8.1. Servers, Ports, and Packets

Let's take a quick, non-technical look at some networking concepts, and how they can potentially impact our own security. We don't need to know much about networking, but a general idea of how things work is certainly going to help us with firewalls and other related issues.

As you may have noticed Linux is a very network oriented Operating System. Much is done by connecting to "servers" of one type or another -- X servers, font servers, print servers, etc.

Servers provide "services", which provide various capabilities, both to the local system and potentially other remote systems. The same server generally provides both functionalities. Some servers work quietly behind the scenes, and others are more interactive by nature. We may only be aware of a print server when we need to print something, but it is there running, listening, and waiting for connection requests whether we ever use it or not (assuming of course we have it enabled). A typical Linux installation will have many, many types of servers available to it. Default installations often will turn some of these "on".

And even if we are not connected to a real network all the time, we are still "networked" so to speak. Take our friendly local X server for instance. We may tend to think of this as just providing a GUI interface, which is only true to a point. It does this by "serving" to client applications, and thus is truly a server. But X Windows is also capable of serving remote clients over a network -- even large networks like the Internet. Though we probably don't really want to be doing this ;-)

And yes, if you are not running a firewall or have not taken other precautions, and are connected to the Internet, it is quite possible that someone -- anyone -- could connect to your X server. X11 "listens" on TCP "port" 6000 by default. This principle applies to most other servers as well -- they can be easily connected to, unless something is done to restrict or prevent connections.

In TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) networks like we are talking about with Linux and the Internet, every connected computer has a unique "IP Address". Think of this like a phone number. You have a phone number, and in order to call someone else, you have to know that phone number, and then dial it. The phone numbers have to be unique for the system to work. IP address are generally expressed as "dotted quad" notation, e.g. 152.19.254.81.

On this type of network, servers are said to "listen". This means that they have a "port" opened, and are awaiting incoming connections to that port. Connections may be local, as is typically the case with our X server, or remote -- meaning from another computer "somewhere". So servers "listen" on a specific "port" for incoming connections. Most servers have a default port, such as port 80 for web servers. Or 6000 for X11. See /etc/services for a list of common ports and their associated service.

The "port" is actually just an address in the kernel's networking stack, and is a method that TCP, and other protocols, use to organize connections and the exchange of data between computers. There are total of 65,536 TCP and UDP ports available, though usually only a relatively few of these are used at any one time. These are classified as "privileged", those ports below 1024, and "unprivileged", 1024 and above. Most servers use the privileged ports.

Only one server may listen on, or "bind" to, a port at a time. Though that server may well be able to open multiple connections via that one port. Computers talk to each other via these "port" connections. One computer will open a connection to a "port" on another computer, and thus be able to exchange data via the connection that has been established between their respective ports.

Getting back to the phone analogy, and stretching it a bit, think of calling a large organization with a complex phone system. The organization has many "departments": sales, shipping, billing, receiving, customer service, R&D, etc. Each department has it's own "extension" number. So the shipping department might be extension 21, the sales might be department 80 and so on. The main phone number is the IP Address, and the department's extension is the port in this analogy. The "department's" number is always the same when we call. And generally they can handle many simultaneous incoming calls.

The data itself is contained in "packets", which are small chunks of data, generally 1500 bytes or less each. Packets are used to control and organize the connection, as well as carry data. There are different types of packets. Some are specifically used for controlling the connection, and then some packets carry our data as their payload. If there is a lot of data, it will be broken up into multiple packets which is almost always how it works. The packets will be transmitted one at a time, and then "re-assembled" at the other end. One web page for instance, will take many packets to transmit -- maybe hundreds or even thousands. This all happens very quickly and transparently.

We can see a typical connection between two computers in this one line excerpt from netstat output:

 tcp    30    0 169.254.179.139:1359    18.29.1.67:21      CLOSE_WAIT

 

The interesting part is the IP addresses and ports in the fourth and fifth columns. The port is the number just to the right of the colon. The left side of the colon is the IP address of each computer. The fourth column is the local address, or our end of the connection. In the example, 169.254.179.139 is the IP address assigned by my ISP. It is connected to port 21 (FTP) on 18.29.1.67, which is rpmfind.net. This is just after an FTP download from rpmfind.net. Note that while I am connected to their FTP server on their port 21, the port on my end that is used by my FTP client is 1359. This is a randomly assigned "unprivileged" port, used for my end of the two-way "conversation". The data moves in both directions: me:port#1359 <-> them:port#21. The FTP protocol is actually a little more complicated than this, but we won't delve into the finer points here. The CLOSE_WAIT is the TCP state of the connection at this particular point in time. Eventually the connection will close completely on both ends, and netstat will not show anything for this.

