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OS X Leopard Firewall Flawed
cycoj writes with a report in the German IT magazine Heise, taking a look at the new OS X Leopard firewall. They find it flawed. When setting access to specific services and programs to only allow SSH access, for example, they found that a manually started service was still accessible. From the article: "So the first step after starting Leopard should be to activate the firewall. The obvious choice to do so is the option to 'Set access to specific services and programs,' which promises more control over network traffic. Mac OS X automatically enters all shared resources set up by the user, such as 'Remote login' for SSH servers, into the list of accessible resources... However, initial functional testing quickly dispels any feeling of improved security. A service started for testing purposes was able to be addressed from outside without any difficulty. The firewall records this occurrence... Even with the firewall set to 'Block all incoming connections' ports to netbios, ntp and other services were still open... Specifically these results mean that users can't rely on the firewall."
You could argue that the 'Block all incoming connections' is badly worded, but you could argue that reading the documentation for a new firewall would be a useful thing to do as well.
And, FWIW, if I set the firewall to 'Set Access for specific services and applications', then disable SMB sharing, I can't connect using nmblookup. I can only get through when the service has been enabled (which seems reasonable).
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Shouldn't be used in the first place. You really need an external dedicated firewall if you want to pretend to be safe.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'll agree with most of that. I've got a Mac, and it's running Leopard (yeah!). At work I surf behind a real firewall, a Watchguard I think. At home, I'm behind my Linksys. I could run no firewall and be OK. That said, I leave it on for one simple reason: I can go to other people's networks without having to think about turning the firewall on. This way if I were to go to Starbucks or something, I'd be much more safe from so guy a few tables over (malicious or just bot-infested). I don't expect things to be perfect. I don't expect a software firewall to be as good as a hardware one. It's just one more layer.
So what do I think of all this? I don't know. I saw comments somewhere the other day that claimed that these guys were just misunderstanding, but I'm not sure. I expect a firewall to block things if I tell it to though.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Apple may not be a monopoly but they certainly act a lot more like one than Microsoft does.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Fine. Just don't have your main firewall be on the same machine as the data you're trying to protect.
Perhaps I missed something...
It looks like every test that was ran was run from the local machine. The tester set "block incoming connections" not "block local connections" and/or "block outbound connections"
If you lsof, you're going to see ports open to localhost, unless the firewall is specifically dropping packets to 127.0.0.1.
ntpdate is an ntp client tool, so it makes an outbound connection instead of an inbound connection.
nmblookup actually warns the guy testing this - it realized that 192.168.69.21 was the local interface, so it responded as "localhost" instead of the samba name!
The nmap test was the only tool that specifically checked a non-localhost IP, and it's not clear to me if it actually checked the localhost interface cleverly or actually sent packets out and through the firewall.
As I said, perhaps I missed some critical fact. However, I would put more credibility in the tests if the tester had used a 2nd machine on his subnet to nmap the leopard firewall.
Regardless, if I am on a network where I dont have control of all the machines on it 24/7, then I think running the machine's OS (or add-on) Firewall is still a must. It really doesnt matter how great a hardware firewall is if someone infects their machine via a CD, DVD, USB Drive, etc from something they bring from their infected home machine or friend's machine or whatever. Since most direct network traffic doesnt (try to) pass through the hardware firewall, one should always be protected from the other machines on their network. For instance, in my office, we have a couple WinXP machines - and though they are not infected, they are constantly broadcasting nonsense trying to find their brethren (to EVERY machine on the network). Our "hardware" firewall does nothing to stop that - even though it does block the traffic from going OFF our network. I block that traffic on my other machines at their firewalls (no need to waste sockets or OS time handling the packets at all). If those XP machines were infected... well, you see the point.
Having one machine on the network, or a few machines that only you use (with taking precautions not to infect them from an external source), then yeah, a hardware firewall is probably all you need.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Really good thing that my linux software firewall is stored on a read-only filesystem then, and only allows login via SSH hostkeys.
I made my initial post pretty quickly, and likewise screwed up some things.
What is the difference between a software and a hardware firewall anyways? Heck, what is a firewall? There are so many countless ways of defining a 'firewall' that the average home router you can pick up at your local grocery store is advertised as a "router/firewall." Just because it's embedded suddenly makes it less of a software firewall, and more of a hardware one?
As mentioned, my router has a read-only root file system. It's also running a complete linux distro. Is this a hardware or software firewall?
Further, it does stateful packet inspection (four-ish lines of iptables commands? Worth $40+ on 'firewall' devices?), QoS (both host and service based), and it does this all through a transparent ethernet bridge. Then I have an admin ethernet jack, which requires IPSEC connectivity before you can touch the internal ports (22, 80).
It's a complete linux distro, so it's software. It's 100% embedded, so it's hardware.
As mentioned, other routers are embedding linux. Cool. Hardware or software? More secure, or less? More capable? Or less capable?
Classifying 'software firewalls' as 'insecure' and classifying 'a cheap Linksys Firewall/Router' as 'secure' is kinda scary in all truth. Well, mostly just wrong. Firewalls are too generic now - just because it says 'firewall' on the front, you're supposed to think that you're safe from 'hackers.'
Why isn't this story also tagged as "haha"?
If this was a story about a Windows Firewall, as well as defectivebydesign you'd also have the "haha" tag. Do I detect bias?
... so if Leopard trusts the service (it's a root process, or it's signed with an acceptable crypto signature), it will have access through the firewall. Since Leopard ships with cryptographically-signed binaries/packages, I guess I'm not seeing the problem - if Jo(e)-evil-cracker already has 'root' on the system, the firewall isn't going to help save the system, after all... Perhaps Heise are just used to using Linux, where the firewall trumps all ? And what happens in the event the trust system is subverted somehow? Either the user accidentally trusts malware, or malware manages to squeeze itself in, what would the user do? The only option they have left is to pull the network connection. At least with a real firewall, a savvy user can lock down their machine and safely investigate further. You could argue that the 'Block all incoming connections' is badly worded, but you could argue that reading the documentation for a new firewall would be a useful thing to do as well. I thought the appeal of Apple was that Things Just Work and it is so intuitive you don't have read the documentation? This is a major bug. Don't try to downplay it like its no big deal. Security is always a big deal. I thought we all learned that from the countless Windows worms?