Re: Why all the open ports?

[Michael Rumpf <mrumpf yahoo com>]

Hi !

Just a remark: The CORBA protocol specification uses a
two-level protocol.

GIOP (General Inter ORB Protocol) and
IIOP (Internet Inter ORB Protocol)
where the latter is a mapping of GIOP to TCP/IP. IIOP
support is not mandatory although every ORB uses it to
achieve interoperability between other vendor's ORBs
and because it is installed on every system nowadays.

This two-level structure imposes an abstraction layer
between the CORBA protocol GIOP and the actual
transport protocol IIOP.

So if you implement a GIOP on top of UNIX-pipes you
should be able to add this as an alternative transport
protocol to the ORB core. The CORBA/IIOP 2.x spec has
some chapters about that.

The disadvantage is that you are only interoperable to
objects/ORBs using the same transport protocol. GNOME
desktops having this protocol as default protocol can
(or better should be able to) interact, but it is
still limited to platforms where UNIX-pipes are
available.

Concerning the CORBA security issues. The CORBA
Security Service has one option where the ORB
communication can be encrypted using SSL. There are
some methods of the ORB core which have been
introduced to interact with this service. I'm not a
security guy, so I didn't looked into the internals of
the security service (yet). But if you are discussing
those issues you should be aware of the fact that
there is a standard way of dealing with security and
protocol exchange.

Just my $.05.....

Michael

--- Derek Simkowiak <dereks@kd-dev.com> wrote:
> ->   * The ORBit libraries have (presumably) been
> audited,
> 
> 	My understanding is that this is currently
> underway, not finished.
> 
> ->     server code is moderately complex. It's
> certainly not something a
> ->     random C programmer could audit in an hour or
> two.
> 
> 	Audits or not, an open port is ALWAYS a security
> risk!
> 
> ->   * Gnome shouldn't listen on TCP/IP sockets. If
> users want to run
> ->     components on multiple machines, they should
> be using SSH and port
> ->     forwarding anyway--anything less exposes all
> CORBA traffic to network
> ->     sniffers, which is the Wrong Thing<tm>. (For
> the record, I feel the
> ->     same way about X's listener on port 6000.)
> ->   * Gnome shouldn't globally disable ORBit's
> TCP/IP support.
> 
> 	I agree with these statements, although given the
> relationship
> between Gnome and ORBit I don't know if the second
> one really makes sense 
> from a technical perspective.
> 
> 	Another Gnome security concern not yet addressed
> (except above :)
> is the encryption of Gnome's CORBA communications. 
> Personally, I think
> that encryption should be left to the VPN and that
> ORBit's network traffic
> should be clear.  Leave encryption to the encryption
> experts, the makers
> of SSH, vpnd, PPTP, and IPv6.
> 
> 
> --Derek
> 
> 
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> gnome-components-list@gnome.org
>
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=====
Michael Rumpf # Meissener Str. 4 # 71065 Sindelfingen # Germany
Tel/Fax +49 7031 415883/884
WWW http://fsinfo.cs.uni-sb.de/~miru
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