The "unprivileged" port that is used for my end of the connection, is temporary and is not associated with a locally running server. It will be closed by the kernel when the connection is terminated. This is quite different than the ports that are kept open by "listening" servers, which are permanent and remain "open" even after a remote connection is terminated.

So to summarize using the above example, we have client (me) connecting to a server (rpmfind.net), and the connection is defined and controlled by the respective ports on either end. The data is transmitted and controlled by packets. The server is using a "privileged" port (i.e. a port below number 1024) which stays open listening for connections. The "unprivileged" port used on my end by my client application is temporary, is only opened for the duration of the connection, and only responds to the server's port at the other end of the connection. This type of port is not vulnerable to attacks or break-ins generally speaking. The server's port is vulnerable since it remains open. The administrator of the FTP server will need to take appropriate precautions that his server is secure. Other Internet connections, such as to web servers or mail servers, work similar to the above example, though the server ports are different. SMTP mail servers use port 25, and web servers typically use port 80. See the Ports section for other commonly used ports and services.

One more point on ports: ports are only accessible if there is something listening on that port. No one can force a port open if there is no service or daemon listening there, ready to handle incoming connection requests. A closed port is a totally safe port.

And a final point on the distinction between clients and servers. The example above did not have a telnet or ftp server in the LISTENER section in the netstat example above. In other words, no such servers were running locally. You do not need to run a telnet or ftp server daemon in order to connect to somebody else's telnet or ftp server. These are only for providing these services to others that would be making connections to you. Which you don't really want to be doing in most cases. This in no way effects the ability to use telnet and ftp client software.

8.2. Common Ports

A quick run down of some commonly seen and used ports, with the commonly associated service name, and risk factor. All have some risk. It is just that some have historically had more exploits than others. That is how they are evaluated below, and not necessarily to be interpreted as whether any given service is safe or not.

More services and corresponding port numbers can be found in /etc/services. Also, the "official" list is http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers.

A great analysis of what probes to these and other ports might mean from Robert Graham: http://www.linuxsecurity.com/resource_files/firewalls/firewall-seen.html. A very good reference.

Another point here, these are the standard port designations. There is no law that says any service has to run on a specific port. Usually they do, but certainly they don't always have to.

Just a reminder that when you see these types of ports in your firewall logs, it is not anything to go off the deep end about. Not if you have followed Steps 1-3 above, and verified your firewall works. You are fairly safe. Much of this traffic may be "stray bullets" too -- Internet background noise, misconfigured clients or routers, noisy Windows stuff, etc.

8.3. Netstat Tutorial

   
$ netstat -tua
Active Internet connections (servers and established)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address           Foreign Address         State
tcp        0      0 *:printer               *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 bigcat:8000             *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 *:time                  *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 *:x11                   *:*                     LISTEN
tcp        0      0 *:http                  *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 bigcat:domain           *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 bigcat:domain           *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 *:ssh                   *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 *:631                   *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 *:smtp                  *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp        0      1 dsl-78-199-139.s:1174   64.152.100.93:nntp      SYN_SENT   
tcp        0      1 dsl-78-199-139.s:1175   64.152.100.93:nntp      SYN_SENT   
tcp        0      1 dsl-78-199-139.s:1173   64.152.100.93:nntp      SYN_SENT   
tcp        0      0 dsl-78-199-139.s:1172   207.153.203.114:http    ESTABLISHED
tcp        1      0 dsl-78-199-139.s:1199   www.xodiax.com:http     CLOSE_WAIT 
tcp        0      0 dsl-78-199-139.sd:http  63.236.92.144:34197     TIME_WAIT
tcp      400      0 bigcat:1152             bigcat:8000             CLOSE_WAIT 
tcp     6648      0 bigcat:1162             bigcat:8000             CLOSE_WAIT 
tcp      553      0 bigcat:1164             bigcat:8000             CLOSE_WAIT 
udp        0      0 *:32768                 *:*                                
udp        0      0 bigcat:domain           *:*                                
udp        0      0 bigcat:domain           *:*                                
udp        0      0 *:631                   *:*                               

 

