Telnet

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Telnet (short for "teletype network") [1] [2] is a client/server application protocol that provides access to virtual terminals of remote systems on local area networks or the Internet. [3] Telnet consists of two components: (1) the protocol itself which specifies how two parties to communicate and (2) the software application that provides the service. User data is interspersed in-band with Telnet control information in an 8-bit byte oriented data connection over the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). Telnet was developed in 1969 beginning with RFC   15, extended in RFC   855, and standardized as Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Internet Standard STD 8, one of the first Internet standards. [1] [2] Telnet transmits all information including usernames and passwords in plaintext so it is not recommended for security-sensitive applications such as remote management of routers. [3] [4] Telnet's use for this purpose has waned significantly in favor of SSH. [5] Some extensions to Telnet which would provide encryption have been proposed. [6]

Contents

Components

Telnet consists of two components: (1) the protocol itself and (2) the service component. The telnet protocol is a client-server protocol, based on a reliable connection-oriented transport. [3] This protocol is used to establish a connection to Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) port number 23 or 2323, where a Telnet server application is listening. [7] [8] [9] Telnet predated TCP/IP and originally ran over Network Control Protocol (NCP). [10] The telnet service is best understood in the context of a user with a simple terminal using the local Telnet program (known as the client program) to run a logon session on a remote computer where the user's communications needs are handled by a Telnet server program.

Telnet Protocol

History

Even though Telnet was an ad hoc protocol with no official definition until March 5, 1973, [11] the name actually referred to Teletype Over Network Protocol as the RFC 206 (NIC 7176) on Telnet makes the connection clear: [12]

The TELNET protocol is based upon the notion of a virtual teletype, employing a 7-bit ASCII character set. The primary function of a User TELNET, then, is to provide the means by which its users can 'hit' all the keys on that virtual teletype. [13]

Essentially, it used an 8-bit channel to exchange 7-bit ASCII data. Any byte with the high bit set was a special Telnet character. On March 5, 1973, a Telnet protocol standard was defined at UCLA [14] with the publication of two NIC documents: Telnet Protocol Specification, NIC 15372, and Telnet Option Specifications, NIC 15373.

Extensions

Many extensions were made for Telnet because of its negotiable options protocol architecture. Some of these extensions have been adopted as Internet standards, IETF documents STD 27 through STD 32. Some extensions have been widely implemented and others are proposed standards on the IETF standards track (see below).

Telnet service

The Telnet service is the application providing services over the Telnet protocol. Most operating systems provide a service that can be installed or enabled to provide Telnet services to clients. [15]

Security vulnerabilities

Telnet is vulnerable to network-based cyberattacks, such as packet sniffing sensitive information including passwords and fingerprinting. [4] [16] Telnet services can also be exploited to leak information about the server (such as hostnames, IP addresses and brand) by packet sniffing the banner. This information can then be searched to determine if a Telnet service accepts a connection without authentication. Telnet is also frequently exploited by malware due to being improperly configured. [9] In fact, Telnet is targeted by attackers more frequently than other common protocols, especially when compared to UPnP, CoAP, MQTT, AMQP and XMPP. Common devices targeted are Internet of things devices, routers and modems.

The SANS Institute recommends that the use of Telnet for remote logins should be discontinued under normal circumstances for the following reasons: [17]

Extensions to Telnet provide Transport Layer Security (TLS) security and Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) authentication that address the above concerns. [6] However, most Telnet implementations do not support these extensions; and they do not address other vulnerabilities such as parsing the banner information. [16]

IBM 5250 or 3270 workstation emulation is supported via custom telnet clients, TN5250/TN3270, and IBM i systems. Clients and servers designed to pass IBM 5250 data streams over Telnet generally do support SSL encryption, as SSH does not include 5250 emulation. Under IBM i (also known as OS/400), port 992 is the default port for secured telnet. [18]

Uses

Figure 1: BusyBox running under the Microsoft Telnet Client from a router. Busybox DG834Gt.PNG
Figure 1: BusyBox running under the Microsoft Telnet Client from a router.

Historical uses

Historically, Telnet provided access to a command-line interface on a remote host. However, because of serious security concerns when using Telnet over an open network such as the Internet, its use for this purpose has waned significantly in favor of SSH. [19] The usage of Telnet for remote management has declined rapidly, especially on the public Internet, in favor of the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol. [3] [20] SSH provides much of the functionality of telnet, with the addition of strong encryption to prevent sensitive data such as passwords from being intercepted, and public key authentication, to ensure that the remote computer is actually who it claims to be.

Modern day uses

Telnet may be used in debugging network services such as SMTP, IRC, HTTP, FTP or POP3, to issue commands to a server and examine the responses. [15] [21] [22] For example, Telnet client applications can establish an interactive TCP session to a port other than the Telnet server port. For example, a command line telnet client could make an HTTP request to a web server on TCP port 80 as follows: [22] 

$ telnet www.example.com 80GET /path/to/file.html HTTP/1.1Host: www.example.comConnection: close

The older protocol is used these days only in rare cases to access decades-old legacy equipment that does not support more modern protocols. [23] For example, a large number of industrial and scientific devices only have Telnet available as a communication option. Some are built with only a standard RS-232 port and use a serial server hardware appliance to provide the translation between the TCP/Telnet data and the RS-232 serial data. In such cases, SSH is not an option unless the interface appliance can be configured for SSH (or is replaced with one supporting SSH).

