The issue is related to a NULL pointer dereference in the telnetd application, which can occur via specific byte sequences, such as 0xff 0xf7 or 0xff 0xf8. In a typical installation, the telnetd application would crash, but the telnet service would remain available through inetd. However, if the telnetd application experiences many crashes within a short time interval, the telnet service would become unavailable after inetd logs a "telnet/tcp server failing (looping), service terminated" error.