Penetration Testing mailing list archives
RE: Honeypot detection and countermeasures
From: Michael Boman <michael.boman () securecirt com>
Date: 24 Jun 2003 22:02:51 +0800
On Tue, 2003-06-24 at 21:48, Rob Shein wrote:
First off, I still maintain that watching the attack will NOT tell you which tool was used. Watching the attack AND being familiar with the tool(s) will, but in of itself, you don't see a series of attacks on a web server and say "ah, that was Nessus, not just whisker, and you can download it from www.nessus.org!" If you see a buffer overflow against a real server, you don't automatically know what it's called, and where to get it (or how to use it). And you certainly wouldn't know the difference between a non-safe Nessus plugin that only crashes a system and the real overflow attack, but with an error so it doesn't gain root. You have to be familiar with the tools in general to begin with, and since the whole scenario started with a company who was going to observe a pen test to try and figure out how to do one, I would presume that they lack that knowledge.
Didn't expect my reply heating up the thread so much, but I feel like I need to put more wood on the fire: If a honeypot / honeynet can't get the tools used, how come every single "research" honeypot dump I've seen so far have a collection of tools that has been used? Because the attacker put them there of course! If you need a spring board into a network (happens to me more often then you think) you need to put at least a small collection of tools on the server. Now, what if those tools were copied somewhere else? Of course, if you get yourself a talk-the-talk PT guy/companies, all the tools can already be found on the net. But there are PR guys/companies that has a collection of lesser known/unknown tools. From my point of view the only difference between a good guy/company (PT vendor) and a bad guy (script kiddie, 'leet hacker) is the good guy asks for permission and gives a report, while you will never hear form the bad guy. When it comes to PT companies the in-house/limited exposure tools would be counted as trade secrets and intellectual properties (for a limited time, until they hit pen-test/bugtraq). But never the less the tools are what separate them from the rest. Seriously, would you pay big bucks for someone to run Nessus against the systems when you can just DIY such test yourself? Best regards Michael Boman -- Michael Boman Security Architect, SecureCiRT Pte Ltd http://www.securecirt.com
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Current thread:
- Re: Honeypot detection and countermeasures, (continued)
- Re: Honeypot detection and countermeasures Larry Colen (Jun 18)
- Re: Honeypot detection and countermeasures Michael Boman (Jun 19)
- RE: Honeypot detection and countermeasures Rob Shein (Jun 23)
- Re: Honeypot detection and countermeasures Dragos Ruiu (Jun 24)
- Re: Honeypot detection and countermeasures Lance Spitzner (Jun 24)
- Re: Honeypot detection and countermeasures Larry Colen (Jun 18)
- Re: SV: Honeypot detection and countermeasures dave (Jun 24)
- RE: Honeypot detection and countermeasures Michael Boman (Jun 24)
- RE: Honeypot detection and countermeasures Rob Shein (Jun 24)
- RE: Honeypot detection and countermeasures .:[ Death Star]:. (Jun 25)
- RE: Honeypot detection and countermeasures Bojan Zdrnja (Jun 25)