---
name: "ffingerd"
section: "8"
platform: "linux"
package: "ffingerd"
version: "1.28-7"
release: "Debian 4.0 (Etch)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/ffingerd"
---

# ffingerd(8)

secure and lightweight finger daemon

## NAME

ffingerd - secure and lightweight finger daemon

## DESCRIPTION

The *ffingerd* program is a drop-in replacement for the standard *fingerd* that comes with most systems today.  Most finger daemons in use today support several features which are not acceptable for security-conscious system administrators, so many chose to disable the finger service completely.  This version of the finger daemon is invoked by *inetd*, but it's not meant to be run as root.  In fact, it should run as *nobody*.  Ffingerd does not allow global finger queries (finger @host), indirect finger queries (finger foo@host.a@host.b), it does not give away valuable information like the shell, login directory and time of last login, and users can put a ".nofinger" file in their homes and then ffingerd will respond with "That user does not want to be fingered".

## LOGGING

Requests that may indicate attacks are logged by *ffingerd* through the [*syslog*(3)](/syslog/3.md) facility.  The default facility is *LOG\_INFO*, you can change that by editing config.h after running configure.

These requests are logged :

- **empty finger attempts**

  ```
  finger @victim.com	# find out who's logged in
  ```

- **indirect finger attempts**

  ```
  finger root@victim.com@innocuous.edu
  	# to victim.com this finger query comes from
  	# innocuous.edu
  ```

- **unwanted finger attempts**

  Users can put *.nofinger* files in their home, and then attempts to finger them will yield

  ```
  That user does not want to be fingered
  ```

## FILES

\~/.nofinger, ~/.plan, ~/.project, ~/.pubkey

## BUGS

When ffingerd is running as nobody and a user does not have world execute permission set for his home, then ffingerd can not check whether that user has a *.nofinger* file there and assumes it's not there.

## SEE ALSO

http://www.fefe.de/ffingerd/

## AUTHOR

```
Felix von Leitner (felix@fefe.de),
```