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Date:      Tue, 20 Apr 1999 11:37:44 -0400 (EDT)
From:      David Gilbert <dgilbert@velocet.ca>
To:        cjclark@home.com
Cc:        dgilbert@velocet.ca (David Gilbert), Harry_M_Leitzell@cmu.edu, fred@fredbox.com, security@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   DHCP (was Re: poink attack (was Re: ARP problem in Windows9X/NT))
Message-ID:  <14108.40776.605720.29036@trooper.velocet.ca>
In-Reply-To: <199904201515.LAA09694@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>
References:  <14108.38235.254919.924353@trooper.velocet.ca> <199904201515.LAA09694@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>

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>>>>> "Crist" == Crist J Clark <cjc@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com> writes:

Crist> OK, I'll bite.

Crist> What happens when someone who is not supposed to connects to a
Crist> DHCP served network? (Besides that they are connected to the
Crist> network and are not supposed to be.)  -- Crist J. Clark
Crist> cjclark@home.com

It just lowers the bar.  To attach oneself usefully to a foreign IP
network requires some experimentation and/or packet sniffing.  On a
DHCP network, it's just plug and pray.  I suppose it's the difference
between running Linux which every script kiddie plays with vs. running 
FreeBSD (little harder) or HpUX (reasonably obscure).

I'm certainly not one to believe in security by obscurity --- not at
least against a knowledgeable attacker.  However, there is a
coorelation between the number of breakins on hosts we (Velocet)
monitor and that hosts representative population.

DG/UX is likely holey as swiss cheeze, but rootshell doesn't have a
'sploit for it.

Back to the origional issue:  Joe _average_ salesman is sitting in the 
boardroom... which has a network jack.  He's left alone for 30 minutes 
for one reason or another.  He plugs in.  Without _any_ knowledge,
he's up and running.  Of course, if Joe were a hacker worth his salt,
this wouldn't be a barrier --- but the likelyhood of Joe being a
hacker is small.

I think there's a definate range of security issues --- and I think
it's rediculus for most companies to take the standard 'stance' that
they must protect themselves against all perils (why then have they
not started filtering for whatever that substance is that kills hard
drives in a week if it's in the air) on the net.

Things range from 'something anyone can do from the other side of the
world from a Win95 machine' to 'something a black-belt hacker could do 
with arbitrary equipment in my machine room' --- an obvious policy is
to allocate time/money to security that has the cost/benifit ratio
that you choose.

Dave.

-- 
============================================================================
|David Gilbert, Velocet Communications.       | Two things can only be     |
|Mail:       dgilbert@velocet.net             |  equal if and only if they |
|http://www.velocet.net/~dgilbert             |   are precisely opposite.  |
=========================================================GLO================


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