Footprinting and Scanning

Protect from
Target acquisition and information

gathering
footprinting
scanning
enumeration

initial access

privilege escalation
covering tracks

Footprinting
gathering target information
profile of security posture
Internet

Intranet

Domain name, network

blocks, IP addresses open to
Net, TCP and UDP services
running, ACLs, IDSes
Protocols (IP,NETBIOS),
internal domain names, etc

Remote access

Phone numbers, remote

control, telnet, authentication

Extranet

Connection origination,
destination, type, access
control

Scope of footprinting
Organization, region, location

open source search

web page (save it offline, e.g. teleport )

multiple search engines (All-in-One , Dogpile)
advanced search (e.g. Yahoo)
publicly trade companies (e.g. EDGAR)
You can obtain satellite images of a location using the TerraServer
or downloading Google Earth.

countermeasures
remove unnecessary information from web pages
create security policies (see Site Security Handbook)

Network enumeration
Identify domain names and networks
registrar query. In Linux/UNIX issue whois
domain@whois.crsnic.net In Windows download SamSpade,
enter a DNS server in the right window and perform the query in
the left windows as shown here.
organizational and domain query. Use the dig function of
SamSpade to obtain information about who is responsible for the
domain, the primary (authoritative) DNS server, the other DNS
servers, etc.
network query. The ARIN database can provide information on
IP blocks assigned to an organization. You can also use the
SamSpade IP Block tool.
countermeasures: only administrative cleanup, because the
information is required for registration.

DNS interrogation
Use the Spade tool to check DNS.
Use the dig tool in Spade to obtain the authoritative DNS for the
organization (it will also provide mail server, etc, IP numbers).
A zone transfer asks the authoritative name server of an
organization for all the information it knows about a domain (it
should not provide the information).
Mail relay check asks a mail server to relay mail for you (it should
not relay your message).
Countermeasures: deny all unauthorized inbound connections to
port 53. You can also set directives to the DNS server (see book).
This prevents zone transfer, but not nslookup to each IP number.

Network Reconnaissance
traceroute (tracert) allows to study the network topology (identify
the nodes in the network). See this example.

Scanning
After obtaining a list of network and IP addresses

scanning starts:
ping sweeps (active machines): user pinger in Windows and nmap
in Linux/UNIX. This is an example of pinger.
TCP port scanning (open ports in active machines): SYN and
connect scans work with most hosts. SYN is stealthier and may not
be logged. In Windows use SuperScan and in Linux/UNIX use
nmap. See an example of SuperScan. BUT, hackers use scripts with
binary files, not graphical tools.
UDP port scanning: use WUPS in Windows as shown here.
countermeasures: detection using active ports (see an example of
what it logs). Later we will learn to install an IDS program (snort),
the way to protect from ping sweeps and port scanning. NAT is a
first step. See more free/shareware security tools here.

More in Scanning
OS detection (stack fingerprinting):
probe the TCP/IP stack,because it varies with OS. Requires at least
one listening port to make determination. See textbook (pages 6972) for types of probe.
why is it important? There are hacker tools OS and Net device
specific. In Linux/UNIX use nmap with -O. You can use the
Netcraft site to check the OS of a host running a Web server.
countermeasures: standards, filtering requests at firewall.

OS detection (passive signatures):

monitoring the traffic the operating system can be detected, among
other things. Siphon is a recent Linux/UNIX tool.
Once the OS is identified enumeration can take place (to be seen in
next class meeting).