Archived from groups: comp.security.firewalls (More info?)

Hello all:

I'm going to be working on an extended science project for high school, and I
would like to, among other things, test the strengths of many commercially
available firewalls. I plan to network a few computers, and it would be ideal
if I could use one to attempt to connect to some of the ports that are often
attacked online. I would like to show that, without a firewall (or even with
some less effective firewalls), it is easy for someone to access and exploit
these system ports. The systems will probably run 98SE and thus not have XP's
built in firewall. Although I have figured out how to ping another computer
(via DOS and various websites), I don't know how to attempt to connect to these
ports.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Archived from groups: comp.security.firewalls (More info?)

Hi,

>these system ports. The systems will probably run 98SE

Not much to attack, then. Unbind netbios from TCP/IP
and there are no open ports left...

>built in firewall. Although I have figured out how to ping another computer
>(via DOS and various websites), I don't know how to attempt to connect to these
>ports.

Have a look at nmap http://www.insecure.org/nmap/nmap_download.html
If you like to understand often used protocols better and play with them: netcat
is a nice tool for that. http://www.atstake.com/research/to [...] utilities/
Another nice tool for realworld environment ist etherreal, with it you can watch
what is going on on the network. http://www.ethereal.com/

Greetings,
Jens

Archived from groups: comp.security.firewalls (More info?)

Ok, thanks guys! Anyone else have experience with this?

Archived from groups: comp.security.firewalls (More info?)

On 15 Jul 2004 00:59:56 GMT, the right honourable
thunderbird291@aol.com (ThunderBird291) wrote:

>Hello all:
>
>I'm going to be working on an extended science project for high school, and I
>would like to, among other things, test the strengths of many commercially
>available firewalls. I plan to network a few computers, and it would be ideal
>if I could use one to attempt to connect to some of the ports that are often
>attacked online. I would like to show that, without a firewall (or even with
>some less effective firewalls), it is easy for someone to access and exploit
>these system ports. The systems will probably run 98SE and thus not have XP's
>built in firewall. Although I have figured out how to ping another computer
>(via DOS and various websites), I don't know how to attempt to connect to these
>ports.
>
>Thanks in advance for any help!

Does not sound like a good HIGHSCHOOL project.

This is professional stuff, requiring years of study in IT.

Come back in 20 years.

For now, maybe it's more appropriate to build a computer from
cardboard, wood and paper ?

You and/or your teachers underestimate the profession heavily.

frgr
Erik

Archived from groups: comp.security.firewalls (More info?)

On 15 Jul 2004 00:59:56 GMT, ThunderBird291 wrote:
> Hello all:
>
> I'm going to be working on an extended science project for high
> school, and I would like to, among other things, test the strengths
> of many commercially available firewalls.

Pretty aggressive project.

> I plan to network a few computers, and it would be ideal if I could
> use one to attempt to connect to some of the ports that are often
> attacked online.

For that a simple hub/switch will work. Make one machine the gateway
for the other boxes. Target boxes can have static ip address.

> I would like to show that, without a firewall (or even with some
> less effective firewalls), it is easy for someone to access and
> exploit these system ports. The systems will probably run 98SE

Is SE more prevalent than say win98? Of course you could have a
different os on each computer.

> and thus not have XP's built in firewall. Although I have figured
> out how to ping another computer (via DOS and various websites), I
> don't know how to attempt to connect to these ports.

nmap utility can be used to indicate open/closed/filtered ports
http://www.insecure.org/nmap/

Your gateway box could be a linux box. You can download/burn the 3 cds
for Mandrakelinux from one of the mirrors.
http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ftp.php3
Just click the already member to get list of public mirrors.

You could setup the firewall to log the attempts from the target boxes
to show what ports try to connect to the internet.

Telnet could be used to show response (if any) when you connect to a
port.

tcpdump can show contents of a packet from a box.

Hope the project is not due in a week or two.