On Thu, 15 May 2003, steve ulrich wrote:

> when last we saw our hero (Wednesday, May 14, 2003),
>  Daniel Taylor was madly tapping out:
> > On Wed, 14 May 2003, Matthew S. Hallacy wrote:
> >
> > > On Fri, May 09, 2003 at 09:48:19AM -0500, Daniel Taylor wrote:
> > >
> > > > As security features go it is a pretty good one. I'd like to see
> > > > perl gone also. For a production firewall you want nothing that
> > > > makes it any easier for an intruder to install software on the
> > > > computer than necessary. Of course, this means that you have to
> > > > do all of your binary production on a compatible dev system, but
> > > > that is as it should be.
> > >
> > > Until they just scp their staticly linked programs in. Not having
> > > a compiler on the system does nothing for security.
> > >
> > It eliminates entire classes of attack. There is no such thing as
> > perfect security, but why make it any easier for the bad guys than
> > you have to?
> >
> > Not having a compiler/interpreter on the system means they _have_ to
> > have pre-compiled static/compatible binaries for the system.
> >
> > This pretty much eliminates cross platform automated attacks, and
> > ensures that _your_ attacker will have to approach your system with
> > the personal attention and TLC that it deserves ;)
>
> this might stop the script kiddie - but it's not going to stop a
> seasoned pro.  rule one - make sure you have infrastructure to
> bootstrap your rootkit independent of access to a compiler, build
> yerself infrastructure.  when people pull this logic out it always
> cracks me up.  what you really need is an environment that doesn't
> support user code.   the pros have the ability to insert statically
> linked executables on the fly from their own infrastructure.
>
Right. It stops script kiddies. It stops self-recompiling worms.
It leaves attacks directed at your hardware/software combination
and attacks directed at you by pros.

This is essentially what I said above.

-- 
Daniel Taylor
dante at argle.org
Forget diamonds, Copyright is forever.


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