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Security Dictionary
Can't tell 'smtp' from 'snmp'? Find the precise meaning of these and hundreds of other security-related terms in our convenient and up-to-date Security Dictionary.
anonymous login
(I) An access control feature (or, rather, an access control
weakness) in many Internet hosts that enables users to gain access
to general-purpose or public services and resources on a host
(such as allowing any user to transfer data using File Transfer
Protocol) without having a pre-established, user-specific account
(i.e., user name and secret password).
(C) This feature exposes a system to more threats than when all
the users are known, pre-registered entities that are individually
accountable for their actions. A user logs in using a special,
publicly known user name (e.g., "anonymous", "guest", or "ftp").
To use the public login name, the user is not required to know a
secret password and may not be required to input anything at all
except the name. In other cases, to complete the normal sequence
of steps in a login protocol, the system may require the user to
input a matching, publicly known password (such as "anonymous") or
may ask the user for an e-mail address or some other arbitrary
character string.
