Problems Authorizing Windows Updates

I'm having some problems with firewall authorizations for Windows Update access in a DMZ. In general, I have had good luck getting access to Windows Update when you authorize passage of HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP to these networks:

131.107.0.0 / 16 207.46.0.0 / 16 64.4.0.0 / 18 65.52.0.0 / 14

In addition, I normally authorize these URLs for both http: and https:

*.microsoft.com windowsupdate.microsoft.com *.windowsupdate.microsoft.com download.windowsupdate.com

The problem I am having is that occasionally the DNS name "download.windowsupdate.com" resolves to some IPs on a huge network from the Limelight load balancing farm. When the client behind the firewall resolves that DNS to an IP, it then connects to the IP and the IP does NOT reverse back to the DNS name download.windowsupdate.com. Instead it resolves to some arbitrary name at the Limelight Network. So the firewall has no way of knowing that the connection is authorized. Further complicating all of this, download.windowsupdate.com does not always resolve to the Limelight load balancers. Microsoft appears to have these IPs pointing to load balancers all over the world. Some of the IPs I saw the download.windowsupdate.com domain name resolve to:

208.111.148.50 8.12.217.124 192.78.223.126 209.84.2.124 etc

Microsoft provides a set of DNS names to use with the ISA firewall, and naturally that doesn't work for the IPs above because they don't reverse to Microsoft domain names.

No way do I want to authorize the entire Limelight load balancing network into my DMZ. There are a huge number of IPs, and those are probably associated with many hundreds of different organizations. When I do a whois on the IPs Microsoft is using, nothing in the huge range of IPs returned suggests which subset of the range is reserved for Microsoft use.

It would be really really nice for those of us who actually think about security if Microsoft would publish openly the range of IPs it is using for Windows Update. Failing that, I am open to ideas here about how can one set up a reasonable set of firewall rules to securely connect to this wideranging set of IPs.

Reply to
Will
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Am Sun, 23 Mar 2008 00:33:12 -0700 schrieb Will:

Why don't you use a proxy?

Reply to
Burkhard Ott

We use NAT on the firewall for all outgoing connections, and a proxy isn't going to improve much on that. The thing we are trying to prevent is the ability to reach unauthorized IPs by any means. If Windows Update has download.windowsupdate.com resolving to half the Internet, you end up having to open up through the firewall outgoing connections to a lot of hosts that could be used to control a compromised host or to further the compromise.

Reply to
Will

"Will" wrote in news:WPCdnfC-BKS1BHvanZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

....

I understand that IPCOP is a free firewall that will run on an old box with multiple NICS.

I am told that it can cache windows updates [and other things] for you. You might look at what it does and how.

Reply to
bz

Will wrote, On 23/03/08 17:53:

Set up rules so that only the proxy can access anything on ports 80 and

443 then the proxy can be set to only allow access to specific URLs. Then the only way they can access anything the proxy does not allow is by poisoning your DNS or accessing through some other port you have left open on the firewall.
Reply to
Flash Gordon

The most secure solution would be if Microsoft published a list of networks and IPs it wants to use for download.windowsupdate.com. I guess that won't happen.

I guess you are right the only other solution is to rely on URLs correctly passing the target hostname in the URL, and firewall rules focus on the URLs. As you mention you are vulnerable to a DNS redirection by poisoning the cache. I'll work out something a little more secure than relying on just the URL but in general I know where I need to go and thanks.

Reply to
Will

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