Re: network appliance...

[j.hall () F5 COM (John Hall)]

He's talking about the Network Appliance network attached disk array (read
BIG RAID box with NFS/CIFS(netbios)/HTTP server or HTTP caching OS).

I've had them at my last two jobs and loved them.  They use a proprietary
kernel based (I think) on vxworks, running on Pentium and Dec Alpha
processors.  There's no UNIX to exploit and if someone did get in, they'd
probably gore the OS to do it which would be VERY noticable.  I've seen
no exploits against their disk servers with recent versions of the OS.
Never ran nmap against them though.  Never had time to really try to
break one.  The protocols are inherently insecure, so I wouldn't put any
NFS or CIFS server on the Internet without some serious diligence.

I do remember there have been some issues with their NetCache product (same
hardware & OS but different application layer).  Here's what I've got links
for:

http://packetstorm.securify.com/9904-exploits/netcache.snmp.public.txt
Pine.LNX.4.21.0003300946230.25171-100000 () dione ids 
pl">http://www.securityfocus.com/templates/archive.pike?list=1&date=2000-03-28&msg=Pine.LNX.4.21.0003300946230.25171-100000
 () dione ids pl</A>

Make sure you buy the support contract with the box, and keep it up.  Their
customer support is way better than "World Class" and is dirt cheap for the
level of support you get.  Network Appliance has the best customer support
of ANY company I've done business with.

JMH

JT <jt () COVERTSYSTEMS COM> wrote:
> has anyone heard of vulnerabilities in the Network Appliance base operating
> systems? they're the company that makes large filer head
> systems and my company is considering buying one. the operating system is
> unix or unix based but an nmap scan on known open
> ports in demonstration showed absolutely nothing - no operating systems
> id either. i was curious as to whether this is really as safe as
> it seems...
>
> thanks,
>
> jim tatman
> jtatman () leopard com

--
John Hall <j.hall () f5 com>                                     F5 Networks, Inc.
Senior Test Engineer                                          206-505-0800

Nemo me impune lacessit.
        [No one provokes me with impunity]
                -- Motto of the Crown of Scotland