Firewall Wizards mailing list archives
RE: Sliding/Shifting/Morphing firewalls
From: "Stout, Bill" <StoutB () pioneer-standard com>
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1999 14:12:34 -0500
Someone told me it's been done already. Damn, can't retire yet. ;) One application would be for high-bandwidth site-to-site WAN networking across the Internet with a low possibility of D.O.S. vulnerability. A RAIDset of Firewalls or RAIFset just might do the trick. RAIF being modeled on the technologies of SSHF radio and disk RAIDsets (prior art), and would be done over parallel and redundant paths over public, public/private, or private links, using IP/IPsec. (I can hear my patent attorney choking himself now...). ;) [Thinking aloud] 'Course the RAIFset would have to be coded with a daily key for the random but predictable pattern of addresses:ports used to create an aggregated trunk. Since internal bandwidth is greater than the trunk, no work would need to be done to ensure simultaneous data transfer, however for additional security some packets could be delayed for out-of-order, fake packets inserted, etc. If random ports were used for a parity packet (as in parity blocks in a RAIDset), lost data on down links could be recalculated without retries. To reduce DOS vulnerability, the whole spectrum of port numbers could be used for the IP addresses involved, and if used for point-to-point only, could be filtered anyway. No single link would give enough data to construct a valid packet. I'm thinking about this since I'm working on creating WAN connections for a foreign banking application (VSAT, Landline, etc), and would rather use IP/IPsec links than X.25, Frame-Relay or SNA/SDLC. A PKI-enhanced VPN would route over a RAIFset, which then uses parallel IP or IPsec links. (3-8 links?) /-Pa---->\ ---Packet->RAIF-------ck>RAIF-->Packet \---et-->/ Bill Stout
----- Original Message ----- From: Stephen P. Berry [SMTP:spb () meshuga incyte com]
<snip>
I've used similar techniques for concealing (or obfuscating, anyway) the movement of data from one place to another. I.e., when I want reasonably synchronous notification of some event from some sensor, but don't want to advertise the fact that the sensor is looking for events of that type. In such situations, generating some decoy traffic is generally useful. If you're interested in muddying the waters beyond the portdancing the RAID firewalls (firewobbles?) are doing, using some fraction of the free bandwidth between them for decoy traffic might be attractive---especially if you have any nagging concerns about that PRNG you've got picking your ports for you. Presumably your protocoal for all this would include some mechanism for negotiating the `what's and `where's for the decoy traffic---so you can distinguish between decoy traffic and spoofed traffic. - -Steve -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBNsJM9Crw2ePTkM9BAQHHAwP8D3fS19Tv3KDlSPXZ6bKxpEdcwxZfDZyl OHXo7o6DkjWLk7iwzbS4OJnXEbIE6EtmggjF6eQeeXjT7UUwBH48MOtPr1MlCPyn XRB+FrpLGMoSP1Bx8P9vAofFS56pEYqLksxWW3sgy7YQvcUjiHBURcOqATVPn6Gn gbd0if32+fo= =j9P3 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----- End Of Original Message -----
Current thread:
- Sliding/Shifting/Morphing firewalls Stout, Bill (Feb 10)
- Re: Sliding/Shifting/Morphing firewalls Chris Cappuccio (Feb 10)
- Re: Sliding/Shifting/Morphing firewalls cbrenton (Feb 10)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- RE: Sliding/Shifting/Morphing firewalls Stout, Bill (Feb 10)
- Re: Sliding/Shifting/Morphing firewalls Stephen P. Berry (Feb 11)
- RE: Sliding/Shifting/Morphing firewalls Safier, Adam (GEIS) (Feb 11)
- RE: Sliding/Shifting/Morphing firewalls cbrenton (Feb 11)
- RE: Sliding/Shifting/Morphing firewalls Stout, Bill (Feb 11)
- RE: Sliding/Shifting/Morphing firewalls Stout, Bill (Feb 11)
- Re: Sliding/Shifting/Morphing firewalls Stephen P. Berry (Feb 11)
- Re: Sliding/Shifting/Morphing firewalls Joseph S D Yao (Feb 12)
- Re: Sliding/Shifting/Morphing firewalls Stephen P. Berry (Feb 11)
- Re: Sliding/Shifting/Morphing firewalls montenegro (Feb 11)
- RE: Sliding/Shifting/Morphing firewalls Safier, Adam (GEIS) (Feb 11)
- RE: Sliding/Shifting/Morphing firewalls ark (Feb 12)
- RE: Sliding/Shifting/Morphing firewalls Stout, Bill (Feb 12)