firewall bypass | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A new research has demonstrated a technique that allows an attacker to bypass firewall protection and remotely access any TCP/UDP service on a victim machine. Called  NAT Slipstreaming , the method involves sending the target a link to a malicious site (or a legitimate site loaded with malicious ads) that, when visited, ultimately triggers the gateway to open any TCP/UDP port on the victim, thereby circumventing browser-based port restrictions. The findings were revealed by privacy and security researcher Samy Kamkar over the weekend. "NAT Slipstreaming exploits the user's browser in conjunction with the Application Level Gateway (ALG) connection tracking mechanism built into NATs, routers, and firewalls by chaining internal IP extraction via timing attack or WebRTC, automated remote MTU and IP fragmentation discovery, TCP packet size massaging, TURN authentication misuse, precise packet boundary control, and protocol confusion through browser abuse," Kamkar said in ...

One of the most common network security solutions is the branch firewall. Branch firewall appliances can pack into a single device a wide range of security capabilities including a stateful or next-generation firewall, anti-virus, URL filtering, and IDS/IPS. But the reality is that most of these edge devices lack the processing power to apply the full scope of capabilities on all of the necessary traffic. If the firewall deployed in the branch cannot scale to address critical security needs, an alternative strategy must be used. Wholesale appliance upgrades are easy but expensive. Regional security hubs are complex and also costly. A new approach, called firewall bursting , leverages cloud scalability to offer an easier, more cost-effective alternative to branch office security. (You can find a great table comparing the different Firewall approaches here .) Costly Appliance Upgrades and Secure Hub Architectures The existing methods of evolving branch security force IT int...

Recently released NSA exploit from " The Shadow Brokers " leak that affects older versions of Cisco System firewalls can work against newer models as well. Dubbed ExtraBacon , the exploit was restricted to versions 8.4.(4) and earlier versions of Cisco's Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) – a line of firewalls designed to protect corporate, government networks and data centers. However, the exploit has now been expanded to 9.2.(4) after researchers from Hungary-based security consultancy SilentSignal were able to modify the code of ExtraBacon to make it work on a much newer version of Cisco's ASA software. Both Cisco and Fortinet have confirmed their firewalls are affected by exploits listed in the Shadow Brokers cache that contained a set of " cyber weapons " stolen from the Equation Group . The Equation Group is an elite hacking group tied to the NSA's offensive Tailored Access Operations (TAO) and linked to the previous infamous Regin and S...