Category Archives: Future Work

Some ideas for future projects. Not just for me… If anyone is interested: Please contact me!

Idea: SSHFP Validator

The usage of the SSHFP resource record helps admins to authenticate the SSH server before they expose their credentials or before a man-in-the-middle attack occurs. This is only one great extension of DNSSEC (besides DANE whose TLSA records can be used to authenticate HTTPS/SMTPS servers).

While there are some great online tools for checking the mere DNS (1, 2), the correct DNSSEC signing (3, 4), or the placement of TLSA resource records for DANE (5, 6, 7), I have not found an online SSHFP validator. That’s the idea:

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Idea: On-the-Fly TLSA Record Spoofing

It is quite common that organizations use some kind of TLS decryption to have a look at the client traffic in order to protect against malware or evasion. (Some synonyms are SSL/TLS interception, decryption, visibility, man-in-the-middle, …) Next-generation firewalls as well as proxies implement such techniques, e.g., Palo Alto Networks or Blue Coat. To omit the certificate warnings by the clients, all spoofed certificates are signed by an internal root CA that is known to all internal clients. For example, the root CA is published via group policies to all end nodes.

But what happens if the DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) is widely used within browsers? From the CA perspective, the spoofed certificates are valid, but not from the DANE perspective. To my mind we need something like an on-the-fly TLSA record spoofing technique that works in conjunction with TLS decryption.

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Idea: IPv6 Dynamic Prefix

For dynamic IPv4 addresses, dynamic DNS services such as Dyn or No-IP are well-known. If an ISP issues a single dynamic IPv4 address every 24 hours (or the like), the router or any other device registers the IPv4 address for a DNS record. With port-forwardings on the router, several services on different clients can be accessed.

Since there are some ISPs that offer dynamic IPv6 prefixes as well, I have a suggestion on how to optimize the “dynamic DNS” service for several IPv6 addresses and names. The main idea is to update only the IPv6 prefix, while the host IDs are statically configured on the DNS server. This limits the DNS updates and expands the usage of DNS names even for devices that have no “DynDNS update client” built-in.

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Idea: Malware for Testing Next-Gen Firewalls and APT Solutions

When implementing new firewalls at the customers’ site it is always interesting to verify that the anti-virus scanners etc. are running as expected. For simple virus-engines, a sample virus such as the EICAR anti-malware test file can be used. If this “virus” traverses through the firewall inside various protocols such as http, ftp, or smtp, the firewall must block this connection.

However, next-generation firewalls or any other APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) solutions are able to send unknown executables to its own cloud in order to test it. If a malware is found, these products can block future connections with these files, e.g., by updating the anti-virus patterns or their URL categories.

The problem is: How to test whether the “upload unknown files” function works properly? -> My idea is to have a server that generates “dynamic” viruses. When downloading such a “fresh generated” virus, the antivirus engine does not have a pattern for it. That is, the file must be uploaded to an APT solution. The logs on the firewall should list this upload process.

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