Security Incidents mailing list archives

RE: Is it possible to derease gradually the number of Client port (add up time table) ?


From: "Rob Shein" <shoten () starpower net>
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 16:20:30 -0500

There's more than one way to gut a fish, but the answer as to why one
performs the method is the same: To gut the fish. :)

-----Original Message-----
From: David LeBlanc [mailto:dleblanc () exchange microsoft com] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2004 4:03 PM
To: Rob Shein; Todd Jang; incident
Cc: leehong () coponet com
Subject: RE: Is it possible to derease gradually the number 
of Client port (add up time table) ?


Rob Shein [mailto:shoten () starpower net] said:

As for why client ports have to change, the answer is simple; if the
client were to use the same source port every time, it would 
only be able to make one connection at a time, and every 
application would have to cooperate to make sure that they 
knew which one was talking at any point in time.  

This isn't quite correct. An application can make a number of 
outbound connections from the same port if that app uses 
SO_REUSEADDR when it creates and binds the socket. A non-PASV 
mode FTP server does exactly this - lots of outbound 
connections from the same source port. Port scanners that 
enable the source port to be set do exactly the same thing. 
With a TCP connection, remote address, remote port and local 
port all 3 go into establishing uniqueness. A UDP socket 
would usually have to coordinate because it is connectionless.

There's some overhead to reusing sockets, which I think is 
the major reason why they change under normal conditions.





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