What would this command do?

[tekomp]

Hi,

Found this command running and I am trying to figure out what it does. Can anybody help?

/usr/bin/ssh -x -oForwardAgent no -oClearAllForwardings yes -lusername
example.com scp -f /etc/passwd

Thanks!

[sitz]

According to the O'Reilly book [oreilly.com]:

When you run scp1 to copy a file from client to server, it invokes ssh1 like this:

ssh -x -a -o "FallBackToRsh no" -o "ClearAllForwardings yes" server-host scp ...

[snip]

This client scp command: scp server:bar foo

Runs this remote command: scp -f bar

So, to hazard a guess, someone's running an old version of scp and attempting to copy example.com:/etc/passwd to your machine. Likely innocent, but should certainly result in raised eyebrows, followed closely by asking the user in question what, exactly, was going on there (IMO).