Security Basics mailing list archives

RE: Exchange <--> Outlook Monitoring


From: "Eric McCarty" <eric () piteduncan com>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 11:45:15 -0800

Sorry I misunderstood, I thought we were talking about mail sent via the
IMS, It didn't occur to me that confidential stuff would be passed
within the company, especially not between outside consultants.  

-----Original Message-----
From: Presley, Steven [mailto:evetsleep () gmail com] 
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 11:41 AM
To: Eric McCarty
Cc: Doll, Josh; security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: Re: Exchange <--> Outlook Monitoring

Unfortunately Outlook--> Exchange does not use SMTP.  It uses MAPI
(RPC) which is not plaintext (its encrypted to some degree, depending on
how the client is setup).  Because the MAPI traffic is encrypted I think
your options on sniffing the traffic to figure out what they are
sending\receiving is not going to happen.  The proper solution is
getting management\HR to approval for journaling and get your Exchange
administrators to configure the database that they are on to journal
everything to a dedicated mailbox.  I realize that you stated that
management will not approve, but unfortunately your options are limited
if you do not manage the Exchange server and if management won't help.
In fact, is there not significant risk to your job in trying to pull
something like this off without management\HR approval?
 Most companies would not look to kindly to some one doing this without
the proper approval.

Best regards,
Steven


On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 11:28:09 -0800, Eric McCarty <eric () piteduncan com>
wrote:
Since SMTP is plain text it can be pulled off the wire @ the gateway, 
if your patient enough to use ethereal w/a filter you can pull all 
SMTP from a certain IP. Or you can use a graphical IDS like the Etrust

product which isn't free but provides an easier and cleaner interface 
for such things.

E.

-----Original Message-----
From: Doll, Josh [mailto:Doll () pbworld com]
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 8:27 AM
To: security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: Exchange <--> Outlook Monitoring

Is there any effective way of capturing exchange / outlook data from a

3rd party machine?  We have a number of sub consultants with email 
access from our company, who's email needs to be monitored / archived 
for breech of contract and sharing of company secrets.  Problem is, we

don't maintain our exchange server here in this office, and the office

that does is unwilling to cooperate in this matter (Read: upper 
management catfight).  Therefore we need a way to ensure that what 
they send and receive is legit.  It is a relatively small number of 
users
(~5) that are still on our LAN that need to be monitored, the rest 
have been moved to another subnet without company email.

My understanding is that it is nowhere near as easy to capture these 
emails when it is an exchange environment vs.. the options available 
when using POP or others.

Any help, or nudges in the right direction would be helpful.

C. Josh Doll
Network Administrator - Houston
Parsons Brinckerhoff



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