$ netstat -taun
Active Internet connections (servers and established)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address           Foreign Address      State
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:515             0.0.0.0:*            LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:8000          0.0.0.0:*            LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:37              0.0.0.0:*            LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:6000            0.0.0.0:*            LISTEN
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:80              0.0.0.0:*            LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 192.168.1.1:53          0.0.0.0:*            LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:53            0.0.0.0:*            LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:22              0.0.0.0:*            LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:631             0.0.0.0:*            LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:25              0.0.0.0:*            LISTEN     
tcp        0      1 169.254.179.139:1174    64.152.100.93:119    SYN_SENT   
tcp        0      1 169.254.179.139:1175    64.152.100.93:119    SYN_SENT   
tcp        0      1 169.254.179.139:1173    64.152.100.93:119    SYN_SENT   
tcp        0      0 169.254.179.139:1172    207.153.203.114:80   ESTABLISHED
tcp        1      0 169.254.179.139:1199    216.26.129.136:80    CLOSE_WAIT 
tcp        0      0 169.254.179.139:80      63.236.92.144:34197  TIME_WAIT 
tcp      400      0 127.0.0.1:1152          127.0.0.1:8000       CLOSE_WAIT 
tcp     6648      0 127.0.0.1:1162          127.0.0.1:8000       CLOSE_WAIT 
tcp      553      0 127.0.0.1:1164          127.0.0.1:8000       CLOSE_WAIT 
udp        0      0 0.0.0.0:32768           0.0.0.0:*                    
udp        0      0 192.168.1.1:53          0.0.0.0:*                      
udp        0      0 127.0.0.1:53            0.0.0.0:*                     
udp        0      0 0.0.0.0:631             0.0.0.0:*          
   
 

 tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:515            0.0.0.0:*          LISTEN     

 

 tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:8000         0.0.0.0:*          LISTEN     

 

 tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:37             0.0.0.0:*           LISTEN     
 tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:6000           0.0.0.0:*           LISTEN
 tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:80             0.0.0.0:*           LISTEN     

 

 tcp        0      0 192.168.1.1:53         0.0.0.0:*           LISTEN     
 tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:53           0.0.0.0:*           LISTEN     

 

 tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:22             0.0.0.0:*           LISTEN     
 tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:631            0.0.0.0:*           LISTEN     
 tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:25             0.0.0.0:*           LISTEN     

 

 tcp        0      1 169.254.179.139:1174    64.152.100.93:119    SYN_SENT   
 tcp        0      1 169.254.179.139:1175    64.152.100.93:119    SYN_SENT    
 tcp        0      1 169.254.179.139:1173    64.152.100.93:119    SYN_SENT   
 tcp        0      0 169.254.179.139:1172    207.153.203.114:80   ESTABLISHED
 tcp        1      0 169.254.179.139:1199    216.26.129.136:80    CLOSE_WAIT 
 tcp        0      0 169.254.179.139:80      63.236.92.144:34197  TIME_WAIT 
 tcp      400      0 127.0.0.1:1152          127.0.0.1:8000       CLOSE_WAIT 
 tcp     6648      0 127.0.0.1:1162          127.0.0.1:8000       CLOSE_WAIT 
 tcp      553      0 127.0.0.1:1164          127.0.0.1:8000       CLOSE_WAIT 

 

 udp        0      0 0.0.0.0:32768          0.0.0.0:*                    
 udp        0      0 192.168.1.1:53         0.0.0.0:*                      
 udp        0      0 127.0.0.1:53           0.0.0.0:*                     
 udp        0      0 0.0.0.0:631            0.0.0.0:*          

 

8.3.2. Port and Process Owners

We've learned a lot about what is going on with bigcat's networking from the above section. But suppose we see something we don't recognize and want to know what started that particular service? Or we want to stop a particular server and it is not obvious from the above output?

The -p option should give us the process's PID and the program name that started the process in the last column. Let's look at the TCP servers again (with first three columns cropped for spacing). We'll have to run this as root to get all the available information:

# netstat -tap Active Internet connections (servers and established) Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name *:printer *:* LISTEN 988/inetd bigcat:8000 *:* LISTEN 1064/junkbuster *:time *:* LISTEN 988/inetd *:x11 *:* LISTEN 1462/X *:http *:* LISTEN 1078/httpd bigcat:domain *:* LISTEN 956/named bigcat:domain *:* LISTEN 956/named *:ssh *:* LISTEN 972/sshd *:631 *:* LISTEN 1315/cupsd *:smtp *:* LISTEN 1051/master

