RE: Out of my league.....

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To: "'Jeff Johnson'" <jjohnson@redoakgroup.com>, <security-basics@securityfocus.com>
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 10:05:49 -0800

  Ports 139 (NetBIOS session) and 445 (CIFS) are the ports used
by Windows File/Printer sharing. In all but a few strange cases,
they should be blocked at your gateway, which it sound like they
are.

  But the real question is: Why would some of your internal
machines be trying to use these ports to connect to outside
hosts???
  There are four basic answers:

1. You're allowing inbound traffic on port 137 (and maybe 138?)
which is adding external machines to your Network Neighborhood.
(These ports -- UDP as well as TCP -- should also be blocked.)

2. You've got users actually trying to mount shared drives from
remote hosts, perhaps by IP address.

3. You've got malware trying to download additional components
from some previously-infested locations, or upload results such
as keylogger data.

4. You've got something else -- perhaps peer-to-peer music
sharing? -- trying to pretend to be normal Windows sharing
(although the PIC you report makes this one unlikely).

  Since the firewall is blocking it, it's probably not a top
priority, but I think the corrective actions for each of these
are pretty obvious.

David Gillett

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeff Johnson [mailto:jjohnson@redoakgroup.com]
> Sent: January 7, 2004 13:16
> To: security-basics@securityfocus.com
> Subject: Out of my league.....
>
>
> Hello. My ignorance will be vivid here....
>
> I'm currently doing marketing at a small office, but, as I'm
> technically
> inclined enough to be dangerous, in my spare time do the IS
> support as well.
> They had an outside consultant set up the system, and he had
> done other
> setups/management when needed, but, is no longer available.
> He'd set up the
> network with a Symantec VPN/Firewall appliance as the
> external gateway, but
> had opened up ports to a server inside the network which is currently
> hosting the email server (Xmail), DNS, as well as a simple
> web app to do
> web-mail checking for employees from the outside. Also
> opened ports for
> ssl, termserver, ftp, smtp, and pop3, and another port for
> remote admin.
>
> Looked a bit insecure for me when I noticed it, so, I
> installed ZoneAlarm on
> this server inside the network, which is currently working.
> Plans are to
> move the web serving onto another server which will be put
> into a DMZ. After
> noticing these open ports, I also decided to pay more attention to the
> firewall logs, and noticed not just the normal external port
> scan attack
> blocks, but also that a couple of computers, including the
> company server,
> are attempting to access outside IPs using closed port calls
> (therefore, the
> firewall catches and logs them). These blocks come with the
> message Block
> host "" internet access, and are typically using ports 139 &
> 445. Looked
> suspicious, so, I ran an fport scan on the server, and it did
> show ports 139
> & 445 open, but, shows that the Pid is 8 (the
> system).....Also did some
> ethereal scan of the network, and it does show that the
> server is trying to
> access this specific external ip address.
>
> My question is (kudos if you've patiently read everything so
> far), how do I
> find out what this process is that is trying to do these
> accesses, or am I
> being overly paranoid. As you can most likely tell from
> this, I'm not the
> most technically adept IT support person, so, I'd also appreciate
> references/suggestions on materials to help me out here.
>
> Thanks in advance to all.
>
> Jeff
>
>
>
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ethical Hacking at InfoSec Institute. Mention this ad and get $720 off any
course! All of our class sizes are guaranteed to be 10 students or less.
We provide Ethical Hacking, Advanced Ethical Hacking, Intrusion Prevention,
and many other technical hands on courses.
Visit us at http://www.infosecinstitute.com/securityfocus to get $720 off
any course!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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