Access Controls - Security in Networks

Access Controls

Authentication deals with the who of security policy enforcement; access controls enforce the what and how.

ACLs on Routers

Routers perform the major task of directing network traffic either to subnetworks they control or to other routers for subsequent delivery to other subnetworks. Routers convert external IP addresses into internal MAC addresses of hosts on a local subnetwork.

Suppose a host is being spammed (flooded) with packets from a malicious rogue host. Routers can be configured with access control lists to deny access to particular hosts from particular hosts. So, a router could delete all packets with a source address of the rogue host and a destination address of the target host.

This approach has three problems, however. First, routers in large networks perform a lot of work: They have to handle every packet coming into and going out of the network. Adding ACLs to the router requires the router to compare every packet against the ACLs. One ACL adds work, degrading the router's performance; as more ACLs are added, the router's performance may become unacceptable. The second problem is also an efficiency issue: Because of the volume of work they perform, routers are designed to perform only essential services. Logging of activity is usually not done on a router because of the volume of traffic and the performance penalty logging would entail. With ACLs, it would be useful to know how many packets were being deleted, to know if a particular ACL could be removed (thereby improving performance). But without logging it is impossible to know whether an ACL is being used. These two problems together imply that ACLs on routers are most effective against specific known threats but that they should not be used indiscriminately.

The final limitation on placing ACLs on routers concerns the nature of the threat. A router inspects only source and destination addresses. An attacker usually does not reveal an actual source address. To reveal the real source address would be equivalent to a bank robber's leaving his home address and a description of where he plans to store the stolen money.

Because someone can easily forge any source address on a UDP datagram, many attacks use UDP protocols with false source addresses so that the attack cannot be blocked easily by a router with an ACL. Router ACLs are useful only if the attacker sends many datagrams with the same forged source address.

In principle, a router is an excellent point of access control because it handles every packet coming into and going out of a subnetwork. In specific situations, primarily for internal subnetworks, ACLs can be used effectively to restrict certain traffic flows, for example, to ensure that only certain hosts (addresses) have access to an internal network management subnetwork. But for large-scale, general traffic screening, routers are less useful than firewalls.

Firewalls

A firewall does the screening that is less appropriate for a router to do. A router's primary function is addressing, whereas a firewall's primary function is filtering. Firewalls can also do auditing. Even more important, firewalls can examine an entire packet's contents, including the data portion, whereas a router is concerned only with source and destination MAC and IP addresses. Because they are an extremely important network security control, we study firewalls in an entire section later in this chapter.