New ZeroConf Spec

[Chris Jones]

Hi

On 12:34:29 pm 27/07/2006 Sebastian  Dröge  <slomo at circular-chaos.org>
wrote:
> application's job to say which services they want and what they want
> to do with these services.

Then that is where the selection should be. Avahi can receive all the
notifications malware infested machines care to send, but if they're being
ignored because they obviously make no sense then there's no problem (avahi
exploits aside, as I mentioned previously).

To extend my prior quick-look at this stuff, I've just installed the
service discovery applet on my machine here at work where we have a lot of
Apple machines and while I can now see lots of printers, machines, itunes
and so-on services, I can't actually do anything with any of them anyway,
the only services we have that lead to actual actions are the web pages
announced by our printers.

So in addition to my questioning of the actual security problems this opens
up, I have to question how useful it actually is. Which services (other
than zeroconf ad-hoc networking, which cannot and will not ever be secure
by its very nature) are people expecting this to provide? Looking at the
list of options in the applet, I'd say that beyond web pages and printers,
not much.

Cheers,
---
Chris Jones
  cmsj at tenshu.net
  www.tenshu.net