Re: [sbs list] FW: Last Word On The BlackAttacker.vbs Question
- From: "Jim Harrison" <jim@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "[ISAserver.org Discussion List]" <isalist@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 16:41:49 -0700
Send mail to sbs2k-subscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx to join the list.
It's an SBS-related group that Yahoo sports.
Actually, Tony is a reasonably decent-like-sorta-kinda (aw, hell; he's nuts)
person.
Unfortunately, he's gotten hold of a non-idea that he views as a major security
flaw in the ISA/Exchange combination that is SBS.
Jim Harrison
MCP(NT4, W2K), A+, Network+, PCG
http://isaserver.org/Jim_Harrison/
http://isatools.org
Read the help / books / articles!
----- Original Message -----
From: "Amy Babinchak" <amy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "[ISAserver.org Discussion List]" <isalist@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2004 15:59
Subject: [isalist] Re: [sbs list] FW: Last Word On The BlackAttacker.vbs
Question
http://www.ISAserver.org
Jim,
Where's this list? Who's this Tony guy? I'm beginning to think that SBS
is some kind of wacko magnet. I hope I'm not one of them. I'm a new
member on the SBS yahoo community group and man there are some strange
opinions on what SBS can and can't do out there. I guess it's a good
thing that I developed my own interest in SBS in isolation and from a
corporate IT background. I'm feeling pretty small in my efforts to bring
out the possibilities of this product.
Amy
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Harrison [mailto:jim@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2004 5:25 PM
To: [ISAserver.org Discussion List]
Subject: [isalist] Re: [sbs list] FW: Last Word On The BlackAttacker.vbs
Question
http://www.ISAserver.org
Hi Tony,
Interesting statements, but dangerously misinformed and naive.
- Spoofed packets:
The minute you think you understand what motivates the average
haxor, feel free to alert the authorities. They've been trying
to sort that our for years. It's also the single greatest confounder to
Mom and Pop InternetUser; "why would anyone try to hack me;
I'm nothing to them?" The fact is, the motivation for the average
script kiddie is nothing more than "I did it!", or "see; haxor
mentor, I can own any machine I touch!".
Your statements regarding how ISA determines "spoof status" are
completely incorrect. ISA uses the Windows routing table to
determine if a packet is being received is incorrectly sourced. The LAT
is not part of the decision at all. In fact, ISA
(correctly configured) properly recognizes spoofed traffic from within
the LAT as well.
Regarding haxors spoofing their own source IP; that's silly. Why
would they want to "spoof" an IP where they send the traffic
from? Maybe a course in basic TCP/IP is in order here? I wasn't trying
to illustrate what haxor Joe is going to do; just what's
possible with readily available tools, and thus in the hands of the
script kiddies.
- Alerts
at least we agree on one point <g>. I've seen many an ISA where
literally ALL of the available alerts were enabled on the basis
of "they created it; it must have a purpose". I agree that the alerts
might have been better explained in the help, but ya gotta
ship a product sometime, and the docs always trail the code...
- Localhost (127.0.0.1)
Nothing stated in the posting that motivated my recent response or
any previous communications we've had on this subject has
ever been "proven"; merely restated in the extreme; "I haven't
personally checked ", to quote you. You're rehashing the tired old
"blind IP spoofing ISA SMTP server publishing vulnerability spamming
threat and a bag-'o-chips" that doesn't exist. At no time has
any proof of concept been presented to anyone with whom you've expressed
it. So far, it's nothing but a paper basket full of rocks.
You do yourself a grave disservice by rechewing this old bone in a
public forum. If you have anything to offer that can be
demonstrated either in a lab or live environment, then please forward it
to the proper folks. What you choose to believe about a
vulnerability that, by your own admission, is nothing more than theory
is up to you, but until you or someone else does demonstrates
this in the physical world, my well-intentioned advice to you would be
to stop beating a dead (or unborn, to be more precise) horse.
Thx,
Jim Harrison
MCP(NT4, W2K), A+, Network+, PCG
http://isaserver.org/Jim_Harrison/
http://isatools.org
Read the help / books / articles!
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Su" <TonySu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <sbs2k@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: <jim@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2004 14:48
Subject: RE: [sbs list] FW: [isalist] Last Word On The BlackAttacker.vbs
Question
I agree with everything but one point Jim says here,
And his warning about the downsides are all valid.
- I've seen the performance effects of "monkey code" running out of
process. If something like BlockAttacker was turned into a proper
tool/feature, of course it should be compiled code but as it is now it
can and will at times cause heavy loads. And, as some have noted before
(Jim can add this to his list of issues), the execution plan is faulty
because the process that launches BlockAttacker does not check for an
existing block first.
- Spoofed packets is a critical downside, which is why Blockattacker
should not be used anytime Internet Access is critical every second of
every minute of every day. This builds on the known issue that ISA's IP
spoofing detection cannot identify spoofed WAN addresses, it only
compares against the LAT. Still, the current state of hacking <today> is
that typically hackers believe or know that their targets are SysAdmins
who are either stupid or don't care. So, <today> (emphasis again) I
don't think anyone believes that hackers are spoofing their own source
addresses. Yes, if someone knows you are running BlockAttacker and how
it's configured, they can cause you to be blocked from essential network
resources (ie. DNS, DG, others) which probably makes more sense than
blocking the User's IPv4 block.
