Succinctly put: why ident sucks

[unixronin]

As I've been saying for years, "identd (identification protocol) is pointless and potentially dangerous."  At least one of my readers (yes, you) will immediately recognize this analysis...

(By the way, I think there's one point you missed on the issue of its pointlessness:  These days, just about every system that one might reasonably expect to provide a trustworthy and useful ident response -- except within enterprises -- is behind NAT anyway, and ident doesn't work through NAT to my knowledge.  If anyone knows of a firewall that does properly forward ident across NAT, please let me know -- I'm curious.)

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

ident is t3h g4y anyway. horrible protocol for needs of a time LOOONG past.

IRC servers need to stop using it and we can quietly let it die now.

I am in full agreement with this. It's not like every Windows IRC client doesn't already forge it anyway.