Ask Slashdot: Is Running Mission-Critical Servers Without a Firewall Common? 348
An anonymous reader writes: I do some contract work on the side, and am helping a client set up a new point-of-sale system. For the time being, it's pretty simple: selling products, keeping track of employee time, managing inventory and the like. However, it requires a small network because there are two clients, and one of the clients feeds off of a small SQL Express database from the first. During the setup, the vendor disabled the local firewall, and in a number of emails back and forth since (with me getting more and more aggravated) they went from suggesting that there's no need for a firewall, to outright telling me that's just how they do it and the contract dictates that's how we need to run it. This isn't a tremendous deal today, but with how things are going, odds are there will be e-Commerce worked into it, and probably credit card transactions... which worries the bejesus out of me.
So my question to the Slashdot masses: is this common? In my admittedly limited networking experience, it's been drilled into my head fairly well that not running a firewall is lazy (if not simply negligent), and to open the appropriate ports and call it a day. However, I've seen forum posts here and there with people admitting they run their clients without firewalls, believing that the firewall on their incoming internet connection is good enough, and that their client security will pick up the pieces. I'm curious how many real professionals do this, or if the forum posts I'm seeing (along with the vendor in question) are just a bunch of clowns.
So my question to the Slashdot masses: is this common? In my admittedly limited networking experience, it's been drilled into my head fairly well that not running a firewall is lazy (if not simply negligent), and to open the appropriate ports and call it a day. However, I've seen forum posts here and there with people admitting they run their clients without firewalls, believing that the firewall on their incoming internet connection is good enough, and that their client security will pick up the pieces. I'm curious how many real professionals do this, or if the forum posts I'm seeing (along with the vendor in question) are just a bunch of clowns.
Its Fine. (Score:3, Funny)
Everything is Fine.
Re:Its Fine. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Target may disagree. Firewalls on database servers may not have kept their data safe but their experience proved that it is unwise to assume that all internal network traffic is trustworthy.
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Re:Its Fine. - not (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry to barge in like this.
Oracle does not have issues with firewall. A proper firewall will allow a specific program to monitor a range of ports.
Ex.
Open port 80 system wide.
Open ports 40000-65000 for sqlserver.exe TCP and UDP.
You may have multiple listener processes, it takes a few moments and some research but in the end, you ensure the door is opened only for the ports and processes you want. This blocks the door for ports and processes that may be vulnerable thru bugs.
It's not perfect, nothing is. But it's better than staying opened.
Will you get hit if you don't, not necessarily but what if you do??? How much is your data worth? Restore time and data lost since that last restorable backup? What? You don't have a backup or have not tested your restore recently... (excuse me while I rotfl).
Sorry for the nasty punts, but let's face it, the day you get hit. I will say the same thing as today. Rather you hear it today, it's cheaper for you and if I helped in anyway, I'll be glad to not laugh later. I do go see humour shows, I don't need this for entertainment.
Good luck, and best of chances either way you go.
Re:Its Fine. - not (Score:5, Informative)
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Your trainer was an idiot, not a network admin. Oracle database and the various Oracle apps I've used have no silly issues with firewalls. They may have some apps with issues, but not the main product which uses a single consistent TCP port for connections.
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To be fair, just because the network is properly setup and allows for certain behavior etc. does not mean the application will play well with that setup. I've seen it happen before (and have been able to demonstrate it with proprietary software) that sometimes the network will not react correctly with certain network setups. At my company we have had to implement special protocols and features in our software just to overcome some inherent network limitations that our IT group pretty much said, "we have n
Re:Its Fine. - not (Score:5, Informative)
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I setup all our Oracle databases.. (Many, many of them). Only port 1521 is open in iptables. (actually, for some, I have secondary listeners).. The Junipers also ONLY allow access on port 1521, (and a secondary, if specified)
I have never had issues connecting to the database.
mod parent down - uninformative. Only NT (Score:3)
Highly uninformative post as it doesn't mention this situation is only for NT. On UNIXes, port 1521 (or whatever port is selected in installer) is enough.
Oracle's emphasis is rarely on Microsoft's operating systems. Not only in RDBMS, but many other products support UNIXes primarily, and Microsoft's operating systems secondarily.
Re:Its Fine. - not (Score:5, Insightful)
Application support always says to turn off everything that might possibly interfere with their precious application. They would have you shut down the operating system if they didn't need it. Application support lives in a fairy land where the only thing they have to worry about is their application. They don't have to fix anything if the application isn't broken. They have no interest in anything else. A good vendor will program their application to work with the system standards. Most ISVs are not good vendors.
