..and anyone with the capability to use the tool also has the ability to remove any event logging it might create. It's a debugging tool. It can only be used by someone with local-logon, admin rights to the ISA. If you have a malicious person of this caliber functioning on the ISA itself, the use of this tool or the APIs that can't be reached without it (or the aforementioned skillset) are irrelevant. Neither the tool nor the APIs it uses are available "by accident". The fact is; anyone attaining the access required to uses this tool can cause far more damage using much simpler techniques, like "diskpart". ------------------------------------------------------- Jim Harrison MCP(NT4, W2K), A+, Network+, PCG http://isaserver.org/Jim_Harrison/ http://isatools.org Read the help / books / articles! ------------------------------------------------------- -----Original Message----- From: isapros-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:isapros-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Young, Gerald G Sent: Friday, July 07, 2006 07:04 To: isapros@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [isapros] Re: FW: FWENGMON issue for the brain trust Hmmm... I'm afraid to voice my opinion because I certainly don't want to be shunned but... Would it be that hard to add the event log and auditing features to the tool or the APIs? I mean, that would be an "improvement", wouldn't it? And there are different levels of abuse this tool or APIs could potentially allow. Suppose an unethical admin out there used it to create a bypass to a questionable website or something. Does the bypass mean that ISA wouldn't even log the traffic? Or, reverse that and suppose the unethical admin is working with an outside source and he creates an incoming bypass. If you can't see the bypass, chances are inbound traffic won't be noticed unless it's pervasive or something else brings attention back to the firewall. And keep in mind that someone could create another utility that makes use of those APIs by playing with ISA on their own and then publish that utility once they figure out what those APIs are. In my opinion, if adding that functionality to the tool or APIs helps to minimize those kinds of risks, it makes sense to me to add it. Cordially yours, Jerry G. Young II MCSE (4.0/W2K) Atlanta EES Implementation Team Lead ECNS Microsoft Engineering Unisys 11493 Sunset Hills Rd. Reston, VA 20190 Office: 703-579-2727 Cell: 703-625-1468 THIS COMMUNICATION MAY CONTAIN CONFIDENTIAL AND/OR OTHERWISE PROPRIETARY MATERIAL and is thus for use only by the intended recipient. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the e-mail and its attachments from all computers. ________________________________ From: isapros-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:isapros-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jim Harrison Sent: Friday, July 07, 2006 1:12 AM To: isapros@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: RE: [isapros] FW: FWENGMON issue for the brain trust I do, but Danny made me wait until I stopped spitting expletives. I agree with message #2 - if the app isn't there, the functionality isn't available. Granted, the Mark Russonovich's or Tim Mullens could probably sniff out the APIs and create all manner of H&D, but so what - anyone of that skill level that has direct local-admin access to your box just got themselves a free server anyway. If the app isn't left on the box and the attacker doesn't have local-logon, admin rights (oh damn; game over), then WTF cares what APIs may exist that you can't get to without prior knowledge (and not-insignificant programming skills) or a product-team-provided debugging tool? IOW, if they're all that worried about who can do what when they log onto the ISA locally as an ISA admin, they've already lost the war. This guy has way too much time on his hands if this is the sort of thing he gets wound up about. Was this Andy? We now return you to your regularly scheduled profanity-filled retorts. ________________________________ From: isapros-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Thomas W Shinder Sent: Thu 7/6/2006 2:22 PM To: isapros@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [isapros] FW: FWENGMON issue for the brain trust No one gots no opinion on this one? -----Original Message----- From: isapros-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:isapros-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Thomas W Shinder Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2006 9:10 PM To: isapros@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [isapros] FWENGMON issue for the brain trust Hey folks, There was a discussion on the beta newsgroup that I thought would be interesting to put in front of the brain trust. There's nothing NDA here, so it's cool. My impression is that the person who was concerned about the fwengmon /allow option is akin to the IPv6 issue -- if the admin is incompetent, malicious or both, then of course the fwengmon /all option can be abused. But the same incompetent and malicious admins can hork any other kind of firewall. The example of the SBSer reading e-mail on the box is archetypal for the idiot admin who goes out of his way to subvert firewall security, so how is this different from creating an "allow all from everyone to everywhere" which you can do on any firewall, including the ISA firewall? Wondering if customers really need to get their undies in a bunch about this or its is calling "fire" at a weenie roast? =========================== Message 1: In my personal opinion, the interface method which "fwengmon.exe /allow" calls should not exist; there should be no such bypass-the-firewall method, even if it is handy for troubleshooting. If it can't be removed, then there should at least be an Event Log message whenever it's invoked, and the fwengmon.exe tool should be able to display whether or not there are any bypasses currently configured so that it can be audited (the "/noallow" switch will turn any bypasses off, but it doesn't indicate whether it did anything or what the IP addresses were in the cancelled bypass). I'm sure the ISA development team uses the bypass feature constantly, but that's development/debug code, and it wouldn't have to exist when the final product ships. Whenever I show others the "/allow" switch and its invisibility of operation, the response is always very negative. Message 2: Yes, but you have to get the file on the box. If I can place files on the firewall without your knowledge, the game is already over, isn't it? Message 3: I agree it's a bit paranoid, but I think the even greater threat comes from external buffer overflow attacks that call that method or malware that does the same when invoked by an interactively-logged on administrator who browses the net or reads e-mail as admin while at the ISA box (which will probably be running SBS, yet it will be ISA that gets the blame for it when the vulnerability is published). In these cases, fwengmon.exe wouldn't even have to be on the local drive. At a minimum, it would be nice if invoking that method --whatever it is-- at least wrote a message to an Event Log. (I also don't like how "lockdown mode" does not drop all existing connections and still allows new outbound connections, but that's another story and easy enough to fix with a custom panic script.) On a purely marketing level, too, ISA has lots of prejudice to overcome, so I've encountered anti-Microsoft sysadmins who jump all over this "invisible hole feature" to undermine ISA as a trustworthy firewall (and then this can sway the fence-sitters in the room to lean to the negative side). I'd still prefer it if this firewall-bypass functionality didn't exist at all... ====================== Thomas W Shinder, M.D. Site: www.isaserver.org <http://www.isaserver.org/> Blog: http://blogs.isaserver.org/shinder/ Book: http://tinyurl.com/3xqb7 <http://tinyurl.com/3xqb7> MVP -- ISA Firewalls All mail to and from this domain is GFI-scanned.