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Blacksheep
11-08-2001, 10:52 PM
**/07/0*
Personal Firewalls Spring Security Leaks
By Brian McWilliams, Newsbytes
ALISO VIEJO, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A.,
07 Nov 200*, **:27 AM CST

Software firewalls deployed by millions of PC users offer only "illusory" protection against Trojan horses and other malicious programs, security experts warned today.

Techniques for defeating the outbound data filters in popular personal firewalls such as Zone Alarm and Norton Personal Firewall have been independently posted on the Web by several researchers. Using the methods described, a rogue program could upload private user data without being detected by the firewall, the experts claim.

To evade a firewall's guards against unauthorized data leaks, the new techniques include commandeering a legitimate program such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer and forcing it to send out data on behalf of the attacker.

"If a firewall is going to allow some program to transmit and receive data over the Internet, and that program allows other programs to control its actions, then there's no point in blocking anything at all," wrote Bob Sundling in text accompanying the source code of TooLeaky, a firewall test program he developed to demonstrate the problems.

FireHole, a similar testing tool, also has been made available on the Web by its author, Robin Keir, lead network security programmer with Foundstone, a computer security consulting firm. Both TooLeaky and FireHole sneak past personal firewalls and upload harmless test data to an external site.

Keir told Newsbytes that other techniques are likely to be discovered for defeating outbound filtering, and that the development s***ests that blocking leaks is "a race the firewall makers will never win." Nonetheless, Keir said he still believes personal firewalls are valuable for their ability to block incoming attacks.

A third firewall test utility, YALTA, creates a virtual device driver that sends data to any Internet address without being detected by firewalls, according to a description of the program, which stands for Yet Another Leak Test Application.

The new firewall testing utilities represent a second generation of such programs, building upon a tool developed by Gibson Research Corp. After GRC president Steve Gibson released LeakTest a year ago to highlight what he called "internal extrusion" flaws in personal firewalls, many vendors made changes to improve the outbound filtering techniques used in their firewall products.

Product manager Tom Powledge told Newsbytes that Symantec was studying the new firewall bypass techniques and would likely revise Norton Personal Firewall to defend against them. But Powledge noted that computer users require anti-virus software and safe computing practices to prevent rogue programs from establishing a beachhead.

"Once a hacker has code running on your computer, they have a tremendous amount of power. We've always said that effective Internet security is a combination of tactics," said Powledge.

The firewall leak discoveries come the same week as an independent testing agency announced the results of its first certification tests of personal firewalls. ICSA Labs said three products passed its battery of tests, which included "restriction of outgoing network communication."

All three of the ICSA certified products, Zone Alarm, Norton Personal Firewall, and Tiny Software's Tiny Personal Firewall, can be defeated by the new outbound attacks in some circumstances, according to the authors of TooLeaky and FireHole. An ICSA representative said the firm was still testing the new tools and had no immediate comment.

More information on FireHole is at http://keir.net/firehole.html .

The TooLeaky home page is at http://tooleaky.zensoft.com .

YALTA is available at http://www.soft4ever.com/security_test/En/index.htm .

Gibson's LeakTest site is at http://grc.com/su-leaktest.htm .

ICSA's Personal Firewall certification page is at http://www.icsalabs.com/html/communities/pcfirewalls/cert_prods.shtml .

DATA
11-09-2001, 09:01 AM
HI,

ANOther threat even behind firewalls is t.e.m.p.e.s.t.
i dont remember what it stands for and i lost a lot of info on my hdd to another virus :(

tempest equipments enable evesdroppers to pick radio signals emitted from ur monitor usually upto * km using sophisticated electronic equipment.
they get to see what u type on the screen a mile away.
they can also pick audio signals as well eg:a voice chat session.
so where does ur firewall come in between all this?it sadly doesnt.
maybe u should make thick concrete walls to prevent the signals out of ur house or use some kind of jammer.
they might be watching u:)the threat is real.
There is a little more on tempest on 2600.faq
and as usuak u may google on tempest.


i can no longer post frm my college which is behind a proxy after the all nettools page was changed a while ago.
the thread nevr gets submitted.

and for tunneling to a shell account i just have a little information.
i suppose i get what u mean now.let me c what i can make of it.

