Security Basics mailing list archives

RE: Understanding and preventing reverse ssh tunnels


From: David Gillett <gillettdavid () fhda edu>
Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2012 15:39:38 +0000

  The way you deploy something like BlueCoat is to tie it to your corporate CA.  Users never see certificate warnings, 
because the certificate the proxy offers them is signed by a CA they already trust as part of their configuration on 
the corporate network.
  (If your network is looser than that about what devices are allowed onto it, then intercepting SSL traffic may be a 
difficult legal/political issue even when it's not technically too difficult....)

David Gillett
CISSP CCNP


________________________________________
From: Jeffrey Walton [noloader () gmail com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2012 5:47 AM
To: !s3grim
Cc: Peter Thomas; a bv; security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: Re: Understanding and preventing reverse ssh tunnels

On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 2:12 PM, !s3grim <persephane () gmx eu> wrote:
I don't think any SSL-mitm-proxy is such a good idea. Any SSL-traffic, even it is 'secure', has to be intercepted. 
Thus leading to many certificate warnings annoying your users and getting them used to invalid certificates and 
ignoring warnings, you won't neither be able to distict malicious site from good ones, even if you wan't to, nor be 
able to detect all types of reverse tunnels, and theoretically there are a plenty of, some being already existent.

These are sometimes referred to as Interception Proxies. Bluecoat
(http://www.bluecoat.com/), et al.

There are some Blackhat talks on the devices. Matt Green has a nice
blog entry "How do Interception Proxies fail?,"
http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2012/03/how-do-interception-proxies-fail.html.

Btw, I don't think a proxy could ever handle this kind of problem. Any solution relaying parts of the submitted 
content without change can be misused  for tunneling. If you are afraid, your user will be owned, what about 
considering something like a terminal session just presenting a browser window without copy'n'paste. Thus at least 
will prevent simple tunneling by changing the semantics of interaction interrupting the direct channel.

Right - these devices need to see "standard" communications exchanges
(even if "standard" includes encrypted). I believe its an instance of
the halting problem (corrections, please). I imagine a spurious header
that is later discarded would be enough to evade some of the lower end
models.

Jeff

Am 03.08.2012 um 04:49 schrieb Peter Thomas <peter () hackertarget com>:

If you have open ports you cannot restrict ssh tunnels or port
forwarding within a SSH connection at the gateway as the communication
is encrypted. The gateway / firewall will only see SSH traffic.

To restrict tunnels you need to block ingress and egress traffic, and
only provide web access over a proxy that does SSL mitm and looks for
ssh over HTTP.

In most cases forcing use of proxy and blocking direct access to
external hosts will be enough.

On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 6:46 PM, a bv <vbavbalist () gmail com> wrote:
Hi,

How can i prevent reverse ssh tunnels?


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In this guide we examine the importance of Apache-SSL and who needs an SSL certificate.  We look at how SSL works, how 
it benefits your company and how your customers can tell if a site is secure. You will find out how to test, purchase, 
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