Great Circle Associates Firewalls
(October 1996)
 

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Subject: Re: Checkpoint -
From: Kent Crispin <kent @ bywater . songbird . com>
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 11:04:00 -0700 (PDT)
To: michael @ memra . com (Michael Dillon)
Cc: firewalls @ GreatCircle . COM
In-reply-to: <Pine . BSI . 3 . 93 . 961010220322 . 20976S-100000 @ sidhe . memra . com> from "Michael Dillon" at Oct 10, 96 10:07:03 pm

Michael Dillon allegedly said:
> 
> 
> Let me grind my axe a little bit more then.
> 
> If there is no source code to examine, then how do you know whether it's
> true or not? Reverse engineering isn't the answer because it can be
> difficult to extrapolate the higher level function of a piece of machine
> language code. Even the guy making the claims said that the reverse
> engineering only "seemed" to point to a backdoor. And not knowing the
> skill level of the reverse engineer and not having access to the source
> code, how can we figure out who is right?
> 
> Full source code disclosure is the only way, IMHO. 

The source/no_source debate is an entertaining way to waste some time. 
But let's not lose sight of the fact that it is indeed a waste of
time.  The choice of what firewall to use clearly depends on many
factors -- how much money is available, how much security is desired,
the quality of in-house expertise, the current hardware/software/
network environmment, the value of what is being protected, and so on. 
There are many places in that space where a commercial firewall with
no source is a reasonable choice. 

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent @
 songbird .
 com,kc @
 llnl .
 gov		the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B6 04 CC 30 9E DE CD FE  6A 04 90 BB 26 77 4A 5E


References:
Indexed By Date Previous: Re: Sniffer detection.
From: Joe Loiacono <jloiacon @ csc . com>
Next: IBM SNG
From: Ikoedem Moses <moses @ mail . state . mo . us>
Indexed By Thread Previous: Re: Checkpoint -
From: Michael Dillon <michael @ memra . com>
Next: Re: Checkpoint -
From: Todd Graham Lewis <lists @ reflections . mindspring . com>

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