Re: ICQ Corporate Security Risks

[Joseph Forbes <jftitan () gmail com>]

First thing is to check the current exploit/bug history the version of
ICQ server your running. Next step is to see if you can designate a
specific port(which more than likely you can assign the server some
off the wall port address)

This will at least help obscure the presents of the ICQ server, but
anyone port scanning, the ICQ server will just identify itself but on
another port.  What makes this better than just opening the port/door
for the ICQ server is at least you have control over the port.

Whatever your router is, just forward, or open said port (ie: 6120)
change the port settings within the server to accept port 6120, and
have all the clients use that port.

Those that are on the outside of your network, will all have to be set
at the 6120, this shouldn't hurt, because you'll as well be specifying
the server as well.  The problem would be in the transition stage,
where the employee is at one point inside the network, but then
leaving (home/remote office) and now some settings have to be changed
in order to allow for the remote connection to the ICQ server.

This is just a run down of the mill answer, but more than likely the
problem is going to be the transition between inside/outside network. 
 try it out.



On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 10:33:45 -0000, Andrew Aris
<andrew () dev bigfishinternet co uk> wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> Just looking for a quick sort of straw poll really, my company runs an
> internal ICQ corporate server for internal IM and we occasionally have
> people who are out on the road who need to communicate with people back at
> the office, the current method is to VPN in to the XP Pro box that hosts the
> ICQ and connect to it that way, however the drawbacks of this are that a)
> only one person can do it at any one time b) sending ICQ messages is clunky
> as you have to wait for the direct connection attempt to time out and then
> "send through server". The proposed solution is to open the ICQ port on the
> firewall and then port forward to the appropriate machine thus solving both
> the problems.
>
> My question is how great a security risk do people think this would be?
>
> cheers,
>
> Andrew


-- 
Joseph Forbes  "Don't Forget to Salt the Fries!"
Network Security Administrator
SwapNEtwork eXtreme, Inc. 
jftitan () satx rr com (jftitan () swapnetx com)
cell 210.834.3450 fax 775.415.9280