Wednesday, October 04, 2006

IP Attacks..

You know that you have taken a great course when you look forward to do each project and the assignments given... Internet Security is one such course. I was supposed to stress test Minix 3 and Linux for vulnerabilies. Specifically I had to attack the ARP, IP and ICMP protocols and find out the vulnerabilities if any. I always thought that this was a waste of time, why on earth will these attacks work?? after all.. these protocols have been there for more than three decades.. how wrong was I!!... This is what I found out :

Attacks Minix 3 Linux
ARP Cache Attack yes yes
IP DoS Attack no no
IP Fragmentation Attack no no
ICMP Attacks

Ping of death no no
Smurf Attack yes yes
Destination Unreachable yes no
Source Quench no somewhat
Redirect yes yes


Out of all the attacks, I find ARP cache poisoning, ICMP redirect and Smurf attacks quite slick. There is no simple method to detect these attacks and anyone can do them (at least you can after reading this blog entry). You don't have to be a cracker with a brain of a rocket scientist to use the publicly available tools.

I used the netwox tool box to conduct the above attacks. Its an amazing collection of 221 tools, each of which can be customized to bring even the most monstrous server to its knees. You can read my documentation of this attack here. This attack reveals some really nasty design flaws in these protocols, sadly changing them means changing the software on a billion computers(i totally made that number up but you get the point right??) on this planet.
Also I must say that out of all the FOSS OSs I have used, I find Minix's source code most well written. If you are a kernel hacker and an object oriented developer at the same time, you will surely appreciate how well written the code is. I find it better than FreeBSD and certainly better than Linux. The Microkernel implementation would also rock your world.
Lastly please don't try these on public networks... your arrest warrant will be stamped before you can reboot your computer. I tried these on my own computers behind a NAT. And BTW.. if you are using Windows, be ready for a bsod.

6 comments:

  1. how i would like to attack you !! go straight for your scrwany jugular !! :P

    ReplyDelete
  2. mess with the best... loose like the rest :P

    ReplyDelete
  3. Its been a while I visited your blog. Nice entries dude!! Please dont take it as a formal, motivational comment, I rarely do such stufff.. Seems like, you are bringing up the mighty power of just few lines of perl.. Wish I had the time to use that... instead of writing those lousy perl parsers..

    ReplyDelete
  4. @neo... thanks

    Ironically ... I hate perl, but whenever I come up with an idea, perl is the only language which can get the job done in the least possible time.

    ReplyDelete
  5. tech blogging at its best dude... hows life eh???

    ReplyDelete