RE: war dialers, are they a current threat?

["LeGrow, Matt" <Matt_LeGrow () NAI com>]

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Ron,

I actually wrote a wardialer a few years back, so I may be uniquely
qualified to give you an answer :-)     I believe it is necessary to
secure any sort of outbound dialing access.  In the age of callerID,
wardialers and codehackers are obviously much less effective and less
widely used than they used to be.  Very esoteric systems still exist
waiting to be found, but I tend to believe the focus of illegal
activity is on the internet.  Back a long time ago, when I was a
young lad of suspicious moral bent, there was definitely some
interest in the Internet in the hacking community, but we were also
surrounded by Tymnet, Telenet, Datapac, BBSs, and other distractions.
  Because of the lack of interconnectedness there was a great
interest in code hacking and especially wardialing.  Now the internet
*is* the hackers' world, and it doesn't require abusing a phone line.
 Its preferable because anonymity is far more attainable, and
everything is interconnected and essentially "free".  So hackers have
sort of evolved past wardialing to access systems because there is
plenty to play with without it.

That having been said, its always a good idea to try and secure
modems which could potentially cause problem.  Its much more tempting
to be able to dial out knowing that its not your line.  My favorite
trick with internet and telenet outdials used to be accessing them
and issuing a hayes redial command, to see what the last user
accessed.  Consider some hacker logging in after your legitimate user
and using the tool that you set up to try and hack whatever system or
service it was supposed to provide access for.  Thats a very
legitimate and real threat.

Not that I believe any of the script-kiddies today know the meaning
of a Hayes command sequence... ;-)

Matt LeGrow
Network Associates, Inc.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Note: Opinions expressed herein are most certainly NOT that of my
employer:-)


> -----Original Message-----
> From: R. DuFresne [mailto:dufresne () sysinfo com]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 1999 2:35 PM
> To: firewall-wizards () nfr net
> Subject: war dialers, are they a current threat?
>
>
> Do folks here consider war dialers a real threat in this day in
> age?  
>
> How would others respond to a request in install a modem for 
> dialup access
> to a server that one cannot secure becuase:
>
> 1)  There's no compiler to install tools to try and secure the
> system  
>
>
> 2)  You are supposed to make this soft chewy available to the 
> whole inside
> network
>
> Being that your pbx has no dialback feature, what's the best way to
> protect such a setup, if there is one?
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ron DuFresne
> -- 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>         admin & senior consultant:  darkstar.sysinfo.com
>                   http://darkstar.sysinfo.com
>
> "Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity.  It
> eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to
> the business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation." 
>                 -- Johnny Hart
>
> testing, only testing, and damn good at it too!

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