Re: AW: Blocking Offensive Material(??) with Firewall

[Jason Olsen <jolsen () dpg devry edu>]

On Fri, 18 Jun 1999, Kunz, Peter wrote:

> > Checkpoint's FireWall-1 package has a 'hook' for 3rd-party software.  They
> > allow the insertion of anyi-virus software, as well as content filtering.
> > Basically, IIRC, you specify a package that has a list (updated daily) of
> > all the 'objectionable content' sites they're aware of.  If the Firewall
> > sees a request to one of these sites, or material returning from one of
> > them, it is dropped.  Bear in mind these things:
>       [Kunz, Peter]  Basically, this is trivial. I'd liek to see soemthing
> dropping a connection absed on the stream content. Any chance we'll ever see
> something liek that? The FW rule being:Drop all malicious JAVA code.

Actually, that feature already exists to some degree.  See
http://www.checkpoint.com/products/firewall-1/contsec.html
for further information on their Content Security hooks.  It says that it
can do a number of things.  It can strip Java applet tags from HTML pages,
strip Java applets from all server-to-client replies, block suspicious
back connections and rip out ActiveX (Huzzah) and Javascript.
Unfortunately, it can't really differentiate "malicious" code from any
other.  It's an all-or-none approach at the moment.

> > 3)Blocking isn't a pure science.  They may add something to their
> > black-list because it has the word 'cervix' or the like, when it's a
> > legitimate site talking about uterine cancer.  Who knows how in depth they
> > investigate before adding it to their list.
>       [Kunz, Peter]  Yeah, look at the case of that Cyberwatch company
> also bannign gays, lesbians, balck rights, etc. Big scandal that somehow
> never got too public...

I was waiting for something like that to happen...

-Jason

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*Jason Olsen                              *  email: jolsen () dpg devry edu  *
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