Securing the FreeBSD Console by removing OS Version

[Ruben de Groot]

[edited because of top-posting]

On Mon, Sep 15, 2003 at 09:35:31AM -0500, Ray Seals typed:
> On Fri, 2003-09-12 at 17:31, Matthew Seaman wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 12, 2003 at 03:44:14PM -0500, Ray Seals wrote:
> > > I don't want the console to display the OS version number.  I have
> > > removed the %h variable from gettytab for my remote login users.  Where
> > > can I remove this info from the Console screen?
> > 
> > Edit /etc/motd ?
> > 
> > If you've got an /etc/issue file (or whatever the if property in
> > gettytab(5) is set to), that will be displayed before the login
> > prompt, and it gets the same sort of % expansion as done for the im
> > (initial banner message) or lm (login prompt) properties.  See also
> > /etc/login.conf where the 'welcome' property can be changes to point
> > to a different file than /etc/motd
> > 
> > 	Cheers,
> > 
> > 	Matthew
>
> It was the /etc/motd file.  I had already edited the file but failed to
> take out the top line.  I was trying to make this harder than it really
> was.

There really is no point in hiding the OS version *after* a user has 
logged in. There are numerous ways for any unpriviliged user to 
determine which version you are running. An intruder entering your system
through some exploit will almost certainly allready know which version
even before logging in.

Ruben

> Thanks
> Ray
> 
> -- 
> Ray Seals <rseals at vdsi.net>
> 
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