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Vulnerabilities
Internet attack patterns
Typically
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A weakness is discovered (usually a software bug)
Many sites are attacked
Short term patch is created
Full repairs to software or protocols are issued
Majority of web sites etc implement repairs
Unrepaired sites end up blacklisted - poses a problem
as it then advertises the sites with weaknesses –
hence more attacks happen
Denial Of Service attacks or
SYN flooding
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In TCP handshaking the sequence is as
follows
Client
S
y
n
Server
SYN
Time
SYN + ACK
ACK
Client and server can now send
service specific data
Perils of half-open connections
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If after the server has send its SYN + ACK response the
client does not send a ACK response - half-open
connection
But the server has built in its system memory a data
structure describing all pending connections. Will time
out eventually
Attacker carries on creating these may cause memory
overflow and server to crash or at least not able to accept
any new connections until table emptied out
IP spoofing location of attacking system is obscured
because source addresses in the SYN packets are often
implausible. When the packet arrives at the victim server
system, there is no way to determine its true source.
SYN flooding remedies
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Non yet with the current IP protocol technology.
However, proper router configuration can reduce the
likelihood that a site will be the source of one of
these attacks.
Currently, the best method is to install a filtering
router that restricts the input to your external
interface (known as an input filter) by not allowing a
packet through if it has a source address from your
internal network. would prevent outside attackers
from sending you packets pretending to be from your
internal network.
also prevents packets originating within your network
from pretending to be from outside your network.
RFC 2267
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Should also filter outgoing packets that
have a source address different from your
internal network to prevent a source IP
spoofing attack from originating from your
site.
These filters will not stop all TCP SYN
attacks, since outside attackers can spoof
packets from any outside network, and
internal attackers can still send attacks
spoofing internal addresses.
IP spoofing – changing source
IP address
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Stealth scan method of spoofing
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Before an attacker will attack a specific server they will
in most cases want to scan the system in order to find
out as much as possible about the system.
this scan could alert fire-walls, IDS systems and their
administrators of a forthcoming attack, and could point
the administrator to the originator of a following (basic)
DDOS attack.
By hiding the actual scan in a large amount of spoofed
scanning datagrams from a wide range of IP addresses,
the attacker will be able to hide the real scan from the
administrators.
Intrusion Detection Systems DoS
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In order to detect and stop hack attacks many companies now
implement so IDS. -when combined with fire-walls that support them
will in the ideal case stop a hack that is in progress ones specific or
generic hacking fingerprints are detected.
Downside of IDS systems is that they have to do a wide range of CPU
intensive and state-full protocol analysis. Can make Datagrams to use a
maximum amount of IDS resources (state objects and cpu) per byte of
datagram.
By using again a large amount of spoofed IP addresses, and by again
using this to create as much as possible state objects on the IDS
system, combined with large strains on the IDS to do the full set of
protocol analysis it will in many cases be possible to heighten the time
taken with IDS detection to such an extend that the full attack can
be implemented before the IDS has been able to detect it.
Anti spoofing techniques
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Border router filter rules
Simple principle - Don't let anything out with a source IP address not
belonging to the ISP rfc2827
Don't let anything in with a source IP address belonging to the ISP
The first one is basically the most important, also used to fight DoS
attacks,
AS for my ISP
171.85.0.0
AS of neighbouring ISP
204.12.15.0
DOS - Smurfing
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Simple concept – send forged ICMP echo
request packets to IP broadcast addresses of an
unsuspecting network.
All hosts on that network send a ICMP reply to
the spoofed IP address of the victim
When (potentially) all the machines on a
network respond to this ICMP echo request, the
result can be severe network congestion or even
breakdown.
Attacker Sends Broadcast packet to unsuspecting network
All hosts send replies to spoofed IP address of victim
Router
Ping
(broadcast address)
Victim
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Attackers have developed automated tools
(botnets etc) that enable them to send these
attacks to multiple intermediaries at the same
time, causing all of the intermediaries to direct
their responses to the same victim.
Attackers have also developed tools to look for
network routers that do not filter broadcast traffic
and networks where multiple hosts respond.
These networks can the subsequently be used as
intermediaries in attacks.
