Hi,

I'll be a little more nuanced than all the other contributors.

If you understand the goal of the pentest is to help you identify the
vulns in your application, then please, by all means, disable your
IDS. If anything, IDS is just an annoyance to an auditor, because he
will see vuls he can't exploit. Also, if you were to turn it off (and
you know production/business reasons will make you turn it off should
they arise), of if your IDS were to have a vuln (fragmented packets,
IPv6 inexistent support, whatever) they would be exploitable.

That is, IF the goal is to help you identify the problems AND you have
ways and means to fix it.

On the other hand, if the goal of the pentest is to show corporate how
lame you are, and how easily your app can be breached, then don't turn
it off. Although getting thouroughly pwned can be a way for a smart
manager to obtain money to do things right.

To answer you original question, I have found in my practice it IS a
common practice to turn "active defenses" like IPSes off for auditors.
Even more so if your IPS blacklists offending IPs for some time. This
is just stupid to do this to an auditor who has, as opposed to a
dedicated attacker, limited time to do the job.

Rob'

On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 3:57 PM, Kid Tangerine <kidtangerine (at) gmail (dot) com [email concealed]> wrote:
> All,
>
> Corporate has requested we get a PENTEST for our Internet facing
> website from a third party, but the third party asked us to allow
> their ip address to be excluded from our IPS.
>
> Is that a common practice to basically turn off our protection and
> allow them in?
>
> Obviously we aren't developers, so If the code has sql injections,
> cross site scripting, etc vulnerabilities we cannot fix it within the
> corporate guidelines, and our only leverage from the IT infrastructure
> side is to include the needed filters in the IPS to prevent their
> crappy code from being exploited. It we turn off the IPS I am sure all
> kinds of things will show up.
>
> Any experience appreciated.
>
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Securing Apache Web Server with thawte Digital Certificate
In this guide we examine the importance of Apache-SSL and who needs an SSL certificate. We look at how SSL works, how it benefits your company and how your customers can tell if a site is secure. You will find out how to test, purchase, install and use a thawte Digital Certificate on your Apache web server. Throughout, best practices for set-up are highlighted to help you ensure efficient ongoing management of your encryption keys and digital certificates.

http://www.dinclinx.com/Redirect.aspx?36;4175;25;1371;0;5;946;e13b6be442
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