Re: Security Issues with Wake on Lan (WOL)

From: Russell Fulton (r.fulton_at_auckland.ac.nz)
Date: 11/02/04

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    To: Paul Beckman <beckhead2002@yahoo.com>, incidents@securityfocus.com
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 09:17:29 +1300

    On Tue, 2004-11-02 at 10:46, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:

    >
    > Another issue - if an attacker can power up an unpatched or misconfigured or
    > otherwise vulnerable machine, they can then do what they want to it all
    > night.....

    true, however the flip side is that you can use WOL to do automated
    patching of desktops in the small hours so hopefully less of your
    machines are vulnerable. Yet another illustration of the axiom that
    there are no global right or wrong answers in security. Everything is a
    balancing act dependent on lots of local circumstances.

    This leads to another unintended consequence. To disable (for whatever
    reason) such a system it is not enough to just power it off, you have to
    unplug it from the network too! 

    -- 
Russell Fulton, Information Security Officer, The University of Auckland
New Zealand
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