Some of these we already know about. But we see now that the printer daemon on port 515 is being started via inetd with a PID of "988". inetd is a special situation. inetd is often called the "super server", since it's main role is to spawn sub-services. xinetd replaces inetd as of Red Hat 7.0. If we look at the first line, inetd is listening on port 515 for printer services. If a connection comes for this port, inetd intercepts it, and then will spawn the appropriate daemon, i.e. the print daemon in this case. The configuration of how inetd handles this is typically done in /etc/inetd.conf. This should tell us that if we want to stop an inetd controlled server on a permanent basis, then we will have to dig into the inetd (or perhaps xinetd) configuration. Also the time service above is started via inetd as well. This should also tell us that these two services can be further protected by tcpwrappers (discussed in Step 3 above). This is one benefit of using inetd to control certain system services.

We weren't sure about the service on port 631 above since it did not have a standard service name, which means it is something maybe unusual or off the beaten path. Now we see it is owned by cupsd (not included with Red Hat by the way), which is one of several print daemons available under Linux. This happens to be the web interface for controlling the printer service. Something cupsd does that is indeed a little different than other print servers.

The last entry above is the SMTP mail server on bigcat. Often, this is sendmail. But not in this case. The command is "master", which may not ring any bells. Armed with the program name we could go searching the filesystem with tools like the locate or find commands. After we found it, we could then probably discern what package it belonged to. But with the PID available now, we can look at ps output, and see if that helps us any:

$ /bin/ps ax |grep 1051 |grep -v grep 1051 ? S 0:24 /usr/libexec/postfix/master

We took a shortcut here by combining ps with grep. It looks like that this file belongs to postfix, which is indeed a mail server package comparable to sendmail ( and is included with Powertools, not the base distribution).

Running ps with the --forest flag (-f for short) can be helpful in determining what processes are parent or child process or another process. An edited example:

$ /bin/ps -axf 956 ? S 0:00 named -u named 957 ? S 0:00 \_ named -u named 958 ? S 0:46 \_ named -u named 959 ? S 0:47 \_ named -u named 960 ? S 0:00 \_ named -u named 961 ? S 0:11 \_ named -u named 1051 ? S 0:30 /usr/libexec/postfix/master 1703 ? S 0:00 \_ tlsmgr -l -t fifo -u -c 1704 ? S 0:00 \_ qmgr -l -t fifo -u -c 1955 ? S 0:00 \_ pickup -l -t fifo -c 1863 ? S 0:00 \_ trivial-rewrite -n rewrite -t unix -u -c 2043 ? S 0:00 \_ cleanup -t unix -u -c 2049 ? S 0:00 \_ local -t unix 2062 ? S 0:00 \_ smtpd -n smtp -t inet -u -c

A couple of things to note here. We have two by now familiar daemons here: named and postfix (smtpd). Both are spawning sub-processes. In the case of named, what we are seeing is threads, various sub-processes that it always spawns. Postfix is also spawning sub-processes, but not as "threads". Each sub-process has its own specific task. It is worth noting that child processes are dependent on the parent process. So killing the parent PID, will in turn kill all child processes.

If all this has not shed any light, we might also try locate:

$ locate /master /etc/postfix/master.cf /var/spool/postfix/pid/master.pid /usr/libexec/postfix/master /usr/share/vim/syntax/master.vim /usr/share/vim/vim60z/syntax/master.vim /usr/share/doc/postfix-20010202/html/master.8.html /usr/share/doc/postfix-20010202/master.cf /usr/share/man/man8/master.8.gz

find is perhaps the most flexible file finding utility, but doesn't use a database the way locate does, so is much slower:

$ find / -name master /usr/libexec/postfix/master

If lsof is installed, it is another command that is useful for finding who owns processes or ports:

# lsof -i :631 COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME cupsd 1315 root 0u IPv4 3734 TCP *:631 (LISTEN)

This is again telling us that the cupsd print daemon is the owner of port 631. Just a different way of getting at it. Yet one more way to get at this is with fuser, which should be installed:

# fuser -v -n tcp 631 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND 631/tcp root 1315 f.... cupsd

See the man pages for fuser and lsof command syntax.

Another place to look for where a service is started, is in the init.d directory, where the actual init scripts live. Something like ls -l /etc/rc.d/init.d/, should give us a list of these. Often the script name itself gives a hint as to which service(s) it starts, though it may not necessarily exactly match the "Program Name" as provided by netstat. Or we can use grep to search inside files and match a search pattern. Need to find where rpc.statd is being started, and we don't see a script by this name?

