Firewall Wizards mailing list archives

Re: Q on external router


From: Bennett Todd <bet () rahul net>
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1998 04:01:52 -0700

1998-04-23-06:34:58 Vinci Chou:
However, because these DMZ hosts are on the same phsical segment, even
they have different net numbers, a compromised host is still able to sniff
the traffic, isn't it ?

That's exactly right. That's why I said, in my first note, ``only losing
protection if a DMZ host is root-level compromised''.

Now if you can't afford to have a multiport router, or N network
interfaces on your bastion, then the cheaper solution that
you're stuck with is a hub, and you lose root on a machine on a
hub and all your traffic can be sniffed, always. But with the
separate-nets-over-the-same-ether trick you can get some good
additional protection _until_ one of the DMZ hosts gets root
broken. Don't get root broken on machines in the DMZ, that's always
sound advice.

-Bennett



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