Telnet is commonly used by amateur radio operators for providing public information. [21]

Although recommended against, security researchers estimated that 7,096,465 devices connected to the Internet continue to use Telnet, however, much less are often estimated because most estimates only scan for TCP port 23. [9]

Technical details

The technical details of Telnet are defined by a variety of specifications including RFC 854. [7]

USASCII control codes

NameByte codeExplanationNotes
NULL240
Line feed241
Carriage return242
Bell243
Backspace244
Horizontal tab245
Vertical tab246
Form feed247
Source: J. Postel and Reynolds (1983) [7]

Telnet commands

Telnet commands consist of at least two bytes. [7] The first byte is the IAC escape character (typically byte 255) followed by the byte code for a given command:

NameByte codeExplanationNotes
SE240
NOP241
Data Mark242
Break243
Interrupt Process244
Abort output245
Are you there?246
Erase character247
Erase Line248
Go ahead249
SB250
WILL251
WON'T252
DO253
DON'T254
Source: J. Postel and Reynolds (1983) [7]

Interpret As Command

All data octets except 0xff are transmitted over Telnet as is. (0xff, or 255 in decimal, is the IAC byte (Interpret As Command) which signals that the next byte is a telnet command. The command to insert 0xff into the stream is 0xff, so 0xff must be escaped by doubling it when sending data over the telnet protocol.) [7]

Telnet options

Telnet also has a variety of options that terminals implementing Telnet should support.

Telnet Options
CodeNameSpecNotes
0Binary Transmission RFC 856 The 8-bit mode (so named binary option) is intended to transmit binary data, not ASCII characters. The standard suggests the interpretation of codes 0000–0176 as ASCII, but does not offer any meaning for high-bit-set data octets. There was an attempt to introduce a switchable character encoding support like HTTP has, [24] but nothing is known about its actual software support.
1Echo RFC 857
2ReconnectionNIC 15391 of 1973
3Suppress Go Ahead RFC 858
4Approx Message Size NegotiationNIC 15393 of 1973
5Status RFC 859
6Timing Mark RFC 860
7Remote Controlled Trans and Echo RFC 726
8Output Line WidthNIC 20196 of August 1978
9Output Page SizeNIC 20197 of August 1978
10Output Carriage-Return Disposition RFC 652
11Output Horizontal Tab Stops RFC 653
12Output Horizontal Tab Disposition RFC 654
13Output Formfeed Disposition RFC 655
14Output Vertical Tabstops RFC 656
15Output Vertical Tab Disposition RFC 657
16Output Linefeed Disposition RFC 658
17Extended ASCII RFC 698
18Logout RFC 727
19Byte Macro RFC 735
20Data Entry Terminal
21SUPDUP
22SUPDUP Output RFC 749
23Send Location RFC 779
24Terminal Type RFC 1091
25End of Record RFC 885
26TACACS User Identification RFC 927
27Output Marking RFC 933
28Terminal Location Number RFC 946
29Telnet 3270 Regime RFC 1041
30X.3 PAD RFC 1053
31Negotiate About Window Size RFC 1073
32Terminal Speed RFC 1079
33Remote Flow Control RFC 1372
34Linemode RFC 1184
35X Display Location RFC 1096
36Environment Option RFC 1408
37Authentication Option RFC 2941
38Encryption Option RFC 2946
39New Environment Option RFC 1572
40TN3270E RFC 2355
41XAUTH
42CHARSET RFC 2066
43Telnet Remote Serial Port (RSP)
44Com Port Control Option RFC 2217
45Telnet Suppress Local Echo
46Telnet Start TLS
47KERMIT RFC 2840
48SEND-URL
49FORWARD_X
50-137Unassigned
138TELOPT PRAGMA LOGON
139TELOPT SSPI LOGON
140TELOPT PRAGMA HEARTBEAT
141-254Unassigned
255Extended-Options-List RFC 861
Source: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (n.d) [25]


Internet Standards

Proposed Standards

Informational/experimental

Other RFCs

Telnet clients

Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope from 1977 has been recreated as a text art movie served through Telnet. [26]

See also

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References

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  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Postel, J.; Reynolds, J. K. (1983). "Telnet Protocol Specification". Network Working Group. doi:10.17487/RFC0854. ISSN   2070-1721.
  8. ↑ "Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry". www.iana.org. Retrieved 2023-01-12.
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  10. ↑ Postel, J. (1981). "NCP/TCP transition plan". Network Working Group. doi:10.17487/RFC0801. ISSN   2070-1721.
  11. ↑ RFC 318 — documentation of old ad hoc telnet protocol
  12. ↑ Bruen, Garth O. (2015). WHOIS Running the Internet: Protocol, Policy, and Privacy (1st ed.). Wiley. p. 25. ISBN   9781118679555.
  13. ↑ The RFC 206 (NIC 7176) Archived 2017-03-15 at the Wayback Machine , 9 August 1971; Computer Research Lab, UCSB; J. White.
  14. ↑ RFC 495 — announcement of Telnet protocol
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  20. ↑ Poulsen, Kevin (2 April 2007). "Telnet, dead at 35...RIP". Wired. p. 24. Archived from the original on 21 December 2016. Retrieved 14 June 2017.
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  23. ↑ Ylonen, Tatu. "History of the SSH Protocol". SSH home page. SSH Communications Security, Inc. Archived from the original on 25 July 2018. Retrieved 14 June 2017.
  24. ↑ RFC 2066 — TELNET CHARSET Option
  25. ↑ "Telnet Options". www.iana.org. Retrieved 2023-01-12.
  26. ↑ "The Lost Worlds of Telnet". The New Stack. 10 March 2019. Retrieved 5 June 2022.
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