Rock solid firewall and server :-) now about to punch a hole in my firewall, but need advice.

From: iffriganovitch (vidaubannais_at_caramail.com)
Date: 05/07/04 

Date: 6 May 2004 16:30:43 -0700

Hi,

I have a RedHat 9.0 system using firestarter as a firewall.
I have configured the firewall to block anything, but what I really
need as now (access to HTTP servers).

Now, I would like to share files with friends - I think ftp is a good
choice as my mates don't need to install an extra client software on
the other side.
I see that wu-ftp is very easy to use (and webmin is great to set it
up).
So I have setup a anonymous ftp account (I can't be asked to setup
users etc... plus if someone is interested by what is available on the
ftp server, good for him/her), which works fine.

Now, I am about to open my ftp server to the wild by punching a hole
on my firewall, but before doing so, I would like to know first if
this is a security risk for the server (apart from the security
vulnerabilities wu-ftp developers come across from time to time and
fix quickly).

A friend of mine told me it is safe, but some others tell me that some
people can gain root access by telnet-ing the ftp port ... Is this
true? (if it is true, it stinks!) ... Also is there anything more I
need to know before hand?

I don't expect a lengthly explanation here - just a couple of pointers
easy to understand (I have seen a lot of stuff over ftp security on
different servers etc... on the internet, but I am not a computer pro
... need to hear human-understandable things here :o)

Thanks!

Relevant Pages

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    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
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    (microsoft.public.backoffice.smallbiz)
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