Tests of Lockdown

Key criteria in choosing a personnal firewall are :

• Effectiveness of security protection : penetration, Trojans, controlling leaks, denial of service.

• Effectiveness of intrusion detection: few false positives, alerting of dangerous attacks.

• User interface: ease of use, instructiveness, simplicity, quality of online help. Does the interface suit the way you use your PC ?

• Price.

How did we test firewall/intrusion detection effectiveness?

1. Ping and accessing shares to and from the test host.

2. A powerful, well known "remote control" Trojan (Netbus Pro v2.1 [2]) was installed on the system on a nonstandard port (to make detection more difficult), the Netbus server started and attempts made to connect from a remote system.

3. An nmap [1] scan was run, to check that incoming ports were effectively blocked. With another local PC launching nmaps againts the test PC and the following options (nmap -v -sT -P0 -O IP_ADDR).

4. An nmap [1] scan was run, to check that incoming ports were effectively blocked. With another local PC launching nmaps againts the test PC and the following options (nmap -v -sP -P0 -O IP_ADDR).

5. A test using Leaktest [4] was done.

6. We checked the system ressource usage of the firewall during the tests (just in case).

7. We tried to launch a modified (by us) release of IEXPLORE.EXE (C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE ) to check if the firewall detects the problem.

8. Test (with nmap [1]) to check if the firewall is statefull or filtering only.

NB : These tests do not pretend to be exhaustives. By the way the aim is to be sure that the tested software offers at least expected security (or not) for a personnal use (do not compare this to professional use).

Jump to the test results.

The Lockdown Millenium v 8.1.1 firewall [3] is full of interesting features :

• (Too) Many tools : Trojan Scanner , Share monitoring, Net tools (Ping, whois...)

• Network software detector.

• Possibility to see all blocked packets.

• Download size : 1.9 MB

1. Ping: Possible. The result of this test is bad.

2. The Netbus server: Lockdown does detect the Netbus server when started, if you select Automatic Kill it, netbus server will be shut down each time it's launched so onnexions to the netbus server will be impossible. The result of this test is good.

3. An nmap scan without Lockdown (on Win 2000 OS SP1 with a "standard" installation, it means NetBios active and so on) :
   
   $ nmap -v -sT -P0 -O IP_ADDR
   
   Starting nmap V. 2.53 by [email protected] ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ )
   Initiating TCP connect() scan against (IP_ADDR)
   Adding TCP port 445 (state open).
   Adding TCP port 135 (state open).
   Adding TCP port 1025 (state open).
   Adding TCP port 913 (state open).
   Adding TCP port 139 (state open).
   
   The TCP connect scan took 0 seconds to scan 1523 ports.
   
   For OSScan assuming that port 135 is open and port 1 is closed and neither are firewalled
   
   Interesting ports on (IP_ADDR):
   (The 1518 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)
   Port State Service
   135/tcp open loc-srv
   139/tcp open netbios-ssn
   445/tcp open microsoft-ds
   913/tcp open unknown
   1025/tcp open listen
   
   TCP Sequence Prediction: Class=random positive increments
   Difficulty=6634 (Worthy challenge)
   
   Sequence numbers: 747E9CE8 747F63FC 74800BF5 7480E3FE 7481BC4F 7482B3B2
   
   Remote operating system guess: Windows 2000 RC1 through final release
   
   Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 10 seconds
   
   Gloups : you'd better have a firewall installed :+) !!!
   
   An nmap TCP scan with Lockdown (on Win 2000 SP1 OS with a "standard" installation, it means NetBios active and so on) with options (Enable DHCP, Enable RPC and Enable Ident all checked) gives events registered in the log which is a good result for detection , but the protection is unefficient :
   
   $ nmap -v -sT -P0 -O IP_ADDR
   Starting nmap V. 2.54BETA22 ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ )
   Host (IP_ADDR) appears to be up ... good.
   Initiating Connect() Scan against (IP_ADDR)
   Adding TCP port 139 (state open).
   Adding TCP port 1025 (state open).
   Adding TCP port 135 (state open).
   Adding TCP port 445 (state open).
   The Connect() Scan took 0 seconds to scan 1542 ports.
   For OSScan assuming that port 135 is open and port 1 is closed and neither are firewalled
   For OSScan assuming that port 135 is open and port 1 is closed and neither are firewalled
   
