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]
Internet protocol suite |
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Application layer |
Transport layer |
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Link layer |
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.
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.
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).
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]
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]
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.
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 80
GET /path/to/file.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
Connection: 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]
The technical details of Telnet are defined by a variety of specifications including RFC 854.[7]
Name | Byte code | Explanation | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
NULL | 240 | ||
Line feed | 241 | ||
Carriage return | 242 | ||
Bell | 243 | ||
Backspace | 244 | ||
Horizontal tab | 245 | ||
Vertical tab | 246 | ||
Form feed | 247 | ||
Source: J. Postel and Reynolds (1983)[7] |
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:
Name | Byte code | Explanation | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
SE | 240 | ||
NOP | 241 | ||
Data Mark | 242 | ||
Break | 243 | ||
Interrupt Process | 244 | ||
Abort output | 245 | ||
Are you there? | 246 | ||
Erase character | 247 | ||
Erase Line | 248 | ||
Go ahead | 249 | ||
SB | 250 | ||
WILL | 251 | ||
WON'T | 252 | ||
DO | 253 | ||
DON'T | 254 | ||
Source: J. Postel and Reynolds (1983)[7] |
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 also has a variety of options that terminals implementing Telnet should support.
Code | Name | Spec | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
0 | Binary 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. |
1 | Echo | RFC 857 | |
2 | Reconnection | NIC 15391 of 1973 | |
3 | Suppress Go Ahead | RFC 858 | |
4 | Approx Message Size Negotiation | NIC 15393 of 1973 | |
5 | Status | RFC 859 | |
6 | Timing Mark | RFC 860 | |
7 | Remote Controlled Trans and Echo | RFC 726 | |
8 | Output Line Width | NIC 20196 of August 1978 | |
9 | Output Page Size | NIC 20197 of August 1978 | |
10 | Output Carriage-Return Disposition | RFC 652 | |
11 | Output Horizontal Tab Stops | RFC 653 | |
12 | Output Horizontal Tab Disposition | RFC 654 | |
13 | Output Formfeed Disposition | RFC 655 | |
14 | Output Vertical Tabstops | RFC 656 | |
15 | Output Vertical Tab Disposition | RFC 657 | |
16 | Output Linefeed Disposition | RFC 658 | |
17 | Extended ASCII | RFC 698 | |
18 | Logout | RFC 727 | |
19 | Byte Macro | RFC 735 | |
20 | Data Entry Terminal | ||
21 | SUPDUP | ||
22 | SUPDUP Output | RFC 749 | |
23 | Send Location | RFC 779 | |
24 | Terminal Type | RFC 1091 | |
25 | End of Record | RFC 885 | |
26 | TACACS User Identification | RFC 927 | |
27 | Output Marking | RFC 933 | |
28 | Terminal Location Number | RFC 946 | |
29 | Telnet 3270 Regime | RFC 1041 | |
30 | X.3 PAD | RFC 1053 | |
31 | Negotiate About Window Size | RFC 1073 | |
32 | Terminal Speed | RFC 1079 | |
33 | Remote Flow Control | RFC 1372 | |
34 | Linemode | RFC 1184 | |
35 | X Display Location | RFC 1096 | |
36 | Environment Option | RFC 1408 | |
37 | Authentication Option | RFC 2941 | |
38 | Encryption Option | RFC 2946 | |
39 | New Environment Option | RFC 1572 | |
40 | TN3270E | RFC 2355 | |
41 | XAUTH | ||
42 | CHARSET | RFC 2066 | |
43 | Telnet Remote Serial Port (RSP) | ||
44 | Com Port Control Option | RFC 2217 | |
45 | Telnet Suppress Local Echo | ||
46 | Telnet Start TLS | ||
47 | KERMIT | RFC 2840 | |
48 | SEND-URL | ||
49 | FORWARD_X | ||
50-137 | Unassigned | ||
138 | TELOPT PRAGMA LOGON | ||
139 | TELOPT SSPI LOGON | ||
140 | TELOPT PRAGMA HEARTBEAT | ||
141-254 | Unassigned | ||
255 | Extended-Options-List | RFC 861 | |
Source: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (n.d)[25]
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Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope from 1977 has been recreated as a text art movie served through Telnet.[26]