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Protecting Your Enterprise Network from Vendor App Servers?
anomaly wonders: "I work for a company with a large IT infrastructure. We have lots of applications in our environment. For a number of applications, vendors provide the apps, and provide core support to those app servers. Our vendors are notorious for demanding superuser access to the boxes that support their applications. To protect our enterprise network from attacks allowed in by well-meaning but less-than-perfectly-competent vendors, we have set up a quarantined network for each vendor. This works well when the model is ASP-like and all of the components live on a single box, but fails when the application needs to be connected to one or more enterprise applications (RDBMS, smtp, they want backup, etc) or when it needs to be connected to lots of target systems inside our environment on lots of different ports. How can I restrict a vendor/application server's access to our enterprise network while still providing platforms to make the applications productive for our user community?"
"Frequently vendors can't restrict their applications to run on a limited set of ports. Most of the time they stare blankly when we want their application to run as something less than superuser.
Our biggest challenge is keeping track of all of the dependencies and managing what ports need to be allowed to which destinations. Of course, when security is tight our business-types say 'you're breaking my application.'
What can you suggest about how to provide access to applications, patch/protect the OS on the app server, and protect the enterprise network? What does your organization do?"
Our biggest challenge is keeping track of all of the dependencies and managing what ports need to be allowed to which destinations. Of course, when security is tight our business-types say 'you're breaking my application.'
What can you suggest about how to provide access to applications, patch/protect the OS on the app server, and protect the enterprise network? What does your organization do?"
You need a Layer 7 Firewall, a.k.a. an application level firewall. Something like Zorp is a good start, but you probably need something with a bit more intelligence about the applications you are talking about though.
L7 Firewalls usually get a bad rap because they tend to be pretty fussy in setup, something you can't really avoind with this kind of stuff. Also, if I was in your shoes, I would learn to stop worrying and start loving tight-ass SLA's...
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Well... don't get EDS to work on it!
Did he inhale?
Seriously.
I built a network for vendor lab equipment that was it's own netowrk, connected to the main network via a file server with 2 nics and NO routing. Therefore, file could be transfered from the lab network to the file server, and then from there to any of the main networks, of course after they had been scanned for viruses and such, since anti virus software usually would not run on their equipment. My rules were firm and backed by higher-ups - if you couldnt get your equipment to work in the enivroment given, or with only minimal flexibility from me (for example i'd write scripts to move their files automatically to the main, backed up network or something simple like that) - then we will find another vendor to provide us a solution that fits. Period. I never had any problem with a vendor once they heard the terms. They won't make money off us if they can't make the system work in our environment.
Don't Tread on Me
Our vendors are notorious for demanding superuser access to the boxes that support their applications.
There are a few things you can do in this case:
1. Get a different vendor (if the application truly does require su for vendor support).
2. Reqest different support staff from the vendor (do this if the app doesn't require su but the support staff is too lazy).
3. Learn how to support the app in-house
I am very serious on these points. You do not want to give root access to people that should not need it. If they say they need it, they have an awful application.
The place I work has a vendor area fenced off from the rest of the server room, and the vendors only have access to what they need. If they need more privileges, the IT guys watch them like a hawk until they're done.
Frequently vendors can't restrict their applications to run on a limited set of ports. Most of the time they stare blankly when we want their application to run as something less than superuser.
Simple answer: Don't let them. This is standard operating procedure in the financial services industry. Do you think that a bank would EVER let a non-employee or non-contractor access any bank system whatsoever? Especially remotely? If these companies want to do business with you, they WILL play by your rules or you'll pick one of their competitors products. In my experience, the only companies that required remote access to their systems were ones that A. Didn't have a fully working product, and B. Had to have the developer log in constantly to patch binaries with the latest bug fixes just to get a semi-working product. These are not the type of companies you want to do business with in the first place.
Speaking as a sysadmin for a smallish financial services company that processes around 1.2 million transactions a month, I would NEVER allow any vendor remote access to our network. It just wouldn't happen. Even if I did want to give them access, there are rules and regulations that strictly forbid my giving them access. If they give you a hard time, make something up about a security audit or something.
