Re: DNS Names for external services

"Paul D. Robertson" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.security.firewalls.wizards
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On Tue, 13 Apr 2010, Behm, Jeff wrote:

> Just curious, what is your opinions of the security vs. ease of use trade-offs on putting DNS entries in (vs. making people know/use an IP address) for services you expose to the Internet.

I've said this for years, but it bears repeating:  Obsucrity reduces the 
incidence of attack, not the success rate.

> 
> For example, 
> 
> webmail.companynamehere.com for your webmail service
> 
> www.companynamehere.com for your web site
> 
> The two above are typically common and don't cause me much concern. What about this next one?
> 
> vpn.companynamehere.com for your employees to access your company's VPN server
> 
> It's this last one that really begs the question. Should I just as well use the name "attackmehere.companynamehere.com" rather than vpn.companynamehere.com. I searched around on the Internet, but couldn't really find pros and cons...
> 
> Just looking for opinions. There are no "right" answers ;-)
> 

What's a bigger burden, your support costs or your security costs?  If 
your VPN is attackable, because of weak userid-passwords or other flaws, 
it'll be attacked sooner or later- if you've done your job, then flaws 
won't be exploitable and the name doesn't matter- if you've done a poor 
implementation or selection job, then all you're doing by hiding is 
postponing the inevitable.

Paul
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