cipherdyne.org

Michael Rash, Security Researcher



holisticinfosec.org on SPA Ghost Services

holisticinfosec.org on fwknop Russ McRee of holisticinfosec.org has written the January Toolsmith issue from the ISSA Journal about fwknop and the ability to create ghost services with Single Packet Authorization. In his Toolsmith paper, Russ emphasizes the possibility of using the ghost services concept to bypass strict outbound network filtering rules on a local network in order to access an external service that is bound to a port that is filtered by the local firewall. That is, the service is made accessible by having the SPA packet created by the fwknop client request that the remote fwknopd server create iptables DNAT rules to forward connections to a port that the local network actually allows out to the port where the service is bound. Russ uses this concept to access a file that is piped through a netcat listener on TCP port 6543, but do it from the heavily filtered network over TCP port 110 (normally associated with pop3).

Here is a link to the Toolsmith PDF entitled "Single Packet Authorization: The Ghost in the Machine".