Re: 192.168.x.x oddities

From: steve (securityfocus_at_delahunty.com)
Date: 06/22/04

  • Next message: Corne Van Dyk: "RE: Personal firewall for lambda users"
    To: <hedgie@hedgie.com>, <security-basics@securityfocus.com>
    Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 08:03:24 -0400
    
    

    Also related, if you are port scanning computers on your ISP's network you
    may be violating your acceptable use agreement with them. But of course it
    helps with your research.

    Answer to below is YES. You obviously need to reach the ISP's gateway and
    so forth, to access the Internet yes?
    (1) Is there any legitimate reason why I ought to be able to reach out to
    RFC 1918 IP addresses from my network? Someone mentioned TFTP for cable
    modem updates, but I don't see why that can't be done with public IP
    addresses. I also seriously doubt these machines fall in that category.

    Answer to the below is NO. You could change your internal network to
    10.x.x.x instead of 192.x.x.x if that makes you feel more secure. If your
    ISP could ping your internal computers, then you might worry (unless you are
    running a webserver and have not prohibited ICMP ping to that server).
    (2) Are there real security concerns with this configuration?
    Intuitively it sounds "wrong," and a few people echoed that. But I don't
    know of any explicit reason for it to be so, other than the fact that
    future sysadmins may "assume" that those computers are on a private
    network when in fact all customers have access to them.

    Answer to the below is YES. Not all ISPs provide public IPs to their
    clients. They likely have a private and public IP bound to your cable
    modem.
    (3) Is this a "normal" configuration? I got two responses referring to
    ISPs that assign customers private IP addresses, but that isn't the case
    here. Additionally, a traceroute from my computer goes out to public IP
    addresses and then *back* into the private IP ranges.

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "Jimmy Brokaw" <hedgie@hedgie.com>
    To: <security-basics@securityfocus.com>
    Sent: Tuesday, June 15, 2004 9:31 PM
    Subject: RE: 192.168.x.x oddities

    I got a lot of helpful replies, both on and off list, which prompted me to
    do a little deeper digging. I'll try to answer everyone's questions
    collectively, rather than answering twenty seperate e-mails.

    Excluding my computers, broadcast addresses, and network addresses, the
    "rouge" addresses left were:

    192.168.18.254
    192.168.19.1
    192.168.19.254
    192.168.100.1

    After doing traceroutes, I got the following:

    192.168.18.254 - packet reaches gateway, then an unidentified computer
    registered to my ISP, then is blocked thereafter. All hops are public
    IPs.
    192.168.19.1 - packet reaches gateway, then the same unid'd computer as
    before, then 172.18.240.1 -- another RFC 1918 address, then reaches
    192.168.19.1.
    192.168.19.254 - Same as .1, except it stops at 172.18.240.1 (Does this
    mean both addresses are the same machine?)
    192.168.100.1 - Goes through my router and stops. I quickly deduced this
    was my cable modem, and a quick port scan confirmed this.

    So, my list of "rouge" addresses is down to three:
    192.168.18.254
    192.168.19.1
    192.168.19.254

    192.168.18.254 has no open ports to help identify it. Most ports are
    closed, some (netbios, subseven, and a few others) are filtered. No idea
    what this machine is.

    192.168.19.1 has a lot of open ports, including ftp, telnet, smtp, time,
    sunrpc, X11 (6000), and quite a few more. NMap failed to id the OS,
    although the open ports gives a little clue. I'm sure I could find more
    out with banner grabs, but I'm not positive how the ISP would look at
    that.

    192.168.19.254 has telnet, 2001, and 6001 open. Again, no OS fingerprint.

    To answer the question of several people, no, these are not computers
    connected via wifi. If my security, authentication, and logging weren't
    enough to demonstrate it, the traceroutes should. And besides, they stay
    if I disable the wifi. :) And yes, the cable company issues me a public
    IP address

    Right now my NetGear router is using 192.168.0.* as the private address
    range, with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. Again, I'm not an expert by
    any means. I'm assuming that if I change that mask to 255.255.0.0, I'll
    lose the ability to see these machines - is this correct?

    I was also thinking of leaving the common 192.168.*.* range for other RFC
    1918 address blocks, but the 172.18.240.1 address that appeared in my
    previous traceroute makes me think that there are other RFC 1918 addresses
    out there.

    I understand my router *ought* to not route RFC 1918 traffic out to the
    Net, but there doesn't appear to be any options to restrict it (unless I
    program static routes for them all). It also seems the ISP *ought* to
    filter that traffic originating from cable modems.

    At this point I'm very close to calling the ISP and telling them about the
    problem. Getting ahold of an intelligent person might prove difficult,
    but I'm guessing that calling or e-mailing the TechName from the WHOIS
    database might prove the best starting point (as opposed to Tech Support,
    irk). What I'd really like to grasp before doing that is:

    (1) Is there any legitimate reason why I ought to be able to reach out to
    RFC 1918 IP addresses from my network? Someone mentioned TFTP for cable
    modem updates, but I don't see why that can't be done with public IP
    addresses. I also seriously doubt these machines fall in that category.
    (2) Are there real security concerns with this configuration?
    Intuitively it sounds "wrong," and a few people echoed that. But I don't
    know of any explicit reason for it to be so, other than the fact that
    future sysadmins may "assume" that those computers are on a private
    network when in fact all customers have access to them.
    (3) Is this a "normal" configuration? I got two responses referring to
    ISPs that assign customers private IP addresses, but that isn't the case
    here. Additionally, a traceroute from my computer goes out to public IP
    addresses and then *back* into the private IP ranges.

    -- 
       \\\\\                       hedgie@hedgie.com
      \\\\\\\__o   Bringing hedgehogs to the common folk since 1994.
    __\\\\\\\'/________________________________________________________
    Visit http://www.hedgie.com for information on my latest book,
    "Waiting for War," published by Aventine Press!
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  • Next message: Corne Van Dyk: "RE: Personal firewall for lambda users"

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