Penetration Testing mailing list archives

Re: [PEN-TEST] Route Poisoning


From: Dario Ciccarone <dciccaro () EMPLOYEES ORG>
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 01:49:51 -0800

I was wondering whether it was possible for someone to spoof routing update
tables being exchanged by routers to keep their routing tables current. As
far as I know the routing table updates are multicast packets which can be
sent to the Ethernet port of the router. In a scenario where someone has
access to the traffic using a Ethernet sniffer on a hub LAN, I think it
would be possible for someone to capture the update packets. This would
first of all give the intruder knowledge about the network and also ip
spoofing can be used to generate fake update packets.

a) can be multicast (OSPF,EIGRP), local broadcast (RIPv1 and V2), unicast (BGP, also RIP if so configured)
b) multicast on a switched network would go to all ports (if the switch doesn't do IGMP snooping) or some ports. 
broadcast, all ports. unicast, only the port where the destination L3 address is connected to, but it's easy to do ARP 
spoofing using tools as arpredirect or ettercap & get the packets. on a flat network as you describe, only using hubs, 
you're going to receive the packets by default.
c) by reading the routing updates packets the intruder would know what hosts are routers (like Cisco routers), what 
hosts has been configured to work as routers, and what networks are those routers connected to. good info all of it, to 
discover the topology of the network


By sending a wrong update the intruder can direct traffic through the
network through whatever route he /she desires. In RIP there is no
authentication done to check the source of the packet.In OSPF a MD5 checksum
of a password provided is used to check the authenticity of the update. ( I
am not 100% sure on this part,please correct me if I am wrong here.)However
i have been informed that normally nobody bothers with this password!!

a) can send the data packets in transit to himself, capture the data and then forward the packets toward the final 
destination (it has to, or else someone would notice that the network isn't working as expected)
b) RIPv2, EIGRP, OSPF and BGP all offer the feature of authenticating routing updates, by using a plaintext password or 
an MD-5 hash. don't know about IS-IS. don't remember about IGRP. but the issue is that many people doesn't configure 
authentication of routing updates at all . . .

Now coming to the point which i am interested in, first of all is this all
possible ??? or am I missing out on some very basic stuff!!! . second if
possible can someone direct me to a site which has more info on this or may
be share whatever he/she knows about all this.

it's possible.

more information available at http://www.cisco.com/public/cons/isp/documents/IOSEssentialsPDF.zip

                                                                                                        Dario


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