Re: How do you handle the P2P problem?

[Peter Charbonneau <Peter.Charbonneau () WILLIAMS EDU>]

We are a fully switched Cisco campus.  We have been using CiscoWorks to
locate people (CampusManager); given that polling takes place every 2
hours, this is not a good solution for mobility.  We have created a
"home-grown" Perl and PHP poller that polls all 350 switches every 15
minutes; we use the dynamic arp cache in the core 6509's to map MAC to
IP address - voila - instant locator.

We also use Snort.  WE DO get quite a number of false positives; however,
I have NEVER seen false positives for the P2P users.  If you turn on the
P2P rules, I think you will find the IPs of the violators.

Out legal counsel has told us that if we ban P2P, and anything "slips"
through, then we are liable AS A CAMPUS.

HTH,

PeteC

*************************************************************************
Peter Charbonneau                       Williams College
Sr. Network and Systems Administrator   Office for Information Technology
Jesup Hall Room 112                     22 Lab Campus Drive
(413) 597-3408 (Phone)                  Williamstown, MA 01267
(413) 597-4103 (Fax)                    Peter.Charbonneau () williams edu
*************************************************************************

-----Original Message-----
From: The EDUCAUSE Security Discussion Group Listserv
[mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU]On Behalf Of Clyde Hoadley
Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 1:54 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: [SECURITY] How do you handle the P2P problem?


I'm looking for simple and low cost solutions to some difficult problems.

How do you accurately detect illegal peer-to-peer file sharing activity?

How do you accurately identify and locate a user who is engaging in illegal
peer-to-peer file sharing?

Metro State does have some problems with illegal peer-to-peer file sharing
however, we are solely a commuter campus.  We do not have dormitories etc...
to support.  So, our P2P problem probably isn't as big as some other
institutions P2P problems.

Most of our network uses DHCP addresses.  We are not using MAC address
authorization at this time.  We have a single Internet gateway.  We are
doing Ingress filtering - permitting incoming connections for specific
port/protocols to specific hosts.  We do limited Egress filtering -
permitting
almost any outgoing connection.  We also have SNORT watching the gateway
traffic but have most of the rules turned off due to the high volume of
false positives.  We could deny high port to high port connections but that
would also stop a lot of very legitimate traffic.

We have not received any subpoenas but we do occasionally receive an Email
notice of Copyright infringement.  How are the rest of you dealing with
the illegal peer-to-peer file sharing problem?

--
Clyde Hoadley
Security & Disaster Recovery Coordinator
Division of Information Technology
Metropolitan State College of Denver
hoadleyc () mscd edu
http://clem.mscd.edu/~hoadleyc/
(303) 556-5074

**********
Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Discussion
Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/cg/.

**********
Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Discussion Group discussion list can be found at 
http://www.educause.edu/cg/.