Firewalls - Ease of Use and Maintenance?

Thu Nov 10 16:06:32 UTC 2011

Look the thread was about considerations for various firewalls. 
Eventually it spun off to be considerations and issues with Open Source 
options. I was merely pointing out a consideration that some folks have 
to take into account. You don't have to like it, agree with it, or even 
believe it. But it does happen and it is out there. I was just pointing 
it out. Take it for what you want but arguing it is pointless. It's out 
there for some of us.

-Hammer-

"I was a normal American nerd"
-Jack Herer

On 11/10/2011 10:04 AM, Peter Kristolaitis wrote:
> Your hypothetical scenario assumes you're the only organization 
> compromised by the flaw (or one of very few), and not #3972 on the 
> list, in which case the company could go bankrupt before a court can 
> hear your case, and the "liability protection" they offered you is 
> worth the electrons it's printed on.    It's great if you're a Fortune 
> 50 and have the legal, political and financial clout to be #1 on the 
> lawsuit list, but nearly worthless for most organizations.
>
> - Peter
>
>
> On 11/10/2011 10:39 AM, -Hammer- wrote:
>> OK. Right off the bat you know I can't and won't. But in some places 
>> it is common practice to make sure agreements are in place to make 
>> sure all parties are protected based on how a product is 
>> expected/designed to perform. I can't say more than that. Realize I'm 
>> speaking about things that are solely on the vendor. Not "Did you 
>> configure the ACL properly?"
>>
>> What you can Google is the names of companies who have settled out of 
>> court against various trolling lawsuits vs the names of companies 
>> that are still in litigation. There is a mix of both 
>> manufacturer/vendor and end customer. It all depends on the case.
>>
>> This shouldn't surprise you. If Toyota makes a defective brake and 
>> you slam into someone else, your insurance covers you. Eventually, if 
>> the issue scales out to the point that it is obvious that Toyota made 
>> a defective brake and it is not your fault, some insurance companies 
>> collectively will go to the government or directly to the 
>> manufacturer for compensation. This is no different. If you sell me a 
>> FW and it catches on fire thru no fault of my own and then the public 
>> finds out that FWs are catching on fire all over the place, it's a 
>> good bet that that FW vendor will be getting some lawsuits. If a FW 
>> vendor reports a product to work a certain way and instead thru a 
>> massive vulnerability or development oversight it does not the same 
>> applies. Software. Hardware. Physical (fire). Logical 
>> (vulnerability). I'm not saying that it happens all the time and I'm 
>> not even saying it's a general practice. What I'm saying is it 
>> happens. And depending on your business vertical it could be a very 
>> real consideration.
>>
>> COMPLETELY 100% MADE UP HYPOTHETICAL SCENARIO:
>>
>> I put a FW in. I put proper L3 ACLs in. I block 443 inbound. I didn't 
>> say I block HTTPS. I block 443. I test it by telnetting from the 
>> Internet to 1.1.1.1:443 and I am unable to connect. Looks good. A 
>> month later our CEO is surfing the Internet. Thru a development 
>> oversight in the product, when I NAT or PAT him to the Internet his 
>> source port is not pulled from the Ephemeral range but is instead 
>> sourced as port 443. He of course goes to sites riddled with Malware 
>> because that's what CEOs do. They click on links. So the Malware 
>> website initiates a new TCP session to destination port 443 with his 
>> NATted IP. The state table has an entry for that IP and 443 and even 
>> though this is a new TCP session the FW lets it thru. The malware 
>> site bad guys are able to retrieve confidential information about a 
>> merger and publish it. The other company that we were merging with 
>> sues us because the information is leaked to the public and adversely 
>> impacted their stock value. Everything in the above paragraph is able 
>> to be documented thru forensics and it is indisputable that the FW 
>> was properly configured and should have blocked it but didn't. The FW 
>> did NOT perform as advertised/designed. This is NOT the fault of me 
>> or my company. If a few thousand dollars is at stake nothing may come 
>> of this. If tens or hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake I 
>> promise you that our lawyers will be contacting the manufacturer 
>> whose product did not perform as advertised. They will compensate (in 
>> one way or another) us for our losses. It's a big ugly world full of 
>> lots of lawyers.
>>
>> -Hammer-
>>
>> "I was a normal American nerd"
>> -Jack Herer
>>
>>
>>
>> On 11/10/2011 09:14 AM, Richard Kulawiec wrote:
>>> On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 08:52:22AM -0600, -Hammer- wrote:
>>>> The other high cost of "free" that people sometimes overlook is
>>>> liability.
>>> Please point to an instance (case citation, please) where a commercial
>>> firewall vendor has been successfully litigated against -- that is, 
>>> held
>>> responsible by a court of law for a failure of their product to provide
>>> the functionality that it's claimed to provide.
>>>
>>> ---rsk
>>>
>>>
>
>