Re: The magic security CD disc Re: HTTP proxies

["Steven M. Bellovin" <smb () research att com>]

In message <Pine.GSO.4.44.0212081952200.11337-100000 () clifden donelan com>, Sean
 Donelan writes:
> Has anyone come out with a fix everything CD customers could use
> to clean up their systems? This isn't an operating system specific
> issue. Buggy and misconfigured software is running on Unix, Mac,
> Windows, etc.

It can't be done, at least not usefully.

It's easy to turn things off; the hard part is knowing what should be 
left on, given your needs, the threat environment, and other protective 
measures.

I forget which of the Rainbow Series of books said it -- the Yellow 
Book, I think -- but one of them noted that the same LAN that was 
insecure in an office might be quite secure in a submerged submarine 
with a highly-cleared crew aboard.

It is possible, though, to write something that would analyze a 
configuration and present you with a sensible menu of choices.  It 
could know, for example, that one can't disable rpcbind if other 
RPC-based services are running.  But getting that right for even a 
single release of a single OS is hard enough, let alone many releases 
of many OSes.  And then, of course, you want to add advice to the user.

                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me)
                http://www.wilyhacker.com ("Firewalls" book)