As a system or network admin, you have to protect the application from the rest of the network and protect the rest of the network from the application and protect everything from the users and the Internet. Part of doing that is firewalling the crap out of your core network, and if you can't do that you should be looking at adding more VLANs and controlling traffic that way.
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You are doing it wrong. (Score:5, Interesting)
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yah, it's all unicorns and rainbows. (Score:3)
and we don't keep logfiles, so we don't have to worry about checking for breakins and cooptions. hey, we don't comment or document our code, either, it's just us two guys. that way, we get to keep all the millions.
hang on, the phone just started melting and my screens went blue...
Common? (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience, the stupid people tend to get fired eventually. But the mess they leave behind can be tremendous.
Re: Common? (Score:3)
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Johney Cash's Song "The Farmers Almanac" --
It's a little off-beat and a little off-track
But it says in the farmer's almanac, it says
'In rivers and bad government the lightest things flow to the top'
Re:Common? (Score:5, Informative)
On the bright side, PCI compliance highly regulates credit card information security and will scrutinize any company/network/point of sale equipment that comes in contact with credit card info. They will never pass inspection with no firewall, which means that they will need to become PCI compliant or face fines.
That point alone was usually enough to convince our clients to do things the right way.
Every stupid idea is common (Score:5, Insightful)
Not just because plenty of things are run by stupid people, but also because otherwise smart people can have pretty damned important blind spots. And other IT people have been talked out of it by their clients just like you're letting happen.
Whether it's common or not has no bearing on whether it's a good idea.
The only question you need to ask them is weather they're willing to accept the quantified risks from having exposed systems.
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"The only question you need to ask them is weather they're willing to accept the quantified risks from having exposed systems."
And you might be able to make a quick buck with that information later.
Re:Every stupid idea is common (Score:4, Funny)
The only question you need to ask them is weather they're willing to accept the quantified risks from having exposed systems.
I'm not sure asking them about weather is going to help. ;)
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Fire(wall) and forget (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds a little like you're trying to just fling a firewall at the system and improve some sort of objective security metric.
What threats are you risks to mitigate with the firewall? What threats will it help guard against?
They don't come for free, and configuring them don't come for free.
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Stop being rational. Just, stop it. You never need a business case for awesomely complex, double reverse DMZ firewall setups here on /. !
Re:Fire(wall) and forget (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like you're some bureaucrat trying to justify the costs of standard security practices.
The objective of any firewall is to prevent traffic on all unused ports in order to limit potential attack vectors. This is a given and no specific threat needs to be stated.
Put the firewall up FIRST, and open essential ports as necessary. This is network security 101.
Re:Fire(wall) and forget (Score:4, Insightful)
But again. What IS the threat of network traffic to a port no one is listening on? None. What your firewall is you protecting from is NOT bad stuff from the outside. It's protecting you from the inside danger that some service suddenly opens a port which is reachable from the outside. (Hate to dig out the old Win vs. *nix, but the usual suspects for this are usually Windows servers you need to lock down first, as they're usually asuming that they're in a friendly network. On *nix machines you usually need to manually add those services one by one, as you would open the ports on your firewall)
Re:Fire(wall) and forget (Score:5, Insightful)
But again. What IS the threat of network traffic to a port no one is listening on? None. What your firewall is you protecting from is NOT bad stuff from the outside. It's protecting you from the inside danger that some service suddenly opens a port which is reachable from the outside. (Hate to dig out the old Win vs. *nix, but the usual suspects for this are usually Windows servers you need to lock down first, as they're usually asuming that they're in a friendly network. On *nix machines you usually need to manually add those services one by one, as you would open the ports on your firewall)
The firewall provides defense in depth. Yes, if nothing else goes wrong, the Firewall is unnecessary. On the other hand, if something else does go wrong, the firewall become another obstacle for the attacker.
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But again. What IS the threat of network traffic to a port no one is listening on? None.
That's like saying what is the purpose of locking all the doors and windows in your house that no one uses? Hey if you want to keep the side windows and the garage doors unlocked, go ahead. If someone strolls in and steals your possessions, that's you own fault.
This metaphor is incredibly wrong. A port no one is listening on is a damn wall. It does not do anything. It isn't a doorway. It's a blank featureless wall.
Which is the OPs point: a firewall on internal network hosts doesn't make a lot of sense a lot of the time. The reason to do it would be if you were adding IP rules to the port some service operated on - but for a lot of them that's likely to be "accept all connections from local IPs". And it's not very useful to IP limit if you have dynamically assigned
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From the summary: "This isn't a tremendous deal today, but with how things are going, odds are there will be e-Commerce worked into it, and probably credit card transactions... which worries the bejesus out of me."