Blacksheep
11-09-2001, 10:42 AM
Hello DATA,

Hope we don't lose your posts to Allnettools discussion forum. You might try TriangleBoy from your school proxy.

TEMPEST = "Telecommunications Electronics Material Protected from Emanating Spurious Transmissions. Today, in military circles, the term has been officially supplanted by Emsec (for Emissions Security); however, the term Tempest is still widely used in the civilian arena."

See: http://whatis.techtarget.com/wsearchResults/*,2*02*4,sid*,00.html?query=tempest

I've wondered if TEMPEST will work on a low voltage LCD display.

P.S. More on TEMPEST: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:pHJNNSWagOg:searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid*4_gci52258*,00.html+Tempest-shielding&hl=en

TIP: If you need to view a dead link sometimes you can find page on Google's cache.

Blacksheep
11-09-2001, 11:27 AM
Hmm... Somehow I lost post edit feature. OK, I'll fix bad link here:

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:pHJNNSWagOg:searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid*4_gci52258*,00.html+Tempest-shielding&hl=en

Nulland Void
11-11-2001, 05:10 PM
Ok, so does that mean then that we're cooked? Even with the latest ZA and Tiny?

Blacksheep
11-11-2001, 06:53 PM
Nulland Void: "Ok, so does that mean then that we're cooked? Even with the latest ZA and Tiny?"

My interpretation is we're cooked only if malicious code gets in one's machine. Don't think one can now depend on ZA, Tiny, etc. to block outbound from live-in trojan. Am sure ZA, Tiny, and other firewall vendors are now looking at this problem. This is a situation where a packet sniffer comes in handy.

Here's more info on latest software firewall vulnerabilities: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-*00*-200-78*06*4.html?tag=cd_mh

Seems these exploits are possible because of a Windows OS bug. Another nasty Windows OS bug is the ability to terminate any running process with no warning to user, e.g. a trojan, like BioNet, can kill your anti-virus and firewall: http://www.nsclean.com/psc-bionet.html

BTW, Windows Ctrl-Alt-Del Close Program window does not display all running processes.

Nulland Void
11-11-2001, 11:08 PM
Youch! That's right annoying.

I guess I better re-install TheCleaner. I recently did a w*8 clean install and haven't re-installed TheCleaner yet.

I have TheCleaner*. Does anyone know of a newer version or another as good/better trojan killer?

Also I run PC-Cillin. Any rants about that one?
I don't care much for Symantec's stuff. Too aggressive.
I hear McAfee is horrible.

Power Jewels
11-12-2001, 08:49 AM
You won't be subject to a Tempest attack unless you _really_ come to *their* attention. Even the Mafia's computer eavesdrop that was recently challenged in court was not done by Tempest but by a key***rd logger.

Tempest requires agents sitting outside in a truck or somewhere nearby, monitoring. You have to be a really really big deal to warrant that kind of attention :-)

Nulland Void
11-12-2001, 09:14 AM
Jeez! I better be extra carefull then (wink! wink!)

Seriously though, somebody's always coming up with something new and better be extra paranoid than not, I think.

Just my 2 bits.

Blacksheep
11-12-2001, 01:57 PM
Looks like Zone Labs might have fix for hijacked trusted progs firewall exploit: http://www.infowar.com/p_and_s/0*/p_n_s_*00*0*d_j.shtml

Nulland Void
11-12-2001, 06:50 PM
Followed your link to ZoneLabs.
Couldn't find # *.

Blacksheep
11-12-2001, 08:08 PM
Link is press release. ZA V *.0 not released yet. To be released before end of year.

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