Penetration Testing mailing list archives

Re:FW: baby pen-test question


From: "bluefur0r bluefur0r" <bluefur0r () drea ms>
Date: 24 Sep 2001 20:20:49 -0000

Usually you would want to scan all ports on all machines. Both UDP and TCP (I usually use nmap -sS syn scan rather than 
connect(-sT). I know someone's gonna yelp about that one... As for the only scanning a few machines, that all depends 
on what the client wants. Some want samples of only a few hosts (usually to save a few hundered dollars). You also want 
to run Nessus/ISS/Cops just scanning ports 1-15000, this way you have the major services covered with the mass-vuln 
assessment program, and ALL ports covered by nmap. Also if they own say... a few class c's you would want to nmap the 
whole range. I usually break it up like this. do an nmap ping sweep, start a scan without the -PO no ping flag and that 
will finish up fairly quickly. Then for all machines that didn't respond to ping use the -PO flag to see if there are 
any "hidden" machines. This takes an extensive amount of time because it's trying ports that do not even reply. Take 
the ranges and split it up on multiple machines... 
bluefur0r 
Op Sun, 23 Sep 2001 21:06:18 -0400 leon <leon () inyc com> geschreven:
Hi everyone,

I have a few “baby” questions about pen-testing / vulnerability assessment.  I say this because maybe the answers 
to these questions are common knowledge (probably are).  My first question is about port scanning.  Bear with me while 
I set up a scenario.  Well I would think backdoors in a network would generally listen on some port.  Now lets say we 
have some kind of listener kind of like sub 7 or whatever but home-made.  It does not have an anti-virus signature so 
it is not picked up by that.  I know that things like ISS, Nessus, Cybercop, Etc look for Trojans by scanning the 
default ports (subseven 27374, netbus 12345, etc).  If I am a hacker I am going to have the server run on a very high 
port number like 60,000.  So when people do audits my question is do you port scan every port (both tcp, & udp) on 
every host or do you just scan with the ISS or maybe just an Nmap of 1 - 1024?  Do people nmap everything (every 
single port on both tcp & udp)?  I would assume this must take quite a bit of time if the network is large (even 
small) and probably use up a lot of bandwidth (create a lot of traffic if you have a lot of people doing every port of 
every machine).  However I would think that you would have to do this if you were being thorough cause if you pick a 
range (say 1 - 30000), you happen to be wrong and the attacker has lets say some super cool Trojan that is unknown and 
phones home with a connection out on port 80 to some preset ip) you might be in a lot of trouble (well the companies 
reputation anyway).  That brings me to my next question which is about medium / large networks.  Do people scan every 
single host with things like Nessus / Insert your favorite scanner / toll here, or do they just take a sample (say 20 
out of 200).  Say there was a network with 2000 hosts.  Even with 4 consultants with amazing laptops it still takes 
time.  I realize that this is probably up to the customer but maybe what I am curious about is what happens more 
frequently or what do you actually suggest when the customer ask
s for advice.  Especially the port scanning.  Is this left to run at night or something???

Anyway I am sure I will have more questions soon ☺

Public and private response welcome.

Cheers,

Leon


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This list is provided by the SecurityFocus Security Intelligence Alert (SIA)
Service. For more information on SecurityFocus' SIA service which
automatically alerts you to the latest security vulnerabilities please see:
https://alerts.securityfocus.com/



=================================================================
Kies een origineel e-mailadres op www.emails.nl

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This list is provided by the SecurityFocus Security Intelligence Alert (SIA)
Service. For more information on SecurityFocus' SIA service which
automatically alerts you to the latest security vulnerabilities please see:
https://alerts.securityfocus.com/


Current thread: