Re: Unrestricted Outbound Web Server Access Opinion

[Mark Leonard <mark () mjleonard com>]

Paul Guibord wrote:
> Someone within our company wants our Internet facing web servers to
> have unrestricted outbound access. Port 80 is the only port permitted
> from the outside coming in.

Have they provided a reason for unrestricted outbound access?  If they
wanted specific ports opened, I could understand that - but unrestricted
access makes me think that they aren't really sure of their own
requirements.

> I need the experts opinion why we do not want to permit this PLEASE.
> Two things I could think of are if the web servers were compromised,
> then the hacker would have the ability offload any data they want.
> Another being if they were infected with a worm they would bring down
> the Internet T1 in their attempt to find other devices to infect.

You seem to be on the right track already.  I've seen these two things
happen in the past, and it's not fun.  The risk of this happening can
become very high if the webservers are using third-party PHP scripts or
CGI that aren't audited.

In the end, this is a management/policy decision.  If the machine is
compromised, what is the cost of the potential harm that would come of
it having unrestricted outbound access?

I'm curious to hear how other admins would deal with this situation.
Typically, I've dealt with this sort of problem with a potential cost
vs. benefit type of analysis.

Hope that helps,
ttyl
mark