Re: Vulnerability Response (was: BGP TCP RST Attacks)

["R. DuFresne" <dufresne () sysinfo com>]

On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, M. Dodge Mumford wrote:

> Paul D. Robertson said:
> > If it can't be attacked, then arguably, it doesn't need to be fixed.
>
> That sentiment surprises me a bit. It appears to me to violate the concept
> of defense in depth. Blocking the exploit path to a vulnerability may
> mitigate the risk greatly, but the vulnerability still remains. In your
> instance, the exploit path would involve attacking your host operating
> system that's performing the firewalling. 
>
> I would think the point of mitigating the risk is to buy you time to fix the
> vulnerability. That "time to fix" may be "until Longhorn is released." Which
> assumes that Longhorn (or, broadly, version++) will fix the vulnerability.

blocking the exploit path should be viewed in the context of "defense in
depth", and a person has to avoid tunnel vision;

At my present place of employment one of the CISSP's had tunnel vision to
the affect that in scanning systems for potential sploitable services, he
had the impression that if he could not touch a service with his scanner
that in and of itself was an issue;  nevermind that our unix toolsets used
a number of apps to provide "defense in depth" and thus his scanner was
'running' into them and they were doing their job, blocking his scans to
those services.  Was this a problem?  Only in his eyes....


Thanks,

Ron DuFresne
-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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testing, only testing, and damn good at it too!

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