marti
October 17th, 2002, 07:32 PM
We have been unable to reproduce NSSI's findings using the information they
supplied. We communicated our inability to verify the test results to NSSI
and continue to test possible scenarios.
Bottom line:
1) The alleged behavior does not represent a security vulnerability.
NSSI only alleges that under very limited circumstances involving a very
heavy SYN flood with spoofed packets, a PC protected by ZoneAlarm Pro might
slow down.
2) None of the alleged behavior would put user data at risk.
3) None of the alleged behavior would cause the protected PC to crash.
4) This attack scenario is unrealistic because according to NSSI, it
requires that the attack comes from within a LAN behind a "10/100mbps
switch". According to NSSI's report, once the attack stops, the PC functions
normally once again. Under almost all circumstances, a common Internet
connection (dial-up, cable or DSL connection) does not have enough bandwidth
to trigger this inconvenience. We did find some slow-down on very fast
networks and will address these issues in our next product release.
5) Our tests show that ZoneAlarm and ZoneAlarm Pro actually reduce the
vulnerability to most DoS attacks significantly because our products prevent
Windows from responding to this illegitimate traffic.
6) Neither ZoneAlarm nor ZoneAlarm Pro are designed to protect server
platforms. The following supported platform list applies to both ZoneAlarm
and ZoneAlarm Pro:
http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/support/znalmGeneralFAQ.jsp#9general
<http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/support/znalmGeneralFAQ.jsp>
We appreciate NSSI's efforts to track this issue and are looking forward to
working with them as we have in the past.
Rgds, Te
Te Smith
Director, Corporate Communications
Zone Labs Inc.
supplied. We communicated our inability to verify the test results to NSSI
and continue to test possible scenarios.
Bottom line:
1) The alleged behavior does not represent a security vulnerability.
NSSI only alleges that under very limited circumstances involving a very
heavy SYN flood with spoofed packets, a PC protected by ZoneAlarm Pro might
slow down.
2) None of the alleged behavior would put user data at risk.
3) None of the alleged behavior would cause the protected PC to crash.
4) This attack scenario is unrealistic because according to NSSI, it
requires that the attack comes from within a LAN behind a "10/100mbps
switch". According to NSSI's report, once the attack stops, the PC functions
normally once again. Under almost all circumstances, a common Internet
connection (dial-up, cable or DSL connection) does not have enough bandwidth
to trigger this inconvenience. We did find some slow-down on very fast
networks and will address these issues in our next product release.
5) Our tests show that ZoneAlarm and ZoneAlarm Pro actually reduce the
vulnerability to most DoS attacks significantly because our products prevent
Windows from responding to this illegitimate traffic.
6) Neither ZoneAlarm nor ZoneAlarm Pro are designed to protect server
platforms. The following supported platform list applies to both ZoneAlarm
and ZoneAlarm Pro:
http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/support/znalmGeneralFAQ.jsp#9general
<http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/support/znalmGeneralFAQ.jsp>
We appreciate NSSI's efforts to track this issue and are looking forward to
working with them as we have in the past.
Rgds, Te
Te Smith
Director, Corporate Communications
Zone Labs Inc.