   WARNING: OS didn't match until the try #2 Interesting ports on (IP_ADDR):
   (The 1538 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)
   Port State Service
   135/tcp open loc-srv
   139/tcp open netbios-ssn
   445/tcp open microsoft-ds
   1025/tcp open listen
   
   Remote OS guesses: Windows Me or Windows 2000 RC1 through final release, Windows Millenium Edition v4.90.3000
   
   TCP Sequence Prediction: Class=random positive increments
                            Difficulty=15379 (Worthy challenge)
   IPID Sequence Generation: Incremental
   
   Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 4 seconds
   
   This means that with these options too many ports remains opened and acces attempts are not even logged, and that it remains possible to guess wich OS it is !! This is a bad result.
   

4. An nmap UDP scan with Lockdown (on Win 2000 SP1 OS with a "standard" installation, it means NetBios active and so on) gives events registered in the log which is a good result for detection and in this case the protection seems efficient :
   
   $ nmap -v -sU -P0 IP_ADDR
   
   Starting nmap V. 2.54BETA22 ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ )
   Host (192.168.2.27) appears to be up ... good.
   Initiating UDP Scan against (192.168.2.27)
   The UDP Scan took 4 seconds to scan 1453 ports.
   Interesting ports on (192.168.2.27):
   (The 1448 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)
   Port State Service
   135/udp open loc-srv
   137/udp open netbios-ns
   138/udp open netbios-dgm
   445/udp open microsoft-ds
   500/udp open isakmp
   
   Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 4 seconds

   This means that the security seems unefficient for UDP. This is a bad result.

5. The Leaktest : Lockdown doesn't detect the software start, the connection attempt isn't filtered, the result of this test is bad.

6. Lockdown goes up to 95 % of CPU max. Memory usage is 12 MB, up to 13 MB peek.

7. The substitution test : (you can do it by yourself for example : you replace Iexplorer.exe with leaktest.exe - yes this one - by renaming the last one and launch it). The result is as long as you've given rights to the usual software to connect (in our example : Iexplorer - Internet Explorer) to Internet Lockdown does not makes any difference, it will allow the trojan horse to connect... the result of this test is bad.

8. The statefull test : Lockdown is not statefull :
   
   $ nmap -v -sA -P0 IP_ADDR
   
   Starting nmap V. 2.54BETA22 ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ )
   Host (IP_ADDR) appears to be up ... good.
   Initiating ACK Scan against (IP_ADDR)
   The ACK Scan took 6 seconds to scan 1542 ports.
   All 1542 scanned ports on (IP_ADDR) are: UNfiltered
   
   Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 6 seconds

1. Lockdown can scan against local installed trojans

2. Lockdown provide some usefull Networok tools

3. It allows to be less permissive with network shares (if any)

1. Lockdown cannot makes any difference between local network connexions and Internet connexions.

2. Price !

3. The security is really too low ! Even with the marketing claim "different way of security" not even detecting a TCP or an UDP connexion !!!

4. Too high in memory and to high CPU cost

5. The GUI is too messy !

6. The help shows different options than those that really exists !

• Improve the logs.

• Clean the GUI.

• Improve all the security efficiency !

• Product internationalization.

• Lower the price !

• Improve the help.

A good idea with all those tools, which needs much more security and work to be really usefull. Really too expansive for a trojan detector (if it works).

Evaluation :

• Installation process (2) : 10/20

• Configuration , GUI (3) : 7/20

• Filtering security (5) : 5/20

• Additionnal security (3) : 0/20

• Software load and memory usage (2) : 7/20

• Import/Export configuration (2) : 0/20

• Help , FAQ (2) : 5/20

• Product internationalization (1) : 0/20

Total : 4.5 / 20

Note : the result may be modified with the release , and when adding new criteria or re-evaluating their weight or their content.

1. Nmap - Network mapper, a really efficient tool to check networks
   http://www.insecure.org/nmap

2. Netbus Pro - Remote control program often used as an attack tool to control remote PCs.
   http://www.netbus.org/
   download

3. Lockdown tool
   http://www.lockdowncorp.com/

4. Leaktest - Small testing software written by Steve Gibson to check firewalls. It makes a simple TCP (ftp) connexion that simulate sennding of personnal content, which can also be used to take remote controle in reverse mode (arg).
   http://grc.com/
   download