From what I understand, having multiple layers of protection is a benefit even if it is internal. This means that an intruder simply cannot bypass one layer and then have access to everything. This is what happened at Target. Someone stole credentials from one of their vendors and was in the n
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If ports are unused, then the hosts themselves will reject any traffic sent to them without the need of a firewall...
If the hosts are running services you don't want, then you haven't configured your hosts correctly and hiding poorly configured hosts behind a firewall is not the answer.
Re:Fire(wall) and forget (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless someone figures out how to glean information from your system, or exploit something you don't know about in the operating system. If I can figure out what ports you have stuff listening on, I can work on exploiting the things that I can determine are listening.
Without a firewall, you're allowing external entities to map the system, when they shouldn't even be able to reach the system.
if you're going to try for security, assume nothing, trust nothing, and act as if it was really important stuff.
If you're not going to try for security, well, the Ostrich Algorithm is a strategy, but one whose consequences you might need to live with.
I'm more of the school that says packet requests from sources you don't trust should simply be dropped, and not provide them with any more information than necessary.
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The original post was about the firewall on a host vs. the network firewall. The network firewall prevents people going around mapping ports on systems. Heck, unaltered raw NAT does that which is why people fought to keep it even in IPv6.
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NAT maps a bunch of internal addresses to a single external address. You can't, from outside of a NAT'd host, easily identify any internal hosts and you certainly can't connect to arbitrary ports on them - that's technically impossible since 65536 isn't going to somehow become 2 or more times it's own number.
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No that is Windows Server Security 101. Network security is different. If you had network security you don't need firewalls on every single server in your enterprise because that traffic is already caught and logged elsewhere. By the time they are at your server, and you haven't detected it, it is too late.
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If this were the 1990s, this would be the perfect answer. Back then, the idea was that you use a firewall as a perimeter defense in a defense-in-depth strategy.
But this isn't the 1990s, this is 2014. Nowadays, you have to assume that at least one endpoint on your local network is compromised in some way, whether that be via malware infection, clueless intern, corporate espionage, disgruntled employee, etc.
These days, any decent firewall does a lot more than prevent access to ports -- most actively monitor
Re:Fire(wall) and forget (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't matter if it's a rational argument backed up by facts or not, or if he's done a risk assessment, or if it's a free, cheap, or expensive firewall. The Payment Card Industry's Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) has as their very first requirement 1: "Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data." It's not an optional requirement, and you can't justify not having one.
If you're going to handle credit cards on the system, it has to be protected with a firewall.
If your POS vendor isn't requiring a firewall, either they are not selling a system that takes credit cards, or they are selling shoddy, insecure systems that are in violation of PCI DSS. Fixing these problems will cost you dearly; worst case, they are setting you up for a breach.
It Depends (Score:5, Interesting)
I've set up networks where the server infrastructure itself is on its own segment, so there's no need for firewalls between the servers themselves, but the whole subnet is firewalled by a border router.
A lot depends on how tightly you can lock down a server. On my *nix boxes, I tend to only run daemons with listening ports to the extent absolutely necessary. I have a LAMP server that basically has ports 22, 80 and 443 open, and everything else either shut down or set to listen only on 127.0.0.1. Do I really need to configure iptables?
Re:It Depends (Score:5, Informative)
Depends on the quality of the web apps running under LAMP
If they get hacked, it may be possible for the attacker to spawn a new process running on some other port (ie, a shell), or sending stuff out to other machines, so having a firewall that only allows the services you have listening may be good, as well as possibly having it restrict new outgoing connections.
And no, you don't need to write complicated iptables scripts/rules to do this. The ufw utility (available in Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, etc) has truly simple syntax
ufw allow ssh
ufw allow http
ufw allow https
ufw enable
Re:It Depends (Score:4, Interesting)
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Out of habit, I like using iptables or firewallD with existing services. At first, there will be initial configuration breaks (especially outgoing stuff), but it provides me three assurances:
1: Machines not configured to talk with the machine will not be able to. This narrows down the attack surface greatly. For example, if a DB server only communicates to some machines in a DMZ, a limitation is put on to only allow that port, so another machine on the same subnet that gets compromised won't be able to
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Yes you should config iptables, If you thing all it's supposed to do is block inbound access your not really using it well. You should be locking down outbound as well per user/group. So rules for a LAMP stack box might only allow some very specific outbound connections from nobody, outbound packets to your log server, outbound connections to your config server and inbound connections to SSH from your jump box. Frankly I would not run a LAMP box in the modern day rather splitting up a web server box a D
Re:It Depends (Score:4, Informative)
That's completely the wrong approach..
