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Firewall Implementations Firewall Implementations Table of Contents Wireless Access Points .................................................................................................................... 2 Firewalls .......................................................................................................................................... 6 Firewall Implementations ............................................................................................................... 8 Firewalls and the TCP/IP Model .................................................................................................... 10 Flood Guard................................................................................................................................... 13 Packet Filtering Firewalls .............................................................................................................. 14 Stateful Inspection Firewall .......................................................................................................... 17 Notices .......................................................................................................................................... 18 Page 1 of 18 Wireless Access Points Wireless Access Points Converts wireless signals to wired signals Layer 2 & 3 Connect wireless devices to a wired network Single Input – Single Output – one antenna / one frequency Multiple Input – Multiple Output – many antennae & frequencies • Increased capacity over single input – single output mode Function as bridges, switches, and/or routers based on configuration Security measures • Change default SSID • Disable SSID broadcast • Enable MAC filtering • Enable WEP, WPA or WPA2 (preferred) • Limit power output – reduce range 75 **075 First, when you look at wireless access points-- they're not a security device. But what you have to do is you have to say: Okay since it is a security- since it is a device that needs securing, what kind of capabilities can we put in place? What kind of configurations can we put on it? And the short answer is you could control the signals that are coming from it. Now remember, on one side of this thing you've got a wired network. On the other side you've got a wireless network. Page 2 of 18 Is this an approved device? See that's the first question that you could ask. And then are the wireless devices that are connecting to it, are they approved devices? Now for sure this is an approved device, in most cases; unless we get into a rogue access point. Somebody finds an open port on your switch. They go: Oh I'll plug in this wireless device so that everybody can use wireless in here and we don't have to configure the ports. If you had port security on, you'd knock that port down, you wouldn't allow it. But if you had port security turned off, you may do an examination against it and actually look at the MAC address on the wired side of that; and it would say: I am a Linksys device; I am a Cisco device: I am a Maru device. Whatever it is, it would announce the manufacturer from it and you could figure that out. So now on the wireless access point availability side of things, we've got single input, single output-- which we don't see these days. I mean, they just got washed away at this point; except for for really, really small devices out there. I would look at the alpha devices for this from a penetration testing standpoint. Single input and single output is kind of washed away. Page 3 of 18 The other places you would see single input and single output is from an attacker's standpoint we now have software defined radios that will-- any of the wireless spectrum, including cellular data, they can actually capture it and abuse, if you will. Today what we have is multiple input, multiple output; and we shorten it up to MIMO. That's many- many antennas; many infrequencies. Now what's great about this is that we can divide up who's using what. So if I have two antennas here and a whole bunch of people are on this one and a whole bunch of people are on this one, I can say: Like-minded people over here with this frequency, like-minded people over here with this frequency; and then I can split up my bandwidth utilization more accurately. The security component of this is the SSID. Well that's not security. But if you change it from the default, at least people know that you've done some configuration to it. You could disable the SSID broadcasting. But that's not security either. Because as soon as one device that knows its name actually talks to it, it'll send a beacon; and then therefore the SSID has been broadcast at that point. You can enable MAC filtering. You could say: Only these wireless Page 4 of 18 devices. And then you've degraded availability for the end-users who aren't on that MAC list; and your administration went through the roof. So so far we're 0 for 3 on security. Okay well what could we do for security? Well we could enable encryption. We could also change the signal by limiting the power output and reducing the range. But again, that reduces availability. So we're really only left with one security way in here. Page 5 of 18 Firewalls Firewalls An access control point • Restricts or allows access to network resources via rule sets • Drops or allows packets according to its configuration Packet and content filtering Stateful inspection • Malware, SPAM, web, email, inbound and outbound traffic Specialized firewalls • SYN proxy • Web / application proxy • Circuit proxy • Kernel proxy 76 **076 Let's talk about a true wired device that is a security device; and that's the firewalls. This is a filter at a chokepoint. What do I mean by chokepoint? Well you know all the traffic will pass through this point; whatever is passing through. You know it's passing through at that point. Put something in the way. None shall pass. That's what we say, right? Now how do we filter? Well we can filter at pretty much any one of the layers that's out there. Page 6 of 18 As we move up the stack in filtering, what happens is we go slower; because the content filtering level of this requires us to dig deep inside the packet, do de-encapsulation, inspect that and compare that to our data analysis engine that's local, or the database of list of evil stuff. And so we're doing this for many, many packets that are passing across there; and that could be really expensive. What we could do is we could do stateful inspection if we wanted to; where we could say: Where did this originate from; what kind of information is communicating; is it inbound or outbound traffic? So firewalls will allow us to do inspection based on kind of source and destination, if you will, and the state of that and who initiated the state. Now there are all sorts of specialized firewalls that are out there: SYN proxies, web/application proxies and circuit proxies and even kernels. And we're going to look at a few of those. Page 7 of 18 Firewall Implementations Firewall Implementations Boundary – located between an internal trusted network and an external un-trusted network; may lack authentication and may have weak authentication Dual-homed – one interface on internal network, another on external network Screened-host – combination of packet filter with bastion host; host is an externally visible system that’s hardened against attacks; best for low risk, limited access from external systems Screened-subnet – two filtering firewalls create a DMZ where bastion hosts reside; attackers must pass through both firewalls to access internal network 77 **077 So where do we put this stuff? How is it set up? In our normal implementations we do what are called boundary. That's at the edge of your network. We put the firewall right there where your router is. It's located between the internal trusted network and the external untrusted network. And if you have an extranet, then that kind of changes things; and we'll see that in a diagram. It probably doesn't have any authentication on it as far as authenticating inbound and outbound users. It may have some sort of weak Page 8 of 18 authentication on it. But those boundary routers are there to funnel away most of the garbage, is what I call it. And we could have a dual-homed host. And that-- by the way, dual- homed also tends toward routing. And so in a dual-homed host we actually pass all the data up into the server itself or into that host, and we actually inspect for some reason or another; like a circuit level proxy or an application level proxy. We could have a screened-host. And this is a combination of doing packet filtering and what's called a bastion host; which is viewable by the outside world. So it is still a host; and that screened-host has been filtered. You'll see this in the DMZ for your Shared Services network. And that's one host. If we have a screened-subnet, this could be more than one host that is being filtered for. So we say: Okay there's a screened- subnet. The first one is our DMZ. The second screened-subnet is our local area network. Normally screened-subnets are created by creating two filtered firewalls to actually generate a DMZ. So there's a little place in the middle. In most screened-subnets-- not all-- we put those shared services between those two firewalls. Page 9 of 18 Firewalls and the TCP/IP Model Firewalls and the TCP/IP Model Stateful firewall Layer 3, tracks conversations Packet filtering firewall Layer 3, filters on addresses & ports Application proxy Layer 5, examines packet content Circuit proxy Layer 5, more broad protection than application proxy, but lacks specifics of control offered by application proxies 78 **078 Okay when we compare this and the examination of communications at that chokepoint, we start using the TCP/IP model, we talk about stateful packet application and circuit. Notice that they do different things at different layers. In a stateful firewall what we say is at Layer 3 who initiated this conversation? Did it come from my inside network here? Oh nobody said that; no you can't come in, go away, don't talk to me.
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