Bastion Proxy Host

August 29, 2008

A Bastion host is a system identified by the firewall administrator as a critical strong point in the network`s security. Typically, the bastion host serves as a platform for an application for an application-level or circuit-level gateway.

Circuit-level gateway does not permit an end-to-end TCP connection. Circuit-level-gateways typically relay TCP segments from one connection to the other without examining the contents. The security function consists of determining which connections will be allowed.

Common characteristics of a bastion host are as follows: The bastion host hardware platform executes a secure version of its operating system, making it a trusted system. Only the services that the network administrator considers essential are installed on the bastion host. These include proxy applications such as Telnet, DNS (Domain name system), FTP (File transfer protocol), SMTP (Simple mail transfer protocol), and user authentication.

The host may require additional authentications before a user is allowed access to the proxy services. In addition, each proxy service may require its own authentication before granting user access. Each proxy is configured to support only a subset of the standard application`s command set and is configured to allow access only to specific host systems.

This means that the limited command/feature set may be applied only to a subset of systems on the protected network. Proxy maintains detailed audit information by logging all traffic, each connection, and the duration of each connection particularly. The audit log is an essential tool for discovering and terminating intruder attacks. Proxy module is very small software specifically designed for network security. Because of its relative simplicity, it is easier to check such modules for security flaws.

A typical UNIX mail application may contain over 20,000 lines of code, while a mail proxy may contain fewer than 1000. Proxy is independent of other proxies on the bastion host. If there is a problem with the operation of any proxy, or if failure vulnerability is discovered, it can be uninstalled without affecting the operation of the other service, the network administrator can easily install the required proxy on the host.

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Generally proxy performs no disk access other than to read its initial configuration file. This makes it difficult for an intruder to install Trojan horse sniffers or other dangerous files on the host. Each proxy runs a non privileged user in a private and secured directory on the host. Life of a company rests on the administrator work.

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