If your hosts aren't secure enough to be on the public internet, they shouldn't be on an internal network either. Many attacks come from the inside, and if you have a large number of insecure hosts hidden behind a border firewall then all it takes is one tiny hole and everything can come crashing down, as has happened many times in the past.
A firewall is not the ultimate answer, and nor should it be your only line of defense. If hosts are correctly configured, then a firewall won't actually improve security as the only services exposed on the host will be ones you intended to run and thus explicitly allowed through the firewall.
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Attacks from the inside are an entirely different type of beast to start with. How did they get in in the first place? If someone can physically log on to an inside system and pretend to be a real user, then you have a physical or user security problem, still not an internal security problem. A firewall wouldn't save you, because the attacker looks like a regular legitimate user who would have access to those services anyway.
Re:It Depends (Score:4, Insightful)
Until someone install something else on the network segment. Like a wireless access point. Or until malware takes over one of the trusted hosts.
Security vulnerabilities always involve violations of some assumptions you make, e.g. that anything coming from a certain set of hosts is benign, or that if a process on a server opens up an IP port it's *supposed* to do that. You want the security of a system to depend on as few assumptions as possible. If it does no harm in day to day operations and offers protection when your assumptions fail, why *not* run a software firewall?
PCI Compliance (Score:5, Informative)
As soon as they start handling credit card transactions, they will need to conform with PCI standards, which will mandate much much higher levels of protections. There are significant fines associated with non-compliance so you may want to forward them over information about this.
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Also, "Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data" appears to be the VERY FIRST requirement of PCI.
Now, I'm not sure if that can be met with a separate (hardware) firewall, but I suspect they require firewalls on each piece.
I'm assuming by "vendor", the OP meant a small company that sold the equipment and installation, not the manufacturer.
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This requirement is normally done at the network boundary, so a hardware firewall will meet this requirement, although for web facing servers, often companies also like having application level firewalls (protocol level) that can inspect for suspicious activity at layer 7, not just the simple stuff. There is a huge business around certification and auditing for this, nobody should just jump into handling credit cards without knowing what they are getting into.
Run only services you need (Score:3, Insightful)
The key is to only ever run the services that are absolutely needed, carefully configure these and keep them up to date. If you follow that advice a firewall is an added level of security but not necessarily needed.
Tower Systems (Score:2)
Is a POS vendor used by most Australian newsagents. Their contract not only mandates the lack of a firewall, but a writeable share of the C: drive on the Windows machine acting as a server - with no authentication.
While this is incredibly negligent, the support contract makes the vendor completely liable for any security breach that occurs while honouring their contract requirements.
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I build and supply retail chain management systems and part of the platform is a store management system, which communicates with POS machines (in most cases via a share). So our solution to what you are describing (a common problem with POS systems) is to put our store management system on a Linux machine that has 2 network cards in it, one is the Internet connection and the other is LAN, this Linux machine runs the store management system and it becomes local network manager and a firewall.
The POS machi
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Next to using POS machines which are basically a 3151 terminal, a cash box, a PINpad and a credit card swipe item, I'd say this is the best approach one can get in this line of work.
Only thing I'd add would be some way of protecting if someone decided to hop onto the POS network (physically unplugging a cash register, plugging in their laptop.) This could be somewhat solved by a smart switch that locks ports to MAC addresses for starters. Not "serious" protection, but will stop some kid trying to get on t
Picking battles... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with this battle is that you're a contract worker. So if reasoning/persuasion doesn't work, then you're only options are to end the contract, or fulfill your obligation.
Keep documentation that shows that you brought up the problem, and were rejected. Bake in language on subsequent contracts that give you an out under these types of scenarios, and move on.
If someone is unwilling to listen to reason, is in a position of power, and there's no laws that they are breaking, then that pretty much gives you all of the information you need to know about your options! Just learn to stop worrying and love the bomb.
Trusted network zones (Score:5, Informative)
If your database is in a trusted network zone, it's fine.
If you have a bunch of assets outside the corporate firewall, you're doing it wrong. These belong behind a DMZ firewall, blocking any ports not strictly necessary, possibly with PNAT and coalescence (i.e. an FTP, Web, and Mail server, natted to the same address, ports 80, 443, 25, 21, and FTP PASV going to different addresses behind that).
Within that DMZ, servers provide whatever services they're going to. MySQL on port 3306 will provide MySQL on port 3306; if you add a local firewall, you will have a firewall that blocks all non-listening ports and leaves port 3306 open, so no difference. If you're worried about ssh, use an IP console card (DRAC, etc.) on a separate subnet, or put the database servers behind another firewall. It is, in fact, common to create trust zones for front-end, application, and database, such that i.e. your Web servers connect through WSGI to a CherryPy application, which connects back to a Database, through a firewall in each step. You can do this with vlans and broken-down subnets, one switch, and one firewall.
