Penetration Testing mailing list archives
RE: Limited vs full blown testing
From: "R. DuFresne" <dufresne () sysinfo com>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 22:13:08 -0400 (EDT)
On Thu, 24 Jun 2004, Wayne Wooley wrote:
I believe it depends on how far you want to go with your testing. There has been some exploits that require a two fold attack. In other words, the DOS attack in some systems opens up the possibility to gain root by timing it with a different attack.
Yes, I recall the fine work of, wasn't it Liu Die Yu? who put together wasn't it 4 or was is as many as 5 or 6 minor looking web sploits to come up with a massive hit in the http arena...yet, required that the victim be lured into a nasty website if I recall. Whichg at least in this case mihgt be more accuratly described as social engineering.
But the thing is, a lot of these types of attacks that are currently out are not published to the public. So its a good chance you will never see them used against your systems. And this all so brings up the point that, no one can ever have a completely secure system.
Understood, one of the basic reasons that security is a layered approcah, we attempt to isolate levels and degrees of risk, and ways to deal with them. Firewalls fail closed, switches are properly configged, and not the basis upon which perimiter security is based, and why disaster recovery is part of the 'security infrastructure', to guard against dataloss, as best as we can 'guard'.
As there will always be exploits available to select individuals that do not publish their work.
One of the base arguements in the full-disclosure debate <smile>...
In my experience most attacks are from individuals with very little knowledge as to what they are doing (kiddie scripts).
Which are mostly nits caught in logs or them noisey outward facing IDS's ment to generate a rational for a security posture <I hate these by the way>... Still I'm interested as stated in another reply, how a DOS is defined specifically different then a DDOS... Thanks, Ron DuFresne
-----Original Message----- From: R. DuFresne [mailto:dufresne () sysinfo com] Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 3:13 PM To: Peter Wood Cc: pen-test () securityfocus com Subject: Re: Limited vs full blown testing [SNIP]We accept a brief excluding DoS attacks, as most clients just won'tsupportDoS testing. However we include appripriate caveats in our report and continue to suggest they do these tests.I'm trying to understand the significance of DDOS testing and importance. Thing is, if you can spew packets fast enough, or make enough connections to consume the resources involved, you can take a site/serice down for at least the duration of the attack, even pipes as large as those of akami<sp?> were proven to be susceptable in recent days. It's a given vector of attack that we live with, a risk level we hope to avoid. But, not something that gives away the insides of the network to thugs and theives. No root shell and all that, which constitute a real threat, at least in my mind. Perhaps I'm missing something that has come up in recent years that redefines DDOS as something that is preventable and a potential for something other then a blip, however long lasting the attack, in service? Thanks, Ron DuFresne
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Current thread:
- RE: Limited vs full blown testing, (continued)
- RE: Limited vs full blown testing R. DuFresne (Jun 27)
- Re: Limited vs full blown testing Martin Mačok (Jun 25)
- RE: Limited vs full blown testing Markowsky, Tyler (Jun 27)
- RE: Limited vs full blown testing Bénoni MARTIN (Jun 24)
- RE: Limited vs full blown testing Martin Murray-Brown (Jun 24)
- Re: Limited vs full blown testing El C0chin0 (Jun 24)
- IE caching issue jatkinson (Jun 27)
- Re: IE caching issue Daniel Staal (Jun 28)
- IE caching issue jatkinson (Jun 27)
- RE: Limited vs full blown testing Thompson, Jimi (Jun 27)
- RE: Limited vs full blown testing Wayne Wooley (Jun 27)
- RE: Limited vs full blown testing R. DuFresne (Jun 27)
- RE: Limited vs full blown testing Alan Davies (Jun 27)
- RE: Limited vs full blown testing Martin Murray-Brown (Jun 28)