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Date:      Tue, 15 Jan 2002 02:58:27 -0000
From:      Matthew Whelan <muttley@gotadsl.co.uk>
To:        Richard Nyberg <rnyberg@it.su.se>, nate@yogotech.com (Nate Williams)
Cc:        Nate Williams <nate@yogotech.com>, Ian <freebsd@damnhippie.dyndns.org>, Rolandas Naujikas <rolnauj@delfi.lt>, stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: tcp keepalive and dynamic ipfw rules
Message-ID:  <GCA67273WQ2HBXUKHUOB6JNLOFDKF.3c439ad3@VicNBob>
In-Reply-To: <15427.13548.266651.846138@caddis.yogotech.com>

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>> My solution to keep my ssh sessions from hanging because I made a cup
>> of coffe was to up the syctl MIB 'net.inet.ip.fw.dyn_ack_lifetime' to
>> a more reasonable value.
>
>So, non-active TCP sessions can now get packets through since the
>lifetime of the rules now exceed the lifetime of many of your TCP
>sessions, so I can now watch your firewall and punch packets through it
>by analyzing the data.
>
>(In short, anyone good enough to punch through packets using the other
>firewall setup is also capable of punching through packets with extended
>lifetime TCP dynamic rules.)

Is ipfw really that dumb? I admit I've never really fiddled with it as, 
being a gamer, I wanted NAT not to have to do the kernel->userland->kernel 
transitions so chose ipf/ipnat... I'm pretty sure from watching the ipfstat 
output that ipf is picking up the FINs and dropping the TTL on dynamic rules 
when TCP sockets are properly closed (admittedly UDP still presents the 
possibility of problems but the default timeout there is rather shorter). I 
haven't seen any ipfw vs ipf comparisons mention this; if ipfw genuinely is 
incapable of spotting the end of a TCP connection (assuming the FINs are 
seen both ways), personally I'd think that a strong reason to advocate ipf 
as being preferable to ipfw where dynamic rules are needed

But then, I'm a firewall newb :)

Besides, it seems to me that given the sort of hacker/script capable of 
exploiting such a weakness, 5 minutes' vulnerability is pretty much as bad 
as 10 days'... after all, they must be recording the traffic as it happens 
to know which port to attack.

Matthew



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