You have to consider everything when you design secure network architecture.
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Every vendor does this... (Score:2)
It depends (Score:3)
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Regardless of client or application (Score:2)
A zoned security architecture is always best and implementing intra-zonal firewalls is likewise a best practice however there's always pragmatic considerations because of cost or risk of the information being protected. If any of the servers are Internet facing or face an internal desktop network, that should be firewalled off at a minimum.
The vendors are clowns, but not the funny kind (Score:2)
If the POS (point of sale... although if the vendor are as lax about their quality assurance as they are about network security, that might just also stand for "piece of shit") and the back office PC are completely isolated from the internet, then I would agree there is no need for a firewall. However, retail POS systems almost always now come with a built-in credit card payment system instead of having separate terminals for that... so the POS cannot be guaranteed an airgap out to the internet unless the P
Very common (Score:2)
For incredibly inept companies that really know nothing at all about security to run without firewalling.
Make sure you have a clause written in that without a firewall your client is fully responsible for any and all damages their unsecured server will cause.
No Excuse really these days. (Score:2)
I do a ton of infrastructure builds. From a few boxes to 1000's of VM's. There is no excuse for no firewalls.
If a vendor is disabling the firewall then they should absolutely be approached. If the clown you are talking to says that's the way it's done then go over his head. Tell your boss.
Be gently of course. Doing the run around my hair is on fire dance is not going to win any one over.
You can even help the vendor. There are a ton of tools for all OS's that will help you determine the port that need
No Excuse really these days. (Score:4, Insightful)
How about this: If you find yourself needing a firewall, your system design has already failed. Every single system should assume actively hostile environment.
I can only repeat your original subject.
Vendors do stupid things. (Score:2)
My basic take on this is to go to the practice manager and say "According to the EMR vendor, their requirements are that we run an incredibly insecure confi
It may be common ... (Score:2)
But it's a terrible idea.
If this is what your vendor is telling you, they're either lazy or incompetent when it comes to security.
My advise, you need to get management to sign off on it to do a l
Really depends on the details (Score:3)
Your post is not clear on what you mean by "without a firewall". There are so many places in a typical setup where a firewall could be placed, and yes, it is safe to leave them out in some situations.
For example, your store has a firewall at the internet connection and everything inside is a private ip address. The cash registers run on their own network, firewall'd away from the other computers in the store, with rules to allow for outgoing credit card authorizations and that sort of thing. Does each cash register need a firewall? Probably not, and it might even be a significant expense to maintain updated rules every time the network needs to be reconfigured.
So yeah, it depends on the entire configuration. The tone of your post suggests that the situation is not good though, and of course, it's a lot easier to argue for a firewall these days than against one.
PCI-DSS or Tokenization (Score:3)
Depends on the industry (Score:2)
Some industries do make it a standard to disable firewalls on everything except perimeter devices. Networking talent is rare in these industries so it makes a certain amount of economic sense. You might be surprised to hear that SCADA and industrial control are one of the industries where this is common.
It's not totally crazy, either. If you know that if anything were to ever get on your internal network, you're going to be more diligent than usual about letting things on it. If you put all your eggs in
Where makes a difference (Score:2)
Internally you should be maintaining a secure environment anyhow, so there is no need. Between users and vulnerabilities, I can understand why people would want to turn on internal server firewalls, but generally no I don't see that happen. And that's from sm
It SHOULDN'T be common (Score:2)
Seriously. Don't do it.
I had a smallish consulting client from 6-7 years ago that ran their Oracle server on a system that had no firewall protection, because it made it easier for the application server to get to it. It also simplified remote access by a contract developer. As the remote DBA, it was also easier for me, although I advised against it from the beginning.
Sure enough, an intrusion happened (whether my script kiddies or someone more serious I don't remember). The intruders left behind a lobotomi
Necessary? (Score:2)
Assuming the servers are correctly configured and hardened, then a firewall is an additional layer - ie the ports allowed by the firewall will be those ports that you have explicitly opened on the server, nothing else should be present irrespective of what the firewall allows. Wether you then need one depends on your budget, your risk profile, wether you need to comply with any external requirements (like pci-dss) etc.
Personally i have many servers with no firewalls, because having a firewall would add addi
Yes. This happens a lot. It sucks. (Score:2)
Risk Assessment!! (Score:4, Insightful)
There are lots of different risks that must be considered when securing a network or system. In my many years of securiy architecture, I've found it make the most sense to create a risk assessment.
