Re: RVP (RezendeVous Protocol)

From: belkaat_private
Date: Wed Jul 11 2001 - 20:32:47 PDT

  • Next message: BUGTRAQ: "RE: RVP (RezendeVous Protocol)"

    I have reviewed Tibco and rendezvous.  I call it 
    the "poor man's CORBA."  The RVP protocol is UDP and 
    broadcasts throughout your network.  The RV listeners 
    read all the UDP traffic looking for datagrams that 
    pertain to them.  
    
    My experience with TIBCO running on a switched network 
    was that it wasn't very reliable.  It does work well on 
    unswitched network.
    
    Here is the rub, however.  Unswitched, the network is 
    easy to sniff.  If you capture the udp packets, do some 
    analysis, and -- viola -- start injecting your own 
    spoofed packets, the RV listeners will respond.  
    
    In the case of the network I was working on, that 
    included requests for account information, to which the 
    RV listeners responded.  The same for order taking, 
    credit cards, etc.
    
    This can be mitigated greatly by implementing very 
    specific acls on the routers to route the datagrams to 
    specific servers on specific segements.  This is labor 
    and maintenance intensive.
    
    The Tibco product is very sound and works very well 
    under most conditions. It is, imho, vulnerable to 
    attack.  I would be careful using it with sensitive 
    information due to the connectionless protocol.  It is 
    very well suited for broadcasting information and data, 
    as long as you wouldn't shy from boradcasting the same 
    information over your local AM station.  If that isn't 
    acceptable, perhaps a different product with different 
    operating methodology would be bettter.
    
    Now, all that said, the experience I just stated is nine 
    months old (1 Internet year).  Things change.  Milage 
    may vary.  However, when I first looked into Tibco, the 
    shop using it wasn't even blocking it at the WAN router 
    and was blasting datagrams to the Internet in search of 
    a sympathetic RV listener.  So, I may be a bit skewed in 
    my opinion.  I liked Redezvous and the technology -- 
    just not for credit card transactions.
    
    Belka Xakepob
    
    > 
    > Hi all,
    > 
    > Has anyone in this list reviewed RezendeVous protocol and the security
    > considerations relating to this protocol. I am on an assignment to review
    > security implemented in a middleware product (TIBCO), which is using this
    > protocol to communicate between various systems. I have been able to gather
    > some information from: http://www.psl.cs.columbia.edu/papers/rvp-dd.html
    > <http://www.psl.cs.columbia.edu/papers/rvp-dd.html> ,   which does not
    > appear to be fully current. I couldn't find any RFC on this.  I would
    > appreciate any help in this regard.
    > 
    > Thanks and Regards.
    > 
    > Brahma
    > 
    > 
    > 
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