[jdev] service banners?

[Jefferson Ogata]

On 2006-07-19 02:00, Hal Rottenberg wrote:
> On 7/18/06, Jefferson Ogata <Jefferson.Ogata at noaa.gov> wrote:
>> Is there any provision in XMPP or JEPs for service banners? By this I
>> mean proper banners such as are supported by ssh2, as well as
>> traditional protocols such as FTP and telnet. A requirement is that the
>> banner be presented to the user before authentication. An MOTD doesn't
>> qualify here.
> 
> May I ask why?  I totally understand the concept of having a login
> banner such as the one that I install on my own Windows domains at
> work.  Disclaimers and such.
> 
> Do you present a banner to users at login to a system?  Yes.
> 
> But do you then present a banner to the user at each subsequent
> application they execute?  Do you show a banner when the user opens
> their mail?  I think this is taking the concept a bit too far here.

I don't know where you're going with this. XMPP is a remotely accessible
service. I need to reliably advise potential users about service
policies (including monitoring and applicable law) before they use the
system. I don't have control over what banners remote users see when
they log in to their local domains (presuming that they're even using
Windows), so I don't see how that is in the least relevant.

> Usually you'll see these banners at the point of entry as it were.  On
> your local workstation or a remote server login.  But once you are in
> it seems a bit superfluous.

Accessing an XMPP service /is/ a remote server login.

Bannering is a pretty commonplace feature of modern network services.

> Let me know if I'm off track...

Sorry, but you're off track.

-- 
Jefferson Ogata <Jefferson.Ogata at noaa.gov>
NOAA Computer Incident Response Team (N-CIRT) <ncirt at noaa.gov>
"Never try to retrieve anything from a bear."--National Park Service