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Security Best Practice: Blocking Ares Galaxy

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Check Point Reference: SBP-2009-03
Date Published:
Preemptive Since:
Severity:
Source: SmartDefense Research Center
Protection Provided by: Security Gateway
  • R70
Who is Vulnerable?
Ares Galaxy users
Vulnerability Description
Ares Galaxy is an open source peer to peer file sharing application that uses its own decentralized supernode network. The latest versions also support the BitTorrent protocol.
 
The use of Ares Galaxy may circumvent the organizational security policy.
Vulnerability Details
Peer to peer Internet traffic, such as Ares Galaxy, slows critical business applications on corporate networks. It lowers employee productivity as they take time away from their work to download music and videos. This sort of traffic also significantly increases a company’s Internet communication costs and requires them to purchase additional bandwidth.

Protection Overview
By enabling this protection, IPS will block the access to the Ares Galaxy proprietary P2P network by identifying Ares Galaxy fingerprints. IPS is able to detect peer to peer traffic regardless of the TCP/UDP port that is being used to initiate the peer to peer session.

In order for the protection to be activated, update your Security Gateway product to the latest SmartDefense update. For information on how to update SmartDefense, go to SBP-2006-05, Protection tab and select the version of your choice.

To configure the defense, select your product from the list below and follow the related protection steps.

Security Gateway R70

How Can I Protect My Network?
1. In the IPS tab, click Protections > By Protocol > Application Intelligence > Peer to Peer.
2. In the right pane, double-click the Ares protection.
3. In the Protection Details window, click on Edit. Choose the protection's Action (Override IPS Policy with: Prevent/Detect), and apply Additional Settings.
4. Install policy on all modules.

How Do I Know if My Network is Under Attack?
SmartView Tracker will log the following entries:

Attack Name: Peer to Peer
Attack Information: Ares protocol detected on connection