Re: [fw-wiz] SANS Top Ten and Commercial Firewalls

From: Gary Flynn (flynngnat_private)
Date: Fri Oct 04 2002 - 06:34:52 PDT

  • Next message: Paul D. Robertson: "Re: [fw-wiz] SANS Top Ten and Commercial Firewalls"

    manatworkyes moderator wrote:
    > 
    > This is a very good question. I'd like to extend that question to other
    > security solutions. IDS for examples: How many IDS systems can deal with the
    > slapper worm ? How many AV blocks bugbear (Before it was publicly available
    > ?)
    > Do you (or anyone else) knwo if there is any *network based generic*
    > security device that deals with the latest Solaris bug ?
    
    The engines that use anomaly detection can theoretically pick up 
    some of this. For instance, by dropping traffic whose high level
    protocol fields are oversized, use illegal values, or are otherwise 
    malformed.
    
    That, of course, assumes that there are standards for the fields
    in question and application writers adhere to them so we don't
    get a million false positives. :)
    
    AV software's corresponding method would be heuristics but I
    get the impression it hasn't been very effective. I suspect this
    is due to the nature of a general purpose computer in a consumer's
    hands...too many applications look like viruses and trojans :)
    
    > IMO, the SmartDefense stuff, is more then signature blocking. It looks for
    > the roots of the problem. So, if SSLv2 is vulenrable, use only SSLv3.
    
    I'd thought SmartDefense was smarter than that. The approach you described,
    to me, would be analogous to "if IIS 4 is vulnerable, allow access only
    to IIS 5 servers". Might not be a bad security policy but I was
    expecting a little more sophistication. Along that vein however, I think 
    I've seen products combining vulnerability detection, firewall, and IDS
    functionality that could theoretically make possible a policy saying
    "don't pass traffic to unpatched IIS servers".
    
    -- 
    Gary Flynn
    Security Engineer - Technical Services
    James Madison University
    
    Please R.U.N.S.A.F.E.
    http://www.jmu.edu/computing/runsafe
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