Dictionary Attack – cracking of
authentication passwords
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Authentication passwords are stored in a file in both
UNIX and Windows – but are usually encrypted with an
algorithm that is non reversible (MD5 etc)
Passwords are stored in password file encrypted using a
one way algorithm (MD5 etc), user enters password
which is encrypted and the encrypted version is
compared with the stored version
With a brute force attack, where all possibilities are
searched through exhaustively, a dictionary attack only
tries possibilities which are most likely to succeed derived from a list of words in a dictionary.
Weakness with passwords
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Usually word from native language
Common list of words typically used
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Dictionary attacks may be applied in two main situations:
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in cryptanalysis, in trying to determine the decryption key for a given
piece of ciphertext;
in computer security, in trying to circumvent an authentication
mechanism for accessing a computer system by guessing passwords.
An attacker may be able to obtain a copy of the list of encrypted
passwords from a remote system; assuming the users are mostly
English speakers, can attempt to guess the passwords at their
leisure, by encrypting each of a list of English words and comparing
each encryption against the stored encrypted version of users'
passwords. As users often choose easily guessed passwords, this
has historically succeeded about 4 times out of 10 when a
reasonably large list is used.
Dictionaries for most human languages (even those no longer used)
are easily accessible on the Internet, meaning even the use of
foreign words is practically useless in preventing dictionary attacks.
One way encryption of password
Stored in Password table
Client
Alix.Bergeret
ADSNUYTGHLKLLL
Password encrypted by
the client using same
algorithm then passed
over network
If Hash values are equal
then client is
authenticated
username
Encrypted password
Alix.Bergeret
ADSNUYTGHLKLLL
Matthew.Green
NJKFFDSHPTTDRD
Ian.Coulson
VFGMNBDEQQASU
Brendan.Riordan
VHGUIOUIYEDRDT
Chris.Dennett
CXZAASWEWEDFD
Andy.Sloane
MLOPIUYTRFFGHJ
Mary.Garvey
MNJTYUUIFVCXFG
Brian.Penfold
REDERFGGGHYTR
Password authentication server
Combating dictionary attacks
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An attacker can by encrypting and storing a
list of encrypted dictionary words, sorted by
the encrypted 'value'.
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requires a large amount of storage and often a
considerable amount of preparation time, but
makes the actual attack almost instantaneous.
particularly effective when a large number of
passwords are to be cracked at once.
Attacker simply takes a list of commonly used passwords and
passes them all thought the same algorithm
Then sorts them alphabetically
username
Encrypted password
Word
Hashed word
Alix.Bergeret
ADSNUYTGHLKLLL
cricket
ABVGTHYULPMMN
Matthew.Green
NJKFFDSHPTTDRD
football
ADSNUYTGHLKLLL
england
CFTGERHTYUUUU
Ian.Coulson
VFGMNBDEQQASU
sister
QRTSNDCNCNNNN
Brendan.Riordan
VHGUIOUIYEDRDT
christopher
RTSGHWEREEEDM
Chris.Dennett
CXZAASWEWEDFD
charlie
STTHHHHHERERE
louise
NMZOAOWJBHEEU
Andy.Sloane
MLOPIUYTRFFGHJ
Mary.Garvey
MNJTYUUIFVCXFG
Brian.Penfold
REDERFGGGHYTR
Crackers sorted list of hashed words
Easy to determine Alix.Begeret password
by comparing hash values
Password list
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A SALT is a value used to modify a hash of a password.
Unfortunately, obtaining the password file revealed hash
values which then could be compared to hash values (the
Hash algorithm are public) for popular passwords, thus
revealing the password itself.
To avoid this, a salt value is hashed along with password,
thus changing the hash value and making a known-hash
attack difficult.
Salt value is a random characters (or more often the
username) which can be stored – even if attacker can
see salt value means they have to add salt value to every
dictionary value – has it and do a comparison against that
one entry in the password file
Add a salt value
Username Password before any encryption
Alix.Bergeret
Football
Password is given a salt value -Username and password added together
Alix.Bergeret + Football = Alix.BergeretFootball
Then encrypted
Alix.BergeretFootball -> FFFGHTYPOIYT
As Alix.BergeretFootball is not a word you would find in a common list
of words then attacker will not find the encrypted version in his list –
makes it impossible to crack
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attack can be greatly reduced by limiting
the number of authentication attempts
that can be performed each minute, and
even blocking further attempts after a
threshold of failed authentication attempts
is reached.
