Security Basics mailing list archives

RE: NetBIOS Messenger spam - how did it get in?


From: "Daniel Miessler" <danielrm26 () hotmail com>
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 16:13:07 -0500

Hmm.  I am wondering where the attacker is going to put this route that
you mention so that it routes right past your NAT.

It can not be stressed enough that NAT alone is _no protection at
all_, there must be some filtering or you are running wide open
looking for trouble.

By adding a route to the network you can directly reach the machines
from outside the NAT box, something like[1]

# route add -net 192.168/16 gw 123.123.123.123

would do. Then just ping around to find what hosts are alive...

It is raining on the Internet. Don't leave your house with the windows
open...

[1] Assuming the corporate LAN uses 192.168.0.0--192.168.255.255 as
    their internal addresses and the gateways external IP is
    123.123.123.123.
----

In other words, NAT gains you pretty much nothing for security.  The
existance of your network behind a NATting device might not be
immediately
obvious to someone scanning from the outside, but anyone watching
traffic
from your NAT device will be able to figure out pretty easily that
there is
a network behind that one IP address, and if they care to probe to see
what
is there, the NAT does not do much to protect the network.

Randy Graham


-----Original Message-----
From: Schuler, Jeff [mailto:Jeff.Schuler () hit cendant com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2002 1:17 PM
To: security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: Network Address Translation insecurities


I am looking for information regarding the insecurities and
vulnerabilities
that exist in Network Address Translation.  One of our admins feels
that
because everything is NAT'd that there is no way anyone can break into
the
systems that are NAT'd.  I know that this is not a completely accurate
statement but need to find some research and documentation regarding
this.
All our systems are behind at least one firewall so please don't
advise me
to install a firewall as extra security as they are already there.  I
just
want to make sure that we are not overlooking serious vulnerabilities
just
because the box is behind a NAT.  In order to justify doing
vulnerability
testing on some of our internal systems I need to demonstrate the
insecurities in NAT.

Thanks in advance

Jeff Schuler

-----Original Message-----
From: Damon McMahon [mailto:inst_karma () hotmail com]
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 11:36 PM
To: security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: NetBIOS Messenger spam - how did it get in?




Greetings,  The gateway host of my small workgroup has just become a
'victim' of the recent spate of SPAM using the NetBIOS Messenger
Service.
However, I'm seeking advice on how it managed to get through what I
thought
was a reasonably secure gateway.  The gateway is a Windows 2000 host
which
connects to the internet via an external IP dynamically assigned by my
ISP,
and to an internal network via a 192.168.0.0/24 IP assigned by the
Windows
Internet Connection Sharing service.  I have ZoneAlarm Pro installed
on the
gateway, which allows NetBIOS traffic over the 192.168.0.0/24 subnet
but
rejects NetBIOS traffic from any other IP. This rule is explicitly
defined
in the ZA Pro configuration, and appears to be working as the ZA Pro
logs
are full of rejected packets from internet IPs attempting to access
NetBIOS
ports on the host.  From what I understand, such a firewall
configuration
should discard any traffic to ports 135, 137-139 from any hosts not on
the
internal network. Clearly there has been a breach.  The only possible
explanation I can conceive is that the source of the NetBIOS message
spoofed
it's IP address to be in the 192.168.0.0/24 range:  1. Is this
possible? I
would have thought any packet with such a spoofed IP address would be
deemed
non-routable by any of the routers between the source host and mine,
and
hence would never make it to my host?  2. If this is possible, is
there any
inexpensive [preferably free!] method of configuring Windows 2000
(with or
without ZA Pro) to filter packets on the basis of interface as well as
IP
address? For example, BSD variants come with an inbuilt firewall
called ipfw
which enables you to construct a rule denying all packets with an
address
192.168.0.0/24 from passing via the external interface, while allowing
such
packets to pass via the internal interface.  3. Are there any other
explanations for this intrusion?  Any advice will be most appreciated.
Please email me on inst_karma A T hotmail D O T com if you require
more
detailed information.


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