Re: lynx-dev Why is Lynx listening on port 11xx ?

[Isaac]

> > I don't like this at all. If it weren't for my firewall, anybody could
> > just telnet in to my running Lynx and...well, I dread to think.
> 
> Nothing, I imagine, as there is probably nothing prepared to accept
> the connection.

I can telnet into it from a host the other side of the world. It accepts
connections on my non-loopback interface from any address/port combination.

> > What I fail to understand is why Lynx is continuing to LISTEN on my
> > external interface despite the FTP transfer being long finished.
> > If I make another FTP connection, the port it is listening to changes.
> 
> I believe it may be to do with a pedantic interpretation of the FTP
> specification by one of the major FTP servers.

Erm, OK. Sounds extremely dodgy to me. Surely whatever FTPd implementation
is used on the server side, no FTP client (including Lynx) should be sitting
there listening to and accepting any incoming connections from any address
and any port after all data had been received and the control connection had
been closed ? 

At the very least, if there _is_ a broken FTPd out there that requires a
client to do this, shouldn't the client make sure that it only accepts
connections from the IP of the FTP server it was talking to ?

Isaac



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