Re: defeating firewalls made easy

From: Walter Roberson (roberson_at_ibd.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca)
Date: 05/29/05 

Date: 29 May 2005 16:36:55 GMT

In article <lhkme.2756$rb6.757@lakeread07>,
itoii 3uvu <itoii3uvu@hotmail.com> wrote:
:http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1031

;the criminals once again demonstrate the historic illusion of computer
;security . . .

Not quite. The article deals with some security breaches made
possible by use of PROMIS software. But,

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/magic_carpet.html

"The one essential weakness of Promis is that it must be physically
installed on a targeted computer for it to be effective."

PROMIS is pretty powerful software, but before we could make
any conclusions about "illusion" of computer security, we would
have to know more about matters such as whether it can disable
firewalls or firewall logging, or whether it communicates via
other mechanisms such as would be used by "bugging".

Everyone who does non-trivial computer security work knows
that computer security is not an absolute but rather a matter
of how determined (and well-funded) your adversary is.

For example, how do you -know- that your reputable premises
security company doesn't have a mole who plants silent override
mechanisms to allow your physical security to be breached?
How do you -know- that the company wasn't shown the outside of
a sealed classified court order that required them to give an
intelligence agent unfettered access and threatened with
trumped-up theft/ fraud/ pedophilia / terrorism charges if they dared
even hint of the visit to anyone? 

-- 
Usenet is like a slice of lemon, wrapped around a large gold brick.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: computer security
    ... I want to know specifics of how to actually carry out such an attack ... used to breach security in situations like that one. ... The most useful tool to implement such security breaches is MS-Windows. ... to employ such programmers using such programming languages, ...
    (comp.programming)
  • Re: Recurrent question
    ... dangerous because of their security breaches, especially Symantec Norton, ... Outpost and Sygate. ... "Ich bin ein freier Mensch und werde jetzt von meinen Freiheitsrechten ...
    (comp.security.firewalls)
  • Re: Recurrent question
    ... >> it's useless. ... >because of being superseeded by the Windows-Firewall, ... >dangerous because of their security breaches, especially Symantec Norton, ...
    (comp.security.firewalls)
  • Re: Does ZoneAlarm use up many resources/memory on your PC?!
    ... Interesting to read all your posts about the ZA which was the first personal ... firewall that I tried. ... I have yet to understand all the details on security to ... are there any security breaches in the product? ...
    (comp.security.firewalls)