Controlling access to your services with xinetd

In the Linux realm, “the superdaemon” has typically referred inetd, which handles requests for a number of daemons that either aren’t used often enough to justify running in the background all of the time, or have such a simple job that a standalone daemon simply isn’t needed. The problem with inetd is that this superdaemon makes little attempt to be secure. It allows you to disable various services if you don’t want to use them, but there is no fine control available. Enter xinetd (http://www.xinetd.org). This program is a “secure” replacement for inetd, meaning in this case that it offers many features that allow you to control who accesses which services, and from where.