The telnet service must be disabled.

From Apple OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) Workstation STIG

Associated with: CCI-000197

SV-65897r1_rule The telnet service must be disabled.

Vulnerability discussion

Passwords need to be protected at all times and encryption is the standard method for protecting passwords during transmission to ensure unauthorized users/processes do not gain access to them.

Check content

The service "telnet" should be disabled, to check the status of the service, run the following command: sudo /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "print com.apple.telnetd:Disabled" /var/db/launchd.db/com.apple.launchd/overrides.plist If the returned value isn't "true" or doesn't exist, this is a finding.

Fix text

To set the telnet service to disabled, run the following command: sudo defaults write /private/var/db/launchd.db/com.apple.launchd/overrides.plist "com.apple.telnetd" -dict Disabled -bool true

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