[mdlug] [WLUG] decrypting ssl connections on the fly?

[Joe Landman]

Hi Carl

Carl T. Miller wrote:
> Secure Computing is a company that makes several products to
> filter Internet connections.  This makes sense for a company
> that doesn't want inappropriate content on their network.
> 
> What caught my eye is that they now claim they can decrypt
> ssl content and filter it the same as they do with unencrypted
> content.  I thought that the whole point of ssl is that

Hmmm.... bad news for VPN traffic if this is the case.

> securely encrypts data between the two endpoints.
> 
> Am I missing something or is this claim not right?

I would think that you have incomplete information, or that the
marketeers who wrote it may not have written this correctly.

I am guessing it is a proxy filter of some sort.  So it does ssl point
to point with the machine requests come from, decrypts it, filters,
re-encrypts, and passes back to user.  This is a man-in-the-middle
attack if this is what is implemented.  Somehow it wouldn't make me
comfortable doing that (if it could be done once ...)

> 
> Secure Content Management (SCM) Suite, efficiently decrypts all inbound
> and outbound SSL traffic at the gateway, applies multiple anti-virus and
> content scanners, and then re-encrypts the content and directs it to the
> intended recipient.
> 
> c
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-- 
Joseph Landman, Ph.D
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