Penetration Testing mailing list archives
RE: Kernel sec. systems WAS: Why eEye Retina (was MBSA scanner)
From: "Teicher, Mark (Mark)" <teicher () avaya com>
Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 13:32:24 -0600
This logic also applies to Sygate Security Agent, as such their kernel protection is also coded a bit differently than Okena, but uses similar logic to detect an attack /mht |Mark Teicher | Senior Security Consultant | Enterprise Security Practice |Business Communication Solutions & Integration|Avaya Global Services |720.444.0194| teicher () avaya com | www.avaya.com/security -----Original Message----- From: Marc Maiffret [mailto:mmaiffret () eeye com] Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2004 02:08 AM To: pen-test () securityfocus com Subject: RE: Kernel sec. systems WAS: Why eEye Retina (was MBSA scanner) Okena "works" because no one knowledgeable has said otherwise. Okena has taken the same flawed approach as network IDS systems focusing on protecting from exploits, and not vulnerabilities specifically. Although they have done so by doing detection of exploits at the kernel level, instead of at the network level. Take the Microsoft RPC attacks as an example... Okena in its "behavioral" protection is for the most part protecting against the recent MS RPC attacks by denying bad "behavior" that is typically seen within most exploits. Specifically speaking, one of the ways they "protect" from the RPC attacks is to make sure that calls to LoadLibrary/GetProcAddy etc.. Are really coming from app code and not some random place on the heap (for example, could be other places, obviously...). Yes, this protection works, for now... Because everyone uses the same templates for exploiting windows flaws that have been used for years now. The main problem with something like Okena (and most other kernel-only) systems is that they do not start protecting applications until AFTER an attacker is executing code... And at that point it is game over. You can bypass ANY of these kernel protection systems. You could even use a local windows kernel flaw to do it in some cases: http://www.eeye.com/html/Research/Advisories/AD20040413D.html There are many other things wrong with the Okenas of the world, such as the usability nightmare of most of these "learning" systems. Also the fact that most of the time they stop an exploit by killing a thread, a process, or in some cases (Okena has the option) restarting the entire system. Therefore your "security" is now a system that denies code execution, in exchange for a denial of service. Which really is not that much better. I could go on and on but don't have the time now. And to clarify: I do not think all kernel protection systems are bad, including Okena. However, kernel protection alone is not enough and only has a very limited use in what it can do to truly help secure a system, marketing diagrams aside. Signed, Marc Maiffret Co-Founder/Chief Hacking Officer eEye Digital Security T.949.349.9062 F.949.349.9538 http://eEye.com/Retina - Network Security Scanner http://eEye.com/Iris - Network Traffic Analyzer http://eEye.com/SecureIIS - Stop known and unknown IIS vulnerabilities -----Original Message----- From: Steve Goldsby (ICS) [mailto:sgoldsby () networkarmor com] Sent: Monday, April 26, 2004 9:02 AM To: Steve Goldsby (ICS); Rainer Duffner; Doty, Stephen (BearingPoint) Cc: pen-test () securityfocus com Subject: RE: Why eEye Retina (was MBSA scanner) CA's eTrust Vulnerability Manager is not a good product. We had a hard-sell demo in our office, and we were not impressed. Typical CA sales tactic, you can demo the box, but only for a week, and only if their engineer babysits it the whole time. It DOES however, enforce strong policy definition and management, which is where most organizations fall down. If you don't have policy, this box has less use. <get on high horse> Most organizations (in my experience) simply buy a vulnerability scanner, run it periodically, and patch what it tells them to patch. When a patch/fix breaks an application, they back it out. There is usually very little regard to what other security controls are in place to mitigate the risk. Basically, you're playing catchup all the time. Chase the patch, chase the vulnerability. </get on high horse> As an aside: to get around the "chase the patch" mess, look at Cisco Security Agent (formerly Okena). We run this on all our assets, and we are running the same binaries and same policy that we loaded **9 months ago** and we have not had a "hack" yet. No updates, no patches, no policy changes. We have clients that litteral have a 4 hour maintenance window each *quarter* and they cannot patch their boxes as patches become available. Okena/CSA gets around this problem beautifully. And, it plain works. This is what personal firewalls should have been doing all along. Steve Goldsby www.networkarmor.com -----Original Message----- From: Rainer Duffner [mailto:rainer () ultra-secure de] Sent: Friday, April 23, 2004 5:50 PM To: Doty, Stephen (BearingPoint) Cc: pen-test () securityfocus com Subject: Re: Why eEye Retina (was MBSA scanner) Doty, Stephen (BearingPoint) wrote:
How does something like CA's eTrust Vulnerability Manager product
compare -
so that continual scanning is not required using ISS, Nessus, Retina,
etc ?
