All very good points. I am not certain as to how viable of an option
this "idea" would be, but what about a totally R/O firewall after
configuration? Incorporate some sort of memory protection into that,
such as stack and heap protection. You'd then have a pretty secure
firewall... but then again... if its passing traffic to an insecure
box... you're screwed anyway.
-Adriel
-----Original Message-----
From: Juliao Duartenn <juliao.duartenn@oblog.pt>
To: greybrimstone@aim.com
Cc: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu; me@n33t.org;
full-disclosure@lists.grok.org.uk
Sent: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 10:28:51 +0000
Subject: Re: [Full-disclosure] PC Firewall Choices
On Tue, 2006-01-17 at 23:33 -0500, greybrimstone@aim.com wrote:
Thats assuming that malware isn't being designed for that firewall.
I'm
sure you already know that software is software regardless of the
hardware that it is running on. Likewise a vulnerability is still a
vulnerability...
I suppose you could r/o the system... but you need to write the confs
somewhere right?
-Adriel
Configuration on a hardware firewall is usually a pretty stable thing -
you don't go around opening ports at random every day, now do you?
Most modern {linux|bsd} firewall implementations can now run from a
read-only device, namely CD-ROM, and also write their configuration to a
removable device that you can manually set RW or RO - floppy, USB pen,
etc.
Of course, since most implementations mount parts of the filesystem into
RAM, you're still vulnerable to attacks, they are merely non-permanent,
if you reboot you are clean again, albeit with the original hole still
present, i'd say.
There are, of course, solutions for that too, but I still haven't seen
one that really works - meaning that it can detect and prevent tampering
in real-time. The best thing I can remember is running tripwire against
a RO database on CD, but that can still be tampered with. Any thoughts?
Juliao
-----Original Message-----
From: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu
To: Nick Hyatt <me@n33t.org>
Cc: full-disclosure@lists.grok.org.uk
Sent: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 21:08:39 -0500
Subject: Re: [Full-disclosure] PC Firewall Choices
On Tue, 17 Jan 2006 18:59:52 MST, Nick Hyatt said:
> Given the choice between one of those selections and a standard
Linksys
> router / firewall combo, wouldn't it be safer to go with the
hardware
> firewall? I find the configuration options to be quite a bit more
in-depth,
> and the hardware firewall doesn't get itself as stuck in the system
as say,
> ZA does.
Even more important, a hardware firewall can't be compromised as
easily
by malware that's on a host behind the firewall. It's easy for a
program
on a PC to tell ZA to look the other way. It's a little harder for
it
to
tell a hardware firewall to look the other way.
Unless of course, the firewall implements the UPnP "Pants Down!"
RPC..
;)
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