> On 11/05/11 23:05, phocean wrote:
> >  Also, if you filter (and you should) both inbound and outbound
> > traffic,  how do you allow legitimate responses to the server?
> I think Roland said earlier that outbound connections from these boxes
> should be going out another interface, presumably (my presumption)
> through a stateful firewall of some kind, because ACLs wouldn't be sufficient.
> 
> This is perhaps the aspect that has been missed in this discussion (mentioned
> once, not particularly picked up on, and not really noted again).  It 
> eliminates
> many of the concerns of using ACLs over stateful.

Actually, the stateless solution was to just ACL via "known good" source ports. 
 And this was a large part of my original response of the value of firewalls in 
front of a server. Limiting outbound traffic to responses to valid initiated 
traffic is an important security control, specifically because the "ACL's 
wouldn't be sufficient."

The examples I was going to tally up for Roland were any number of SQL 
injection attacks where tftp and ftp command files were created (in this case, 
by some tool that I presume created .cmd files just like we all used to do with 
"echo >>") to get other toolsets.  These requests failed as the SQL box 
couldn't make outbound connections.  There was no capability for the attacker 
to initiate another remote connection to craft a response to.  

I was actually going to try to get detailed information from way back where 
Code Red propagation was avoided by outbound connection attempts as well, but I 
don't really see the value in doing that at this point.  I also had Slammer 
research where I tested ISA's resilience to blocking outbound UDP 1434 
connections, but I think it suffices to say that there are many, many valid 
examples of why stateful inspection of traffic is valuable and adds security in 
depth. 

I had some other responses as well, but I have to bolt.  I'll make sure to 
catch up on the rest of the responses before I do so as well.

t

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