Threat x Vulnerability x Impact = Risk
Once you have defined the risks, you can define the best protection method to reduce each risk.
Application firewalls may not be the best protection method depending on the rest of your network security controls. If you have strong network firewalls and every device that connects to the network must be authenticated (and scanned for viruses) before its given an IP address, an application firewall may not reduce much risk. If it doesn't reduce much risk, it may not be necessary.
In business, security is like insurance. You have to justify how much to spend, based on how it will protect us if something bad happens. Further, you have to make sure that whatever the security control is, it doesn't interfere with what the business needs to function. If the database cannot function with a firewall, a firewall is not the best protection method and other options should be considered (Network Intrusion Prevention systems, Data Protection [encryption/tokenization/hashing], Anti-Virus, File Integrity Monitoring, etc). There are many tools available to security professionals today. A firewall is a good tool, but not the only tool... depending on the situation, it may not even be the right tool.
ANY to ANY (Score:3)
I've seen firewalls that simply allow any port on any protocol right on through.
Many PHBs seem to think that merely having a firewall is a panacea for all security issues.
If I hear "but it's behind the firewall!" one more time...
It Depends (Score:2)
PCI DSS (Score:2)
If you are going to be working with credit cards then read NOW and not later the PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry - Data Security Standard) standards and follow them, or the company could be liable to penalties from your financial institution. Firewalls are indeed mandatory, as is proper documentation, management and review of the firewall rules.
Download PCI-DSS v3.0 here: https://www.pcisecuritystandar... [pcisecuritystandards.org]
Yikes. This handles people's money (Score:2)
In my humble experience, POS systems are those most forgotten, and least protected once you get on to the network. Few patches if any, and the vendors often squawk about only supporting ancient versions of Windows XP. Yes, the POS systems are probably Windows. Probably no AV either, and quite likely all administered with shared accounts that everybody knows. A firewall is by far the least they should be doing.
no firewall, but something similar (Score:2)
Some large (internet scale) services run without a firewall, although typically ACLs on the router serve a similar function. The issue is that firewalls have a hard time scaling to internet scale volumes. (source: I have served as the lead systems architect on very large scale internet infrastructure).
Protection against security bugs. (Score:2)
You simply don't know the future security bugs that will affect your infrastructure. Just look at http://www.cve.mitre.org/ [mitre.org] or any distribution security announcement like https://www.debian.org/securit... [debian.org] . Security bugs are discovered all the time. With this fact in mind you realize that you need more than a single protection layer to get a chance to detect and drop a harmful traffic. The bug could be deep into the kernel, making almost any magic possible from the application point of view. Having only a
Know what firewalls do. (Score:3)
Honestly, determining whether you need a firewall isn't as simple as "yes, always, all the time" or "no you don't need one." You have to know what the firewall is doing, and what security is required. You can set up a firewall, allow all ports to be forwarded through without inspection, and while you have a firewall, it's not helping you. Or you could have a server running a secure OS with only the vital ports opened, without access to anything other than the Internet, in which case a firewall probably isn't doing you a lot of good.
Also, it seems you're talking about a software firewall installed on the server? I wouldn't trust it. If I'm running Internet accessible servers, I generally want separate hardware firewall, and I want to put those servers into a separate DMZ if I can. I might leave the built-in Windows firewall turned on if it's not causing any problems, but if I have to disable it, I don't worry too much about it because I have the hardware firewall.
A properly secured Linux/Unix server should be able to sit directly on the Internet without issues, but you may as well put it behind the hardware firewall if you have the option.
But are we talking about disabling the built-in software firewall on a machine that's only accessible by other computers on the LAN? That's probably fine. You should have some security preventing unauthorized personnel from accessing the LAN, and I would assume the SQL databse it password protected, right?
I guess my bottom line here is this: Since you can't trust a the built-in Windows firewall to actually protect from very much, you shouldn't worry too much about disabling it. Make sure your network is secure without it.
Firewalls are overrated and misunderstood. (Score:3)
A firewall will not stop most attacks. A firewall has to allow traffic to the services that are permitted (duh), and so that open channel, attacking and exploiting the service is what will allow the attack.
A firewall could not stop that by design.
If an internet facing server is secure correctly, there is no need for a firewall in front of it.
There is however a need for a firewall between the DMZ (which is where this server should be) and the internal network, to prevent access to the internal network in the event the server in the DMZ is compromised.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Let's get this in writing. (Score:2)
Simple. (Score:2)
The Vendor will have issues with their product running if you do not configure the firewall correctly and will cost the Vendor support time.
