RE: Nortel Security

[Mike.Ruscher () CSE-CST GC CA]

A good place to start would be to examine the security modelling
documentation for the device.

There should be a statement of security objectives included as part of the
engineering documentation. A security policy defined, based on the security
objectives, outlining the proposed security features/services to be
implemented will provide the details of the product's security behaviours
that were to be implemented. This should be followed up with design
specifications for each of the identified security mechanisms that comprise
the totality of the security features/services required to realize the
product's written security policy, along with a correspondence or mapping to
the policy features/services, since there will likely be necessary sharing
of many of the lower level security mechanisms functionality for code
reduction and other practical considerations.

Once you have a complete understanding of the product's security design, you
will be in a good position to 'review' the product's security, or will have
done so, more or less.

You should also be able to locate the product's security features test
planning documents and detailed testing results which validate the security
design to a certain degree.

Now, as an added bonus, you are is a perfect position to perform some of
your own tests, for things like undocumented features, behaviours etc. that
could compromise the security policy, unless of course this had been done
thoroughly during product testing already.

I'm sure I have left out a few other things that could be examined, or done,
as part of this particular review exercise, since they are typically very
context  dependent, but not nearly as much as the dependency that the
documentation actually exists, or that the product was designed with any
adherence to standard security engineering principles.

Good luck,

mgr

Mike Ruscher, ITS Specialist I2, CSE/CST
mgruscher () cse-cst gc ca
Phone: +1 613 991-8040
ED/C200
http://www.cse-cst.gc.ca



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Thad Horak [mailto:thadhorak () yahoo com]
> Sent: Friday, June 29, 2001 11:45 AM
> To: pen-test () securityfocus com
> Subject: Nortel Security
>
>
> I've been asked to review the security of our Nor-tel
> Meridian PBX. I've searched Google & Yahoo and can't
> find to much to aid me in this. Can anyone point me to
> some good information on key things to audit/test?
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Thad
>
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