"Server hardening" means to make the servers operation more secure. As you have already beeen advised you should disable the server part of some unsecure protocols, which is done by disabling them in inetd.conf. Deleting some binaries (which are not the server-, but the client parts of the protocol) will

1) accomplish nothing because incoming connections would still be possible

2) alter the system because before this change you had a system where these binaries were present and afterwards you have a system where these binaries are not present. Altering the system is not advisable generally.

If you still think you have to change the system you should do so at least by using a package instead of doing it by hand.

??

I don't know who (or what) you mean by "they". If you mean "the binaries": "they" are not going to change the system, but YOU are going to change the system if you change their permissions.

Before this change you have: a set of files, directories, etc., all with some specific permissions. This is called "your system". If you alter the permission of a binary which is part of this system, you are altering it.

As I said above altering the system should be done only by applying/removing packages. The reason is that manual changes to the system are not documented well and usually not redoable. Imagine that your hardware breaks and you have to rebuild your server in exactly the same way it was: if you have done your change via a package you would obtain a list of all the packages installed on the old machine, apply all the packages (including yours) one after the other onto your new hardware and end up with the same server state as before.

If you have done that manually, you may or may not end up with the same system state as before, depending on if you can find the documentation of the change, if you remember that change having to be applied, etc., etc..

I hope this helps.

bakunin