There are downloadable tools for
password cracking
RIP attacks
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Routing Information Protocol (RIP) Routing attacks
is often seen in routers which implemented the
original RIP.
RIP is used to distribute routing information within
networks, such as shortest-paths, and advertising
routes out from the local network.
original version of RIP has no built in
authentication, and the information provided in a
RIP packet is often used without verifying it.
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Attacker could forge a RIP packet, claiming his host
"X" has the fastest path out of the network. All
packets sent out from that network would then be
routed through X, where they could be modified or
examined. An attacker could also use RIP to
effectively impersonate any host, by causing all traffic
sent to that host to be sent to the attacker's machine
instead.
The version 2 of RIP was enhanced with a simple
password authentication algorithm, which makes RIP
attack harder to happen. IPsec VPN provides a way
to keep routing information encrypted among the
routers implemented the IPsec VPN.
Packet Sniffing
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NIC cards normally only process packets (MAC)
addressed to your PC
Software/hardware is easily available to do this
Can turn it promiscuous so that it processes all
packets passing your portion of the network
Means the contents off all packets can be seen – FTP,
Telnet, POP3 all send passwords in clear text. Many
more implications
Should not be a problem in a switched environment
as only packets destined for your PC will be on your
segment, but ….
Packet Sniffing
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MAC Flooding is an ARP Cache Poisoning technique
aimed at network switches. When certain switches
are overloaded they often drop into a "hub" mode.
In "hub" mode, the switch is too busy to enforce its
port security features and just broadcasts all network
traffic to every computer in your network.
By flooding a switch's ARP table with many spoofed
ARP replies, a hacker can overload many vendor's
switches and then packet sniff your network while
the switch is in "hub" mode.
264,354
247,027
205,953
215,643
259,014
337,050
123,044
4,000,000
5,000,000
3,455,079
7,000,000
7,427,545
7,724,659
6,739,929
8,000,000
5,231,375
4,522,495
4,838,962
9,000,000
2,800,649
2,098,012
6,000,000
9,139,704
10,000,000
n
Ju
2005
ay
M
r
Ap
ar
M
b
Fe
n
Ja
ec
D
ct
ov
N
O
p
Se
g
Au
Number of intercepted phishing attempts (provided by MessageLabs)
l
2004
3,015,685
2,493,734
3,000,000
Ju
n
Ju
ay
M
r
Ap
ar
M
b
Fe
n
Ja
ec
D
ov
N
2003
69,982
43,222
p
Se
ct
279
1,000,000
O
g
Au
0
14
Phishing Emails Intercepted
Phishing
2,000,000
100%
94.51%
90%
86.29%
84.25%
81.41%
83.11%
76.76%
76.02%
80%
76.30%
73.77%
72.14%
68.81%
67.61%
68.76%
68.72%
67.25%
70%
59.90%
60%
52.82%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
2004
Ratio of spam to legitimate email (provided by MessageLabs)
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
2005
May
Jun
Spam Percentage in Mail
63.01%
1 in 0
1 in 10.37 1 in 10.42 1 in 10.41
1 in 13.75 1 in 14.53
1 in 19.26
1 in 20.69
1 in 20
1 in 28.16
1 in 32.24
1 in 32.16
1 in 33.54
1 in 34.90
1 in 43.37
1 in 46.12
1 in 44.32
1 in 42.78
1 in 40
1 in 60
1 in 80
1 in 100
1 in 120
1 in 129.42
1 in 140
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
2004
Ratio of virus-laden email to legitimate email (provided by MessageLabs)
Dec
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
2005
May
Jun
Virus Ratio in Mail
1 in 51.75
700,000
612,408
600,000
500,000
Number Stopped
400,000
300,000
275,339
200,000
100,000
3,386
Timeline
Number of intercepted directed phishing attempts (provided by MessageLabs)
n
Ju
2005
-100,000
ay
M
2,962
r
Ap
n
Ja
10,903
ar
M
56
b
Fe
0
Attacks by industry (provided by IBM Security Monitoring)
Attacks by category (provided by IBM Security Monitoring)