Re: FirePass questions

["Joseph Steinberg" <joseph () whale-com com>]

So called "SSL VPN"s (such as the product that you mention) can be
deployed securely -- but doing so requires addressing many concerns,
not only related to the issue to which you refer of "punching a hole through
your firewall" (which is obviously a serious problem), but also to
the problem of people accessing from insecure locations such as
Internet kiosks and leaving the browser cache, temporary files, and
other data on machines that subsequent users can access.

Whale has been in the business of offering secure SSL VPNs for almost
two years, and whether you want to use our product or someone else's,
you probably want to read the white paper available on our web site
(http://www.whalecommunications.com/whitepapers)
that discusses the security issues surrounding deploying SSL VPNs.

Joseph Steinberg
Director of Technical Services
Whale Communications

In response to:
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 10:37:46 -0600
To: firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com
From: john.smith () minolta-qms com
Subject: [fw-wiz] FirePass questions

Greetings Everyone,

        I've searched through the 2002 and 2003 Bugtraq, Firewall Wizards and VPN
lists and not come up with anything.

        A group within our company is looking at the FirePass appliance
(www.uroam.com).  The appliance appears to work by punching a hole through
your firewall and offers a whole range of services.

        My opinion is that this is a *very* bad thing:

        a) The group wants connectivity from a large enough number of locations
that filtering would be next to impossible, if not impossible, therefore we
would have to allow access to it from the whole world.
        b) We would eliminate the firewall from the security equation.
        c) We would be depending on the security of the appliance to protect the
corporation, and it is designed to *grant* access, not prevent or deny it.

        My questions:

        1) Does anyone have any experience with the FirePass?
        2) Is there a way to securely offer access to this box?
        3) Am I totally off base in my above assumptions and my analysis of the
appliance?

        Chances are I will be required to install this box.  In this case the
middle ground I am shooting for is only granting access to the box via VPN
(even though they are eliminating 'traditional' VPN from the picture
according to their literature).  We already use VPN, so to me only allowing
external access through the VPN is a trade-off - our security stance is no
worse than it was before.

        Thanks for all your help.

js

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