Firewall Wizards mailing list archives
RE: Worms, Air Gaps and Responsibility
From: "Paul D. Robertson" <paul () compuwar net>
Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 17:21:48 -0400 (EDT)
On Thu, 13 May 2004, Eugene Kuznetsov wrote:
[snip]I'd argue that boxes with equal 'ubiquity' start with an equal 'targetability coefficient' which is then adjusted based on end use (kudos, spam, intel, ...) and 'breakability'. Since Windows scores+1, very good points... It is the "level of functionality/complexity" (to first order, proportional to # of lines of code) X "ubiquity" X "value-of-seized-platform" X "security-quality".
Hmmm, but we're missing modifiers, such as "degree of difficulty," "platform knowledge," and some quantification of "security-quality" that accounts for really poor designs.
The more "connected" you are and the richer the interfaces that are exposed, the more security risk there is. That's why RPC interfaces are so much more
That's mostly complexity- rearing it's head as bugs/kloc and poor design (a la "security is not addressed in this document.")
dangerous that simple web servers, and web servers are more vulnerable than IP forwarding engines. The underlying security of the code is part of the issue, but it's an independent variable.
Yet, it would seem that we've seen more damage from mail clients than from RPC services, and more from Web servers than RPC clients (overall damage, not per-machine severity.) Paul ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul D. Robertson "My statements in this message are personal opinions paul () compuwar net which may have no basis whatsoever in fact." probertson () trusecure com Director of Risk Assessment TruSecure Corporation _______________________________________________ firewall-wizards mailing list firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com http://honor.icsalabs.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards
Current thread:
- Best Practices, (continued)
- Best Practices Paul D. Robertson (May 19)
- Re: Best Practices Dana Nowell (May 21)
- Re: Best Practices Gwendolynn ferch Elydyr (May 21)
- Re: Best Practices Dana Nowell (May 21)
- Re: Re: Best Practices R. DuFresne (May 21)
- Message not available
- Re: Re: Best Practices Dana Nowell (May 21)
- Re: Worms, Air Gaps and Responsibility Nate Campi (May 21)