Hi, Thanks for the comments. I guess I have two questions then: (1) is the current setup without tunnel much more secure? and (2) is there another approach that lets me get work done without the tunnel? Regarding the first, I can see two scenarios without a tunnel where you would have the same security problems/advantages. One is where someone gains access to my machine and then to the intermediary machine. That person then sets up some program that waits for me to make the second hop and then uses that somehow (I am just being hypothetical, I don't know how hard this would be, which is really the question, but I thought keyboard grabbing programs were a pretty standard part of the hackers toolbox). The other is that I can imagine it would be possible for me to somehow home brew a tunnel - once you can connect from A to B to C somehow, is it that difficult to run a program on A and B that makes connecting A to C transparent? For the second, the real problem is moving files around (though a graphical interface is occasionally a problem - you can double ssh -X/-Y I think, but I believe they have blocked this as well). I have limited disk space on machine B, but need to move large files around. Even if I had the disk space, moving them twice is a pain that tends to add a lot of extra time. Does anyone have a suggestion for solving this problem, even if it is a hack? And just to be more specific about my security setup, I don't just ssh to the intermediate machine. First you connect to a website with one username/password. At that site, you start a java application that makes a localhost:port ssh connection available that is really to a machine behind the firewall. Then you authenticate to that machine with a different username/password. Then you double ssh to the machine you want.... Thanks, David On Fri, 2008-10-17 at 11:02 -0700, AMuse wrote: > David: Among other tricks which can be played with SSH tunnels (for > good or ill, just the facts) are that if you set up your external host > to do "GatewayPorts yes" and open its firewall, you could accidentally > (or intentionally, from your ITSec groups' point of view) allow anyone > in the world to connect to your external host and traverse your SSH > tunnel, in reverse, to the inside of your corporate LAN. > > "Security risk" is always a subjective decision made by your IT Security > group based on your organizations' priorities, assets, data, etc -- but > my guess would be that if they feel it's a risk, it's probably due to > your potential to bypass corporate firewalls for incoming traffic. > > David M. Kaplan wrote: > > Hi, > > > > My IT department is really heavy on security. From outside the > > building, they have a rather complex system setup so that you can get > > around the firewall and ssh into a single machine. From there, you have > > to ssh into the machine you want to use. > > > > To simplify things, I have been using a tunnel to hop from my machine > > directly (through the tunnel) to the machine I want to use in the > > building. This has worked fine until a couple of days ago when IT > > decided to prohibit tunneling for "security reasons" (attempting to use > > the tunnel now responds with "channel 3: open failed: administratively > > prohibited: open failed"). This has made it almost impossible to work > > with the system. > > > > What I am wondering is exactly what "security risk" does an ssh tunnel > > pose? I thought you used an ssh tunnel to enhance security, not the > > other way around. Can someone give me a reason why it is a risk to > > leave this open or give me good arguments that I can forward to IT for > > why they should not prohibit tunneling? > > > > Thanks, > > David > > > > > > > -- ********************************** David M. Kaplan Charge de Recherche 1 Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement Centre de Recherche Halieutique Mediterraneenne et Tropicale av. Jean Monnet B.P. 171 34203 Sete cedex France Phone: +33 (0)4 99 57 32 27 Fax: +33 (0)4 99 57 32 95 http://www.ur097.ird.fr/team/dkaplan/index.html **********************************
