Re: The SKRONK protocols (version 0.6)

[Matt Blaze <mab@crypto.com>]

>
>Matthew J Ghio says:
>> sdw@lig.net (Stephen D. Williams) wrote:
>> 
>> > UDP won't get through most firewalls.
>> 
>> I'm working on a program that gets around this.  It creates a IP tunnel
>> by setting up a SLIP interface on a encrypted TCP stream and routes
>> packets through that.  It's not completely finished but it does work. 
>> Send me mail if you want it.
>
>Pardon but... why? Whats the reason for wanting to do this?
>
>If a firewall has been set up to stop UDP, then it should stop UDP. If
>the firewall has not been set up to stop UDP, or has a mechanism like
>the experimental versions of "socks" currently being played with that
>relay UDP, then there is no reason to want to do the above. I don't
>really understand what the idea is here.
>
>Perry
>

Actually, tunneling through a telnet connection on an application-level
firewall does have its place, especially when the firewall's
granularity of authentication is designed only to bind authorized
people to telnet connections.   This way, the firewall need only
enforce a very simple access control model (which is easier to
verify is working correctly) and need make very few authentication
decisions on a per-packet basis.

The down side (which is why I don't do this myself) is that you
have to be careful that the external end of the tunnel does not
forward IP packets from the rest of the net and is otherwise
reasonably secure, or one such connection is enough to eliminate
any security benefits the firewall might otherwise have offered.
It's not clear there's much a telnet firewall can do to prevent
tunnels, however, so we might as well at least make them secure as
we can.

-matt