If you get hacked because you let malware onto your POS systems or put a compromised machine on the network it is your problem.
A firewall will just prevent an exploit of a service. So only run the services you need. The real issue for this POS would be an exploit that gains access to the SQL server and a firewall is probably not going to stop that.
yes it is common (Score:4, Informative)
Don't be a muppet. Limit the spread of malware on your network as much as possible by only opening things that need to be open, to places they need to be open to. There is ZERO reason, for example (plucked at random to illustrate a point), for your end user PC network being able to directly connect to SMB on your SQL server, for example.
Yes, in theory they need credentials to do that. But why leave it open to anyone who obtains credentials when you can be more pro-active about defending the box?
Firewall != Windows Firewall (Score:2)
You said they disabled the local firewall. That's how I'd run most Windows servers on a network of any size, because the local firewall just eats up resources on the server that could be better used for the server's actual job. The firewalls should be proper hardware firewalls built into the networking infrastructure located a) between the outside world and the client networks to control access to the network in general, b) between the POS terminal segment and the server segment to control what access the t
PCI DSS Standards (Score:3)
That design tells me that you need to put a PCI-compliant hardware firewall between the POS and its associated DB server, and the rest of the internal network. And you also need to have a firewall logger that is actually looked at daily, plus you need to do vulnerability scans both internally and externally. A Windows firewall is not sufficient and won't meet PCI DSS requirements in any event, ever, and isn't going to provide any benefit if the firewall between the POS network and the rest of the store/enterprise is in place.
Any device that processes, carries, or stores ANY credit/debit card data that isn't encrypted *must* be behind a firewall that only permits it to send traffic to specific hosts that are necessary for the functioning of the system, and even then only on the bare minimum number of ports, and almost all inbound traffic is denied as well.
With less security your faster to market (Score:2)
More common than you think (Score:3)
My job requires that I deal with a lot of, to put it politely, vertical market software companies. As in, they're the only game in town for that particular function in the industry I work in. It's extremely common to see stuff like this, and it's usually justified by saying "firewalls won't protect you anyway, so why bother?" I only slightly agree -- in my mind the most important thing is to severely limit the use of admin/root accounts and protect their passwords, since you can shut off any security measures once you're through the door.
Usually, it's just laziness on the part of the vendor. The software is assumed to be running on a closed network with no external access in many cases, and a lot of people don't get that even closed networks aren't really closed anymore. I'm completely platform-agnostic, but I've noticed this a lot with typical Windows DCOM fat client / SQL Server (or worse, Jet/Access DB) pairings. As soon as you try to run these securely on a general purpose desktop, you find that port-based firewalling is very difficult to do without opening a huge range of ports due to the way RPC works. Yes, there are workarounds, but in general the protocol is not firewall-friendly. And, the golden rule of vertical market software is "thou shall not upgrade thy technology stack, ever." I do desktop systems integration -- OMG, getting poorly coded VB6 applications working on Windows 8 is a nightmare even with the compatibility toolkit, etc. Not sure what it is with the market segment I'm in, but I see lots of VB6 married to a Jet database, and lots of craptastic fat Java applications. Both can be killers to fix and get working without access to the code/programmer.
Discussion with Client legal (Score:3, Informative)
they went from suggesting that there's no need for a firewall, to outright telling me that's just how they do it and the contract dictates that's how we need to run it. This isn't a tremendous deal today, but with how things are going, odds are there will be e-Commerce worked into it, and probably credit card transactions... which worries the bejesus out of me.
I suggest you relegate the 'is this common' question to a discussion after hours over a beer.
Your real issue is security. I would want to schedule 2 different meetings, preferably with everyone attending in person. The first is a prep meeting with your client and their legal counsel to discuss your concerns, review the contract language that is being referenced by the vendor, and what liability the vendor has if the machine is compromised due to the vendor required there be no software firewall.
The second meeting would be with your client, their legal counsel, and the vendor.
local firewalls (Score:3)
My current company has a firewall for the incoming internet connection. (What sane company doesn't?) We also have individual firewalls on each PC but no individual firewall on any server. I'm not a network administrator -- it's a black box from my viewpoint, but I can rattle it and guess what's inside. The servers, I believe, are protected in two ways -- (1) to get out on the internet, you must go through a proxy, and the servers do not know how to do that. (2) traffic on the server subnets are blocked by the internet firewall, except for a few in a designated DMZ. We run into this all the time when applications have features that report back to vendor tech support, but are always blocked by the firewall. (In one case we had an application that would hang when it couldn't make an ftps connection with the vendor's tech support site -- who the heck uses ftps anymore? We stopped using that app.)
