Why did someone connected even with hosts.deny all: all ?

[Donovan]

why did I get:

Jan 1 20:34:53 www portmap[98]: warning: cannot open /etc/hosts.allow: Permission denied
Jan 1 20:34:53 www portmap[13498]: connect from xxx.xxxx.xxx.xxx to dump(): request from unauthorized host

Why did I get "connect from" ? I thought hosts.deny with ALL: ALL was supposed to disallow any connect ??

Thanks,
Donov

[larryliberty]

Tcp wrappers doesn't work the same way a firewall works. It actually allows the connection and then closes it right away if the rules in hosts.allow and hosts.deny don't allow for it. It's a good thing to have, but no replacement for a firewall.