PNAT vs. vuln.

Chris Buxton cbuxton at menandmice.com
Sat Jul 19 17:59:19 UTC 2008


On Jul 19, 2008, at 10:13 AM, David Carmean wrote:
> So does standard PNAT just negate any advantage given by the
> recent patches?  Or is there more to it than just source port
> randomness.

If by PNAT you mean port mapping by a NAT device, the answer is often  
yes. It depends on the implementation. For example, Linux iptables  
does not appear to cause problems.

The problem here is that, in masquerading the outbound IP of the  
query, the NAT device may also change the outbound source port, often  
using a predictable sequence. Or it may change all outbound queries to  
use the same port.

Ideally, the NAT router would only change the source port if the  
original source port conflicted with a port already in use, such as  
from an outbound query from another name server behind the same NAT  
router.

Chris Buxton
Professional Services
Men & Mice



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