RE: Norton AV 2002 rewriting SMTP, breaking TLS

From: Owen, Greg (Greg_Owenat_private)
Date: Fri Jul 19 2002 - 11:40:16 PDT

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    > I saw this behavior in Norton AV 2000.  After searching their 
    > web site, I found the information saying that they just plain
    > don't support SSL encrypted email.  You have to pick, auto-scan
    > AV, or encrypted session.
    
    	I ran into this bug (yes, I'll call it a bug) in Norton a few
    months ago.  I can only say that there is a special circle in hell
    reserved for companies which _silently_ disable security measures in
    order to let their product carry out a procedure (especially a redundant
    procedure).
    
    	While we're on STARTTLS issues, another security issue people
    should be aware of is that mail clients (I've seen this on OE, but I'm
    betting it is pretty common) only use SSL for encryption, not
    authentication.  In other words, if you just happen to be in a hotel
    with one of those ethernet devices, and the hotel ISP happens to
    silently redirect port 25 to their own SMTP relay, and their SMTP relay
    supports STARTTLS with a valid certificate, then your mail client will
    very happily transmit your SMTP AUTH credentials to their server,
    thinking it is your own that it is talking to.  This one bit me at SANS
    Orlando 2002 (Thank you, Marriot...)
    
    -- 
    	gowen -- Greg Owen -- greg_owenat_private
    	Senior Network Engineer, Network Solutions Group
    	Vibren Technologies, Inc.
    



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