TCP Wrappers

Published by Nick on March 7, 2020March 7, 2020

TCP Wrappers is a host-based ACL system, they are used to limit network access to specific IP addresses. They work on Unix based operating systems like Linux and BSD.

The original code was written by Wietse Venema in 1990 to monitor an unauthorized users activities on a Unix operating system at the Department of Math and Computer Science at the Eindhoven University of Technology.

ACL’s or access control lists are usually used at the network level with firewalls or switches, using ACL’s at the host level provides an extra layer of security in case an intruder gets on the network segment the target host is on.