If it hides the IP address of your fridge, wouldn't that impair anyone from
drinking your milk? If access to the resource is blocked using NAT, then
isn't that aspect of security inherent to NAT?
Charles
+-------------------------+-------------------------+
| Charles Adams | US Pipe and Foundry |
| Network Security Admin | 3300 1st Avenue North |
| cadams(_at_)uspipe(_dot_)com | Birmingham, AL 35222 |
+-------------------------+-------------------------+
All opinions expressed here are solely my own.
Peter Deutsch wrote:
...
The moral of the story? Traffic patterns and metadata can be powerful
tools and
one person's junk is another person's data. You should not assume that the
majority of people shouldn't or wouldn't care about it leaking out, even
if at
first glance it seems pretty mundane.
Absolutely true. Nothing to do with NATs. Any router conceals internal
traffic
patterns. Any router can hide internal addresses that don't talk to the
outside.
All the NAT hides is the number of logically (not physically) distinct hosts
inside that do talk to the outside. This is not security; it might hide
the IP address of your fridge, but it doesn't hide your fridge.
Brian