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Date:      Fri, 13 Sep 2002 10:16:27 +1000
From:      Mark.Andrews@isc.org
To:        Jason Stone <jason-fbsd-security@shalott.net>
Cc:        freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: ipfw, natd, and keep-state - strange behavior? 
Message-ID:  <200209130016.g8D0GRB5032397@drugs.dv.isc.org>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 12 Sep 2002 15:42:11 MST." <20020912152423.M3276-100000@walter> 

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> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> 
> > > Having the firewall permit such packets and counting on the client to
> > > correctly discard them is probably a bad idea - after all, if you trust
> > > the clients to run a properly configured and non-broken OS, why have a
> > > firewall at all?
> >
> > Defense in depth.
> 
> Yes, that's exactly my point - you are advocating that we have the
> firewall permit more than we need to and trust the clients.  I'm saying
> that of course you try to do as good a job securing the clients as you
> can, but you also have the firewall be as restrictive as possible so that
> you're trusting the clients as little as possible.
> 
> 
> > What happens if the packets don't go through the dynamic firewall? Or
> > are sent in response to an internal request and dynamicly permitted
> > through?
> 
> >    Presuming that you should permit responses to internal requests because
> > internally-initiated requests are supposed to be "safer" is an assumption
> > that I question.
> 
> We are not presuming anything of the kind - obviously, any packets that
> you mean to deny you set up deny rules for.  We are talking about
> a situation where you want to allow a particular outbound service.  With
> your ruleset, you are allowing packets back into the internal network that
> should never be allowed in there.  With a ruleset that involves
> keep/check-state, you have the same semantics in terms of what you mean to
> allow, but you deny more packets that shouldn't be allowed.  And if you're
> only setting keep-state on the rules allowing the outbound setup packets,
> you probably don't have to worry about DoS.
> 
> We're replacing:
> 
>     allow tcp from $INET to any 22 setup
>     allow tcp from any 22 to $INET established
> 
> with
> 
>     check-state
>     allow tcp from $INET to any 22 setup keep-state
> 
> 
>  -Jason
	
	Note: keep-state works well with protocols that are chatty.
	'ssh' is not chatty.  You need to adjust the timeouts to
	support ssh otherwise the rules will timeout.

	Mark
--
Mark Andrews, Internet Software Consortium
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742                 INTERNET: Mark.Andrews@isc.org

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