- As Jim says, what alerts you configure to trigger any action is
essential to what the consequences are, intended or otherwise.
- Jim might want to modify his comments about 127.0.0.1 if he recognized
what we've been saying on this List and has been proven... The
vulnerability might have been addressed in most situations (I haven't
personally checked but to a degree will take the word of others as
valid), but it's faulty. I suspect the Microsoft "fix" is to look
specifically for certain application processes instead of building an
entire layer which would have addressed all <unknown> applications as
well as known at the time it was designed. Regardless, the unexpected
faultiness is actually a benefit because once the vulnerability and
exploit are known, then we as SysAdmins can know to avoid it <and
similar situations>. In other words, am I to believe that the SMTP
exploit is restricted to SMTP only? Of course not. If the fix that's
supposed to work isn't working, anything similar is almost certainly
also potentially exploitable (which should be a real concern because the
practice of publishing Companyweb on port 444 <does> expose a
possibility although the actual ability to exploit and how is not
clear).
Tony Su
-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas W Shinder [mailto:tshinder@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 8:50 PM
To: sbs2k@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [sbs list] FW: [isalist] Last Word On The BlackAttacker.vbs
Question
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Harrison [mailto:jim@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 6:56 PM
To: [ISAserver.org Discussion List]
Cc: [ISAserver.org Discussion List]
Subject: [isalist] Last Word On The BlackAttacker.vbs Question
http://www.ISAserver.org
(if you want me to see your reply from sbs2k@xxxxxxxxx, please 'r' me)
Hi all,
It's come to my attention that the once-proud BlockAttacker script is
once again the subject of deep discussion. This script has been pulled
from isatools.org (it never was on
isaserver.org) and it will not reappear on that site so long as I own
/ run it.
It is no longer supported by me, Microsoft or anyone cooperatively
associated with either one of us.
This subject (and related script) has been abused, misused and
misunderstood for far too long. It stops here and now.
Contrary to what you might have heard, this script was never intended
for anything more than an example of how to use environment
variables in ISA 2000 alert actions. As with any good deed, it has not
gone unpunished.
If you are using it for automatic "deny" policy creation, consider this:
1 - with the notable exception of SMTP Filter alerts (you're not using
it there, are you? That would be silly in the extreme...),
if ISA generated an alert based on the traffic from the remote host,
that traffic was also blocked. Adding a rule to block traffic
that is already silently dropped is a waste of processor time
(redundantly repetitive).
2 - Every time this script creates a new packet filter for a presumed
"attack on your property":
a - it takes CPU time to create, update and save the changes; if
your script is creating rules as fast as someone can DoS your
ISA with spoofed packets, then your firewall quickly becomes a network
brick.
b - you complicate the ISA policy set. Every rule in the ISA engine
takes processing time. The fewer rules you have, the
faster your ISA can process the traffic
IOW, leave this monkey-script in place long enough and your ISA will
crawl to a halt.
3 - ISA can generate "attack" alerts on any number of packets that ISA
deems to be "out of context". Most notably, these include
(but are not limited to):
1 - "late" packets; these are response packets arriving from a
server outside of the time ISA considers traffic from this host
to be "valid".
You'll usually see these when internal clients drop their
session before the server finishes the response stream.
99% of the time, ISA will report these as "scans" and drop them
2 - DHCP traffic from your ISP; even if you use static IPs, it's
very likely that someone in your broadcast subnet uses dynamic
IPs.
Will your ISA see these? You betcha.
Will it trigger on them? Maybe; it depends on your
configuration and how many alerts you've enabled.
3 - Real attacks using spoofed source IPs; here's the real danger.
All it takes is one script-kiddie to slam your ISA with spoofed
packets from the entire IP v4 space and your ISA will no
longer be functional in the Internet. If you think this is hard to do,
you're fooling yourself.
4 - There has been some discussion regarding:
a - the value of blocking traffic from 127.0.0.1 and how your
ISA will lie bleeding to death on the floor from the "circle
of death" resulting from such an attack. The fact is, while ISA is
properly configured in Firewall or Integrated mode, this
"attack" profile a non-issue. ISA 2000 in Cache mode has no such
self-protection, so you should use a properly-configured
packet-filtering router.
b - the potential for blocking traffic from your own ISA server
is less than zero. Any traffic seen at the external
interface with a source IP of 127.0.0.1 is a spoof packet, period. End
of discussion. You should get mad at your ISP for allowing
this to reach you, not some "think for me" script for not having a
"whitelist".
As always, I'm interested in feedback, but here is the final word:
"BlockAttacker.vbs is not a supported tool for any Microsoft product in
this, or any other lifetime in which I may be a member."
Anyone who wants to offer intelligent discussion on the subject will be
heard, and maybe even responded to in kind (of). Anyone who wants to cry
"foul" (no; wait, that's "spooooon!") will be courteously (or not)
ignored.
Jim Harrison
MCP(NT4, W2K), A+, Network+, PCG
http://isaserver.org/Jim_Harrison/
http://isatools.org
Read the help / books / articles!
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