So to answer your question, a well designed network will have clients that can get to the outside through a proxy server, and servers that can't get to the outside at all, and servers that can cautiously get to the outside from the DMZ. The servers that are blocked from getting to the outside by the network don't necessarily have to have individual firewalls, and in fact, local firewalls can cause problems with some applications.
Now, if you're running the back end part of the system on a local PC that can also get out on the internet... whoo boy... that sounds dangerous.
Not only not common, but not allowed (Score:3)
Unless *all* datafiles on your client's system are encrypted, also, and I don't think even that's enough.
ObDisclosure: I worked for about 4 months on a contract at Trustwave, a root CA.
Leaving that huge hole in your defenses... I suggest you look, if you don't already know, at .
From the 1.2 std: "Firewalls are a key protection mechanism for any computer network. Other system components may provide Firewall functionality, provided they meet the minimum requirements for Firewalls as provided in Requirement"
Even all data between two systems *MUST* be encrypted, for full compliance, if you're doing your own.
So, what this vendor is doing... I'd say you and your client need to reread the contract *VERY* closely, and if they say they're adhering to stds, they're in violation of the contract.
mark
Network best practices may say this... (Score:3)
"A firewall is a MUST".... However
1.) If you are a contractor (or an employee for that matter), and you're explicitly told not to do something, document your concerns, in writing and either do what they tell you or quit. This covers your butt when thing blow up. Note I said, when, not if. You don't get to dictate the business objectives in either case (contractor or employee).
2.) The networks/firewalls are only one part of the picture. I've noted other posts asking questions concerning the surrounding environment. These are good, even if they don't address point (1.) If a "best practice" for an element in the environment breaks the environment, then the "best practice" is invalid and MAY be ignored. It may also be that the app in question is brain dead, but that's a whole 'nother topic.
I've seen way too many "best practices" that do not account for the specific environment and even more "checklist" jockeys who can't figure out how to make things work without them. Learn to do more than to follow a flowchart/checklist.
Firewalls are stupid (Score:3)
This whole "network security" meme is a failed experiment needing to be called out as the ridiculous farce that it is. Firewalls are the equivalent of mounting castle defense against an airforce. It does not work and never has. The opportunity cost of squandering resources on castle building vs standing up an opposing airforce is both high and sad.
Host-based firewalls are even more amusing. They come enabled by default. High probability any application installed needing to listen() is going to automatically punch a hole to do so as vendors have zero interest in dealing with firewall support nightmares. This begs the obvious.. what is the effective difference between listen() and firewalled-listen() ?
If you really want a secure internal system then lock down services/listeners and configure each system to use only secure communication protocols. If this is not possible set IPsec = required and secure the transport E2E only.
The further away from application domain you apply security the increasingly worthless that security is.
firewalls that shut closed doors are not helpful (Score:3)
There are firewalls and firewalls. If you have a box with port 80 listening and nothing else listening, and you install a firewall that blocks connections to ports that are not port 80, you haven't really added a whole heap of useful. If you have a firewall that allows port 80 from anywhere and ssh connections only from a particular subnet, then maybe the firewall is earning it's keep. If you have a firewall that warns you about outgoing connections from your server that might be to command and control botnet servers if it gets compromised, then maybe it is worth doing. If you have a stateful firewall that is doing traffic analysis and shutting down particular attacks on your server then great. Shutting closed doors just for the sake of buzzword compliance is not a useful function.
Re:Apparently... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or bandwidth. Or visitors. Or intern-connections. There's a lot of room for serious damage from a lack of security, and not all of it is data theft.
People using your server as a spambot is bad.
People infecting your sites visitors with malware is bad.
People jumping to a different, more secure system from your server is bad.
We tend to notice the data theft issues most these days, because a lot of companies keep a lot of sensitive data, so a Target credit card hijack is tremendously bad and newsworthy.
But that doesn't mean other classes of security risk don't exist.
Re:Apparently... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Too many people (both businesses and home users) say "Well, I don't have anything that 'those hackers' would want so why bother with protections?" The thing is, though, you DO have something they want. At the very least, a home user has bandwidth. If a malware author hijacks a computer, he can use it to pump out tons of spam. The user might notice an annoying slowdown but otherwise wouldn't know what was up. In the case of businesses, infecting your customers with malware (due to being hacked) or your site slowing down to a crawl (because it is a spam bot and is spending precious resources spamming people) is a sure method to lose customers. I'd wager that the money "gained" by not doing a proper firewall network is more than lost by the "lost sales" of customers fleeing after the servers have been hacked.
Re: (Score:2)
so does PCI v2, with mandatory six month reviews of firewall rules