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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical RE: Quarantine your infected users spreading malware
We're one of those user/broadband ISPs, and I have to agree with the other commentary that to set up an appropriate filtering system (either user, port, or conversation) across all our internet access platforms would be difficult. Put it on the edge and you miss the intra-net traffic, put it in the core and you need a box on every router, which for a larger or graphically distributed ISPs could be cost-prohibitive. In relation to that ThreatNet model, we just could wish there was a place we could quickly and accurately aggregate information about the bad things our users are doing -- a combination of RBL listings, [email protected], SenderBase, MyNetWatchman, etc. We don't have our own traffic monitoring and analysis system in place, and even if we did, I'm afraid our work would still be very reactionary. And for the record, we are one of those ISPs that blocks ports 139 and 445 on our DSLAM and CMTS, and we've not received one complaint, but I'm confident it has cut down on a host of infections. Frank -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Gadi Evron Sent: Monday, February 20, 2006 3:41 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Quarantine your infected users spreading malware Many ISP's who do care about issues such as worms, infected users "spreading the love", etc. simply do not have the man-power to handle all their infected users' population. It is becoming more and more obvious that the answer may not be at the ISP's doorstep, but the ISP's are indeed a critical part of the solution. What their eventual role in user safety will be I can only guess, but it is clear (to me) that this subject is going to become a lot "hotter" in coming years. Aunty Jane (like Dr. Alan Solomon (drsolly) likes to call your average user) is your biggest risk to the Internet today, and how to fix the user non of us have a good idea quite yet. Especially since it's not quite one as I put in an Heinlein quote below. Some who are user/broadband ISP's (not say, tier-1 and tier-2's who would be against it: "don't be the Internet's Firewall") are blocking ports such as 139 and 445 for a long time now, successfully preventing many of their users from becoming infected. This is also an excellent first step for responding to relevant outbreaks and halting their progress. Philosophy aside, it works. It stops infections. Period. Back to the philosophy, there are some other solutions as well. Plus, should this even be done? One of them has been around for a while, but just now begins to mature: Quarantining your users. Infected users quarantine may sound a bit harsh, but consider; if a user is indeed infected and does "spread the joy" on your network as well as others', and you could simply firewall him (or her) out of the world (VLAN, other solutions which may be far better) letting him (or her) go only to a web page explaining the problem to them, it's pretty nifty. As many of us know, handling such users on tech support is not very cost-effective to ISP's, as if a user makes a call the ISP already losses money on that user. Than again, paying abuse desk personnel just so that they can disconnect your users is losing money too. Which one would you prefer? Jose (Nazario) points to many interesting papers on the subject on his blog: http://www.wormblog.com/papers/ Is it the ISP's place to do this? Should the ISP do this? Does the ISP have a right to do this? If the ISP is nice enough to do it, and users know the ISP might. Why not? This (as well as port blocking) is more true for organizations other than ISP's, but if they are indeed user/broadband ISP's, I see this as both the effective and the ethical thing to do if the users are notified this might happen when they sign their contracts. Then all the "don't be the Internet's firewall" debate goes away. I respect the "don't be the Internet's firewall issue", not only for the sake of the cause but also because friends such as Steven Bellovin and other believe in them a lot more strongly than I do. Bigger issues such as the safety of the Internet exist now. That doesn't mean user rights are to be ignored, but certainly so shouldn't ours, especially if these are mostly unaffected? I believe both are good and necessary solutions, but every organization needs to choose what is best for it, rather than follow some pre-determined blueprint. What's good for one may be horrible for another. "You don't approve? Well too bad, we're in this for the species boys and girls. It's simple numbers, they have more and every day I have to make decisions that send hundreds of people, like you, to their deaths." -- Carl Jenkins, Starship Trooper, the movie. I don't think the second part of the quote is quite right (to say the least), but I felt bad leaving it out, it's Heinlein after all... anyone who claims he is a fascist though will have to deal with me. :) This isn't only about users, it's about the bad guys and how they out-number us, too. They have far better cooperation to boot. There are several such products around and they have been discussed here on NANOG before, but I haven't tried them myself as of yet, so I can't really recommend any of them. Can you? I'll update on these as I find out more on: http://blogs.securiteam.com This write-up can be found here: http://blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/312 Gadi. -- http://blogs.securiteam.com/ "Out of the box is where I live". -- Cara "Starbuck" Thrace, Battlestar Galactica.
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