Can malicious traffic pass through a Victorville firewall server without resorting to open ports or exceptions? In the world of information security, firewalls are believed to be among the strongest elements of network protection; nonetheless, an information security researchers recently demonstrated methods that skilled hackers could use to break through a Victorville firewall server.
Potential Threats to Victorville Business Network Security
According to CSO Online, a respected publication dedicated to information security, German researcher Alexander Klink of the Fraunhofer Security Test Lab has shown a new exploit that would allow attackers to take advantage of an XML external entity by means of a Java email application.
As the situation currently stands, the theoretical attack demonstrated by Klink would require a malicious script that would prompt applications to parse XML files and reveal a certain amount of information about the server. The information may include folder listings and files stored in the root directory.
Furthermore, Klink also showed that similar malicious scripts could be used to allow network connections to rogue servers; this can be accomplished by means of URLs that include file transfer protocol commands. This would require attackers to activate the Java FTP client in a network.
Implications of Victorville Firewall Server Exploits
In the wake of the announcement by Klink, a researcher working for Blindspot Security released details of an investigation that shows how hackers can actually force Victorville firewall servers to open ports through Java and Python FTP clients. Similar to Klink’s research, Timothy Morgan from Blindspot Security explained that his discovered method would use rogue URLs; however, attackers would not have to invoke SMTP commands. This method would actually force a network to open a TCP data channel, which would leave a company’s data structure completely open.
It is worth mentioning that the two aforementioned attack scenarios have already been addressed in the firewall products installed on Linux servers. On the surface, the protective measure seems simple: TCP ports are only opened when the PORT command is invoked at the beginning of a packet, which is something that only authorized users can do.
Oracle and Python engineers are currently working on releasing patches and fixes for existing firewall products. IT security experts believe that carrying out these attacks would require a high level of sophistication.