Seriously, you are asking for trouble if you let them have access. Who's going to take the blame when one of their developers logs in and wipes out all of your company's data? Chances are they'll blame it on you and you'll be in trouble for their mistake.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
What can you suggest?
Find some better vendors?
Seriously ... . I'm a sysadmin for a medium sized accountancy company, and you wouldn't believe the number of vendors I've had to beat off. I end up talking them down to lower levels of access, all the while listening to the lusers talk down to me as if they knew more about running it on *my* network than the local sysadmin.
In the long run though, I've figured that these lusers are going to be more trouble than they're worth, and am talking the boss into replacing the NetApps and Junipers (routers) with Gentoo Linux boxen. So in short, don't protect, just reject!
We force the vendors to enter via VPN. we use the VPN gateway to restrict each vendor account's access to only the IP addresses of the systems they need access to. Further, we occasionally use a packet sniffer to watch certain vendors.
We disable the account by default and require them to contact us and tell us what they are doing (change control) before letting them in.
Works for us.
I work for an ISP, and we do not give anyone outside the system/network administration team root access to anything if at all possible. We have given network vendors (Redback and Ascend/Lucent) remote access to a device a couple of times (we changed the passwords on the particular device before and after), and we have one web application that we had to give the vendor root access for setup (but that was on a dedicated server).
Our antispam server is a dedicated server, but it still was screwed up once by the vendor. We were having a problem (only half our mail was actually being processed by the filters), and management directed that I go ahead and give the vendor support person access to the server (as the user the software runs under). He logged in to look at it, and within minutes the system was broke and mail was queueing up because the antispam software shut down and wouldn't restart. He had seen something unrelated to our problem that he thought didn't look right and decided to "fix" it for us. As soon as I got him to change it back, I told him to log out and removed his access (and they won't ever get it again).
After that, the only other time we considered allowing a vendor access was on a problem case that was over a year old that we had to have fixed ASAP. However, in that case, we were NOT going to allow remote access; the vendor was going to have to send somebody to us and we'd sit him down in front of the console (which would be logging) with us looking over his shoulder.
The only people that know your systems and network are your people (and you'll make enough mistakes). Vendors should not have access to change things at any point; at most they should get a "view" type account (they can look all they want but they can't touch). If something needs changing, they need to tell you and you can make the change (after evaluating it and having a back-out plan). For complex systems, you never end up installing software exactly the way the vendor specified; they are not going to know or understand changes you made for your local configuration (and how such changes affect other services and systems). Even a well-meaning "fix" can cause serious problems, and since it'll be your job to fix them, you better know what was done.
From the vender side.
First: It's amazing how many people haven't got a CLUE. "Don't give it to them or get another vender" isn't an option. When you're running a 24x7x365 system and expect sub 1 hour response time from your venders (our customers do) you're going to have to give some.
All of the boxes we hook up have phone lines into them. If security is an issue on dial-in access, we set it up as follows:
Modem is enabled dial-out only, no dial in access.
If the box dials home, we contact the administrator, identify who we are and which box has troubles and have them enable access to the server/hardware and reset the root password temporarily on the box. This occurs only if it's something we haven't already configured to work with sudo.
We then keep logs of the entire session, then email it to the customer when we're done.
When we're done, we have them reset the root password and disable dial-in on the modem again.
If we require access to a network resource from the machine, we're onsite with the customer shoulder surfing.
We do this at secure military sites, financial institutions, etc. and have yet to have an issue in 20 years.
I disagree with what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it to the death - Voltaire
The FreeBSD operating system provides the jail(2) system call and the jail(1) command for imprisoning a process and its future decendants. The jail facility is based on the chroot(2) implementation, but prevents well-documented means to escape chroot confinement, offering partitioning of the file system, process, and networking namespaces. The facility removes all super-user privileges that would affect objects not entirely inside the jail.