How does this thing work then ? I mean, NeVO uses passive scanning, and Nessus-scanning, but this "thing" ? Oh, I see: "Q: How does eTrust Vulnerability Manager detect vulnerabilities? " "A: eTrust Vulnerability Manager uses non-intrusive methods to detect vulnerabilities on an asset through a two-step process. Step one is the identification of technologies running on an asset. This may be accomplished through manual input or automatically by eTrust" Vulnerability Manager Service, which identifies the version, patch and hot fix level of technologies running on an asset. This information is then correlated with CA s security database to identify the vulnerabilities that apply to the asset." Can anyone, who runs this, comment on wether this leads to lots of false positives/false negatives ? Does it need an agent ? And, to be honest, I can't stand "appliances" with specs like that: "eTrust Vulnerability Manager is an appliance-based solution that runs on Windows 2000 Server Platform and can be accessed by Internet Explorer 5.0 and higher. " A 'security-appliance' with the most bug-ridden, most-exploited OS on the planet, to be used with the most bug-ridden, most-exploited application running on top of it ? And: "In addition, eTrust Vulnerability Manager Service supports: " IBM AIX " HP-UX " Red Hat Linux " Sun Solaris " Windows NT/2000/XP/Server 2003" Does that mean it only detects vulnerabilities on those OSs ? What about all the other stuff that floats around ? The printer that runs some form of embedded Linux with a vulnerable Apache ? Rainer ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------ Ethical Hacking at the InfoSec Institute. Mention this ad and get $545 off any course! All of our class sizes are guaranteed to be 10 students or less to facilitate one-on-one interaction with one of our expert instructors. Attend a course taught by an expert instructor with years of in-the-field pen testing experience in our state of the art hacking lab. Master the skills of an Ethical Hacker to better assess the security of your organization. Visit us at: http://www.infosecinstitute.com/courses/ethical_hacking_training.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------ Ethical Hacking at the InfoSec Institute. Mention this ad and get $545 off any course! All of our class sizes are guaranteed to be 10 students or less to facilitate one-on-one interaction with one of our expert instructors. Attend a course taught by an expert instructor with years of in-the-field pen testing experience in our state of the art hacking lab. Master the skills of an Ethical Hacker to better assess the security of your organization. Visit us at: http://www.infosecinstitute.com/courses/ethical_hacking_training.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------ Ethical Hacking at the InfoSec Institute. Mention this ad and get $545 off any course! All of our class sizes are guaranteed to be 10 students or less to facilitate one-on-one interaction with one of our expert instructors. Attend a course taught by an expert instructor with years of in-the-field pen testing experience in our state of the art hacking lab. Master the skills of an Ethical Hacker to better assess the security of your organization. Visit us at: http://www.infosecinstitute.com/courses/ethical_hacking_training.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ethical Hacking at the InfoSec Institute. Mention this ad and get $545 off any course! All of our class sizes are guaranteed to be 10 students or less to facilitate one-on-one interaction with one of our expert instructors. Attend a course taught by an expert instructor with years of in-the-field pen testing experience in our state of the art hacking lab. Master the skills of an Ethical Hacker to better assess the security of your organization. Visit us at: http://www.infosecinstitute.com/courses/ethical_hacking_training.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current thread:
- RE: Kernel sec. systems WAS: Why eEye Retina (was MBSA scanner) Marc Maiffret (May 04)
- Re[2]: Kernel sec. systems WAS: Why eEye Retina (was MBSA scanner) Jason Ostrom (May 04)
- RE: Re[2]: Kernel sec. systems WAS: Why eEye Retina (was MBSA scanner) Chuck Fullerton (May 05)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- RE: Kernel sec. systems WAS: Why eEye Retina (was MBSA scanner) Teicher, Mark (Mark) (May 04)
- RE: Kernel sec. systems WAS: Why eEye Retina (was MBSA scanner) Steve Goldsby (ICS) (May 04)
- Re[2]: Kernel sec. systems WAS: Why eEye Retina (was MBSA scanner) Jason Ostrom (May 04)