RE: Administrivia: Are you seeing portscans from source 127.0.0.1 source port 80?

From: Dan Hanson (dhanson_at_securityfocus.com)
Date: 10/29/03

  • Next message: David Vestal: "Persistant Connection to tcp/1423"
    Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 12:32:47 -0700 (MST)
    To: "Jim Harrison (ISA)" <jmharr@microsoft.com>
    
    

    From memory, the DoS routine grabs the Class B network off the machine
    (255.255.0.0) and spoofs from within that, so it's not inconceivable that
    it would be coming from upstream.

    D

    On Wed, 29 Oct 2003, Jim Harrison (ISA) wrote:

    > That's an nteresting observation (and no doubt true in many cases), but
    > I've also seen a collection of reports from ISA customers (big surprise,
    > huh?) that have actually traced this traffic and discovered that it's
    > coming from their upstream.
    > Apparently their ISP is failing to apply router ACLs that any
    > self-respecting network engineer would consider "basic settings".
    > I have seen this in my ISA logs as well, but since it's garbage traffic
    > (extremely low), I don't get too excited about it.
    >
    > * Jim Harrison
    > MCP(NT4/2K), A+, Network+
    > Security Business Unit (ISA SE)
    >
    > "I used to hate writing assignments, but now I enjoy them.
    > I realized that the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas,
    > obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity.
    > With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and
    > impenetrable fog!"
    > -Calvin
    >
    > -----Original Message-----
    > From: Dan Hanson [mailto:dhanson@securityfocus.com]
    > Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2003 08:00
    > To: incidents@securityfocus.com
    > Subject: Administrivia: Are you seeing portscans from source 127.0.0.1
    > source port 80?
    >
    > I am posting this in the hopes of dulling the 5-6 messages I get every
    > day
    > that are reporting port scans to their network all of which have a
    > source
    > IP of 127.0.0.1 and source port 80.
    >
    > It is likely Blaster (check your favourite AV site for a writeup, I
    > won't
    > summarize here).
    >
    > The reason that people are seeing this has to do with some very bad
    > advice
    > that was given early in the blaster outbreak. The advice basically was
    > that to protect the Internet from the DoS attack that was to hit
    > windowsupdate.com, all DNS servers should return 127.0.0.1 for queries
    > to
    > windowsupdate.com. Essentially these suggestions were suggesting that
    > hosts should commit suicide to protect the Internet.
    >
    > The problem is that the DoS routine spoofs the source address, so when
    > windowsupdate.com resolves to 127.0.0.1 the following happens.
    >
    > Infected host picks address as source address and sends Syn packet to
    > 127.0.0.1 port 80. (Sends it to itself) (This never makes it on the
    > wire,
    > you will not see this part)
    >
    > TCP/IP stack receives packet, responds with reset (if there is nothing
    > listening on that port), sending the reset to the host with the spoofed
    > source address (this is what people are seeing and mistaking for
    > portscans)
    >
    > Result: It looks like a host is port scanning ephemeral posts using
    > packets with source address:port of 127.0.0.1:80
    >
    > Solution: track back the packets by MAC address to find hte infected
    > machine. Turn of NS resolution of windowsupdate.com to 127.0.0.1.
    >
    > Hope that helps
    >
    > D
    >
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