For more information read:
Then you make your policy strictly exclusionary. And when they say "BUT I NEED THIS!", you say, "Ok, fill out a form 23" or whatever the form is. They'll learn quickly that they aren't going to get many of them approved and they'll start putting them in only when they really need them.
I do security
I work at for a large government contractor, where root privilage is truely guarded to only those who need to know as there is data that absolutely need to be protected. Allowing random people from random companies access is not an option. It is actually a criminal offense to let someone else use your account who does not also have an account on the system (it is still a security violation even if they do have an account and is possibly subject to disciplanary action, up to and including criminal punishment depending on what it was being used for).
Basically, the only people who have root are the actual system administrators. And that is even locked down in the sense that we are supposed to log in with our regular account first and "su" to root, or otherwise need to call up security and let them know what system you need to log into directly as root (login and audit logs are checked on a regular basis for any discrepencies).
Basically, like I said, if they need root, they go thru one of us to do something.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
As one of those vendors for governments, I have to constantly deal with some moron admins who refuse to give me any access to the machine, yet CONSTANTLY call for support.
I don't generally need superuser access on the machine, since generally the only thing that gets screwed up is the data in the RDBMS (you know, user error).
I had one propellerhead go around in my database deleting tables and columns he felt they didn't need. He told me on the phone "we don't use timestamps here". One of those slam your head on the desk conversations. These are civil servants with lifetime jobs, and maybe they knew all about VAX in 1970, but goddamn if they aren't dense.
They tend to think that RAID is a magical "never need to backup ever" solution. I just love it when they call me up after their second RAID-5 drive failed, and I ask them when they last did a backup - and they go "uhhhh we don't need to backup we gots RAID".
Then I explain how RAID has nothing to do with archival or backups, etc, etc.. And I pull out the backup I made last time they had a major upgrade and tell them they have to reenter every parking ticket for the last 8 months, and they threaten and bitch how it's my fault and I tell them I'm not their admin, and if they really want to go to their bosses and fess up how incompetent they are they can go ahead.
Frankly, I'd love for some more competent clients. Of all of them, I can think of one who has any clue what to do with a computer.
But then sometimes they call with a problem that requires fixing on the machine. I'm not going to sit on the phone talking them through shit, I'm not going to email them scripts or code, etc. More than once I've had to tell them that if they don't give me access it wont get fixed.
If it's a problem for you, give them superuser rights when they need it, when they're done doing maintainance, take it away.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
1. Smaller niche vendors usually don't have the hardware or manpower to simulate your system. You went with them because they were half the price of dealing with IBM, remember? :)
2. Often, those applications that require Superuser for the installation are third party applications. Install it yourself. You may have more trouble on the outset, but you'll know what's going on with your machine.
3. Often, vendors have their programmers as installers. The bad news is that you see the problems you do with the installations. The good news is that they'll know exactly why they need root - and they'll tell you what they need done. This might need to be a tag team installation, of course.
4. Remember, you can always invite them up there if you want to pay them for their time. Remote access is requested because it's cheaper. Alternatively, put in the contract that you want installation instructions. It will take more time, but you're always welcome to pay more.
Many of these vendor problems are reduced to cost-cutting measures. If you want to pay more, then vendors will be willing to oblige.
You obviously can't have ever dealt with anything of importance then...
If you have something go down on you which is costing several people's salaries per hour in lost revenue, you don't sit around for days trying to sus it out - you get the vendor to fix it. That's why you pay them for their support. You do pay for vendor support don't you?
They know their products a hell of a lot better than you ever will, and you'll likely have a contract saying it will be fixed in a stated timescale or they'll be paying you compensation. Often vendors will courier out replacement hardware instantly before the engineers have even sat down to log into the device, and those engineers will be of the highest quality if you've flagged a critical call. If you've triggered a bug in a piece of vendor kit, how long will it be before you've diagnosed it to be a bug? Then how long will it be before you get a fix? I know of at least one large company which has compiled and installed a new software image on a customer device within hours of a critical fault call being raised. Would they do that if you weren't paying for support? I think not.
For maintainence however, you learn how to do it yourself.