CORRECTION/Correcting company name in headline; Network Engineering Technologies sted Network Engineering Technology.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 8, 1996--The makers of a new firewall for computer security have promised to pay $10,000 to the first person able to penetrate the firewall protecting its own server and retrieve information placed there by the company, Network Engineering Technologies, Inc. (NET).

The $10,000 Firewall Challenge, open only from May 1 to May 31, is NET's statement to the computing world that its product, called The Firewall, is the most secure protection yet for companies that want to participate fully in the Internet, but keep their internal data behind a secure firewall protected from hackers and computer criminals. "We are very confident that nobody will be able to claim that $10,000," said Chris Coley, vice president of engineering for NET.

"Rather than a contest, the $10,000 Firewall Challenge is designed by NET as a chance for interested individuals to demonstrate their skill by meeting a challenge that NET believes cannot be met," Coley said. "Other vendors weaken their firewalls by punching holes in them for certain connections. Our firewall has eliminated that security gap."

The Need for Firewalls

Theft and leakage of corporate and industrial secrets in the U.S. has more than tripled in the past three years and now may be costing business $2 billion a month, according to a study by the American Society for Industrial Security.

Firewalls are designed as a security barrier to protect internal company data from public access. The trouble with most firewalls is that they are designed to have holes punched through them for certain kinds of connections, allowing security to be compromised. NET's firewall eliminates the possibility of hole-punching by placing Web and e-mail servers outside the firewall and by using a unique technique called multi-homing.

The two types of firewalls in current use are ones employing packet filters and others using application gateways or proxy gateways, sometimes called circuit-level gateways. Packet filters, often employed within network routers, rely on checking bits within data to determine whether the data should pass. Since it's relatively easy to change data bits to allow the data to pass, packet filtering is the least secure type of firewall.

Application or proxy gateways employ small programs called proxy agents running on the firewall machine. These agents sit on the firewall like a sentry, checking for the sender's address, destination address, the time, date, and other information that determine whether a connection should be made. When the information meets set conditions, the connection is made.

The trouble with most firewalls that employ proxy agents is that all protocols do not allow the prompting necessary to make a connection. In those cases, most firewall vendors allow packet filtering to take over, which in effect punches a hole through the firewall. A circuit-level gateway also hard-wires the destination, creating another security risk -- one that is eliminated by multi-homing.

NET's multi-homing technology maintains all the proxy agent capabilities for each protocol by effectively making the firewall look like multiple machines. Each of the machines can be programmed to deal with a different host on the Internet, and specific protocols for each, maintaining a full level of security for every connection. Additionally, NET's Firewall enables router-based packet filtering to protect against IP spoofing -- that is, Internet Protocol addresses pretending to be some other address.

The multi-homing capability is also useful in allowing a company's widely separated departments to access each other's secure networks transparently without compromising security. Use of this security creates a virtual LAN or WAN, since the locations are connected as though on a private network.

The Challenge

To claim the $10,000 in NET's Firewall Challenge, individuals must first register with NET, then use a computer to break into NET's secure transaction server and retrieve information stored there about paper currency totaling $10,000, namely: (1) the number of notes, (2) the denomination of each note and (3) the serial number of each note. The first person to supply the correct information to NET between 12:01 a.m. May 1 and 12:01 a.m. May 31 will win the $10,000.

In the case of multiple break-ins, the first person sending the correct information to NET's e-mail address will be declared the winner. Participants must be individuals over 18 years of age, not companies, and must also agree to surrender to NET all relevant information about the methods they used to break through the firewall.

Further details on the Network Engineering Technologies' $10,000 Firewall Challenge available on the World-Wide Web at http://thefirewall.com or by writing NET at 1714 Ringwood Ave., San Jose, CA 95131.

CONTACT: Corman/Croel Marketing & Communications

Patrick Corman, 415/326-9648

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