Controlling ports used by natd

[Charles Swiger]

On Dec 12, 2003, at 7:19 PM, Barney Wolff wrote:
> I have a real philosophical problem with ceding ports to worms, viruses
> and trojans.  Where will it stop?  Portno is a finite resource.

This is a respectable position, but the notion of categorizing ranges 
of ports into an association with a security policy already exists: 
bindresvport().

Perhaps one could argue that this limitation isn't that meaningful now 
that it's unfortunately common for malware to be running with root 
privileges-- or the Windows equivalent, more likely.  Still, if you and 
your users don't run untrusted programs as root, system permissions 
will prevent malware from acting as a rogue 
DHCP/DNS/arp/routed/NMBD/whatever server, sniffing the local network, 
etc...all of which contributes to slowing down the opportunities for 
and rate at which a worm spreads.

-- 
-Chuck