Help my ISP wants to see inside my PC!

[raid517]

My ISP's engineer wants to try to access my Linux box remotely through SSH to try to do some network testing. I have offered him this facility to try to troubleshoot some networking issues they are having at their end. Understandably I am nervous about this - as I am not hugely keen on the idea of my ISP rattling around on the inside of my PC. Nonetheless I still do want to try to help. Is there a way I can tie this guy down to the CLI without necessarily giving him any access to any folders or directories on my machine?

I want to give him as much access as he might need to tools that will allow him to do network testing - but I want to keep him out of stuff that simply isn't any of his business.

Please advise.

GJ

[tuxnewb]

just give him a normal user shell....any network tools he may need will be used on his end anyway...and if he needs to ping...im sure that a normal user can ping.

[rocketpcguy]

make sure your directories permission is set right. what you can do is create a new account and type "su thenewaccount", and see if you can access your home directories.

[knute]

So what kind of remunerations are they giving for you providing this service?

[JamminJoeyB]

I'm with knute, are you getting any comensation for this? Also as a normal user he should be locked down pretty well to what ever directory you put him into. Read the manual on ssh and do some google searches. You should be able to pretty much jail him in a tiny space.

[knute]

I'd also call the ISP and check to make sure he's legit. I've never heard of an ISP engineer needing to access a box in order to do "network testing". There are enough resources online to be able to do whatever kind of network testing he needs.

[soulestream]

I'd also call the ISP and check to make sure he's legit.

AMEN

I cant think of anything they would need to do on your pc that they could not test internally. Sounds a little funny to me. I would also like to know what exactly it is they would be "testing".


soule

[Parcival]

And it's probably also a good idea to have all current updates installed to your system in case you are giving him access to your box...

[jailbreaker]

I let the level 2 tech guy at Telus into my box and fixed a config problem (dont remember what it was) but he emailed me and called to tell me exactly what he did and what was wrong :D