10 years or so ago, this happened:

[ptribble@mastodon.illumos.cafe]

10 years or so ago, this happened:

Me: I'm going to disable telnet on all the servers and use ssh everywhere.

Users: Can't do that, our client software doesn't support it.

Me: Oh, what software are you using?

Users: Something called putty.

Me: ...

A quick walk round the office to reset everyone's putty back to defaults and telnet was very quickly disabled.

[ptribble@mastodon.illumos.cafe]

Actually, my memory of time is a bit off. Make that 20 years or so ago.

[pitrh@mastodon.social]

@ptribble about 20 years ago sounds reasonable.

OpenBSD removed the last traces of telnetd in the base system in 2005: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=111700017509177&w=2, not sure how long other systems kept theirs (but could be years in some cases)

[oxyhyxo@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@pitrh @ptribble The only devices I can recall encountering after 2005 or so were old Cisco kit (which we would switch over to SSH or replace). By 2010-12 I cant recall telnetting into anything

[oxyhyxo@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@dch @pitrh @ptribble

ewww

[stefano@mastodon.illumos.cafe]

@ptribble keeping telnet enabled in 2026 sounds so…dangerous

[nuintari@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@ptribble I was going to say, if I had only switched from telnet to ssh a mere ten years ago, I don't think I'd be willing to admit it publicly.

[ptribble@mastodon.illumos.cafe]

@stefano That was as I started work with a new employer (just got confused about the date), and eradicating telnet was one of the first things I did. Using telnet was so wrong even back then.

[nuintari@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@stefano @ptribble I was working on multiple networks in 2025 that had many telnet services enabled.

The one network had currently supported Adtran TA5000s with SSH disabled, and telnet turned on. They don''t ship that way, someone explicitly made that decision.

Said someone also did not believe in firmware updates. How it came out of the box was how it remained forever. We were charged with unfucking his shit.

Also, my boss had more ADHD than a squirrel on crystal meth. That job sucked.