Re: OT? New compromise.

["Mike Barkett" <mbarkett () us checkpoint com>]

> Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 13:09:58 -0500
> From: Frank Knobbe <frank () knobbe us>
> Subject: Re: [fw-wiz] OT? New compromise.
> To: Firewall Wizards Security Mailing List
>       <firewall-wizards () listserv icsalabs com>
> Cc: firewall-wizards () listserv cybertrust com
> Message-ID: <1175278198.40136.36.camel@localhost>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> On Thu, 2007-03-29 at 17:12 -0400, Mike Barkett wrote:
> > > > On Windows
> > > > /c:\netstat -an |find /i "listening"/
>
> > > There are tools like openports or the sysinternals set you may
>
> > Windows: netstat -aon
> > Linux: netstat -apn
>
> Of course all these tools only work if the application uses the OS'es IP
> stack. Any decent rootkitted malware, that puts it's on packets on the
> wire and sniffs the responses promiscuously, won't show up in those
> lists. You can see the packets with tcpdump/sniffers, but won't be able
> to correlate them back to an application (unless you do some CPU
> utilization sample and correlate that with the observed network traffic,
> but you'd need to be able to see the app in the first place, so if it's
> hidden by a rootkit, that won't help you either).
>
> Just because nothing shows up in netstat doesn't mean that there isn't
> an application promiscuously listening for data to that port.
>
> Regards,
> Frank


True, a rootkit is one possible explanation.  In this case the traffic has
already been spotted on the network and thus requires explanation at the
host.  Therefore, a netstat showing nothing is just as informative as one
that shows something bogus, which is just as informative as one that shows
the actual running application.  Every outcome requires further digging
anyway.  It is just one more data point that is only as valuable as the
skill level of the security professional analyzing it.

-MAB

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