I hate to spread FUD, but last summer at Black Hat Briefings,
I asked a panel which included Mudge, route, Artimage, and a number of
other smart hackers about the next big type of attack, now that buffer
overflows and misconfigurations are commonplace.
There were a couple of confident replies that switching
technology only works until you subject it to malicious attack, and
then all sorts of interesting things can be made to happen.
This jibes with my experience, which is that technologies not
designed for security don't provide security, and that technologies
not designed to resist malicious attacks don't resist malicious
attacks.
So, if you choose to rely on a switch, ask your vendor for
their test results from when they maliciously attacked it. Adjust
your trust levels accordingly. And deploy IPsec.
Adam
Eric Vyncke wrote:
| At 22:26 7/04/98 -0500, Chris Lonvick wrote:
| >Hi,
| >
| >Some random thoughts:
| >
| >Use a switch - If any one system on the DMZ is compromised, then an
| > attacker may be able to set up tcpdump (or similar) to capture
| > usernames and passwords. With a switch, the attacker will only
| And even be more paranoid, use a switch with static mapping
| between MAC address and port. The physical port cannot be change
| from a remote site while the MAC address could possibly be changed.
--
Just be thankful that Microsoft does not manufacture pharmaceuticals.
Received on Apr 10 1998
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