Re: Find out the subnetting of a company

From: Miles Stevenson (miles_at_mstevenson.org)
Date: 08/04/04

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    To: pen-test@securityfocus.com
    Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 18:23:03 -0400
    
    

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    Don't mean to re-hash old stuff, but it took me a while to get around to doing
    some testing. After a bit of playtime, it seems to me that the ICMP type 18
    request is a very unreliable method to discover IP subnetting, as almost all
    modern IP stacks will simply ignore these requests.

    This was tested by installing multiple OS's under vmware, and using both
    hping2 and thcrut (thanks to Jerry Shenk for posting a link that works!) to
    test sending ICMP type 18 requests (address mask request) against each
    system. I tested the following systems:

    Windows 2000 SP1
    Windows XP SP1
    Windows NT 4 SP1
    Windows NT 4 SP6
    Linux 2.4
    Linux 2.6

    Please note that I have NOT tested any of the BSD's or Solaris. The only
    system in the above list that actually responded with its subnet was the NT
    4.0 SP1 system. However, after installing SP6a, the system ceased to respond.

    I saw one suggestion to look for some SNMP enabled routers that you can grab
    the info from, but this is also less likely to be available these days. So
    far, the most reliable method that I have found for mapping out the
    subnetting of a network, is to look for broadcast addresses.

    The only theoretical problem with this approach, as pointed out by J.A.
    Terranson in a previous post to this thread, is that some older systems will
    also treat the network address as a broadcast, and respond to both ends. I
    have yet to actually see this kind of behavior, nor have I any systems to
    actively test this on, but I if this is true, it wouldn't be hard to work
    around.

    It would be a simple matter to notice the same system responding on two
    supposedly differen broadcast addresses, and assume the lower of the two is a
    network address. Combine this with some OS fingerprinting to reinforce those
    findings. I would also imagine that a system this old would most likely give
    a response to an ICMP 18 request. Hence, searching for broadcast addresses
    will still provide a reliable way to map subnetting as long as you keep the
    previous issue in mind.

    I would also like to point out to any beginners out there who might be afraid
    to ask, that network discovery (finding all of the devices connected to a
    network) is extremely unreliable and almost NEVER finds everything. This is
    especially true when you are attempting the discovery from a system that is
    not on the local network. Remember that there could be a number of devices
    that are in "stealth" mode, such as NIDS (although there have been some
    techniques developed to detect devices in promisc mode, with varying
    success). This doesn't count any devices operating at layer 2, such as
    bridges, hubs, switches, etc. A good pen-tester that is attempting to
    discover as many network devices as possible will not rely on network
    scanning alone, but will also use different channels, such as data-mining and
    social engineering.

    Regards,

    - --
    Miles Stevenson
    miles@mstevenson.org
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