# grep rpc.statd /etc/init.d/* /etc/init.d/nfslock: [ -x /sbin/rpc.statd ] || exit 0 /etc/init.d/nfslock: daemon rpc.statd /etc/init.d/nfslock: killproc rpc.statd /etc/init.d/nfslock: status rpc.statd /etc/init.d/nfslock: /sbin/pidof rpc.statd >/dev/null 2>&1; STATD="$?"

We didn't really need all that information, but at least we see now exactly which script is starting it. Remember too that not all services are started this way. Some may be started via inetd, or xinetd.

The /proc filesystem also keeps everything we want to know about processes that are running. We can query this to find out more information about each process. Do you need to know the full path of the command that started a process?

# ls -l /proc/1315/exe lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 July 4 19:41 /proc/1315/exe -> /usr/sbin/cupsd

Finally, we had a loose end or two in the UDP listening services. Remember we had a strange looking port number 32768, that also had no service name associated with it:

# netstat -aup Active Internet connections (servers and established) Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name *:32768 *:* 956/named bigcat:domain *:* 956/named bigcat:domain *:* 956/named *:631 *:* 1315/cupsd

Now by including the "PID/Program name" option with the -p flag, we see this also belongs to named, the nameserver daemon. Recent versions of BIND use an unprivileged port for some types of traffic. In this case, this is BIND 9.x. So no real alarms here either. The unprivileged port here is the one named uses to to talk to other nameservers for name and address lookups, and should not be firewalled.

So we found no big surprises in this hypothetical situation.

If all else fails, and you can't find a process owner for an open port, suspect that it may be an RPC (Remote Procedure Call) service of some kind. These use randomly assigned ports without any seeming logic or consistency, and are typically controlled by the portmap daemon. In some cases, these may not reveal the process owner to netstat or lsof. Try stopping portmap, and then see if the mystery service goes away. Or you can use rpcinfo -p localhost to see what RPC services may be running (portmap must be running for this to work).

If you suspect you have been broken into, do not trust netstat or ps output. There is a good chance that they, and other system components, has been tampered with in such a way that the output is not reliable.

8.4. Attacks and Threats

In this section, we will take a quick look at some of the common threats and techniques that are out there, and attempt to put them into some perspective.

The corporate world, government agencies and high profile Internet sites have to be concerned with a much more diverse and challenging set of threats than the typical home desktop user. There are many reasons someone may want to break in to someone else's computer. It may be just for kicks, or any number of malicious reasons. They may just want a base from which to attack someone else. This is a very common motivation.

The most common "attack" for most of us is from already compromised systems. The Internet is littered with computers that have been broken into, and are now doing their master's bidding blindly, in zombie-like fashion. They are programmed to scan massively large address ranges, probing each individual IP address as they go. Looking for one or more open ports, and then probing for known weaknesses if they get the chance. Very impersonal. Very methodical. And very effective. We are all in the path of such robotic scans. All because those responsible for these systems fail to do what you are doing now - taking steps to protect their system(s), and avoid being r00ted.

These scans do not look at login banners that may be presented on connection. It will do little good to change your /etc/issue.net to pretend that you are running some obscure operating system. If they find something listening, they will try all of the exploits appropriate to that port, without regard to any indications your system may give. If it works, they are in -- if not, they will move on.

8.5. Links

Some references for further reading are listed below. Not listed is your distribution's site, security page or ftp download site. You will have to find these on your own. Then you should bookmark them!

• Redhat sites of interest:

  The Redhat watch/security mailing list: https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-watch-list

  Red Hat errata and security notices: http://redhat.com/errata/

  The Red Hat update FTP site: ftp://updates.redhat.com/

• Other relevant documents available from the Linux Documentation Project:

  Security HOWTO: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Security-HOWTO.html

  Firewall HOWTO: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Firewall-HOWTO.html

  Ipchains HOWTO: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/IPCHAINS-HOWTO.html

  User Authentication: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/User-Authentication-HOWTO/index.html, includes a nice discussion on PAM.

  VPN (Virtual Private Network): http://tldp.org/HOWTO/VPN-HOWTO.html and http://tldp.org/HOWTO/VPN-Masquerade-HOWTO.html

  The Remote X Apps Mini HOWTO, http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Remote-X-Apps.html, includes excellent discussions on the security implications of running X Windows.

  The Linux Network Administrators Guide: http://tldp.org/LDP/nag2/index.html, includes a good overview of networking and TCP/IP, and firewalling.

  The Linux Administrator's Security Guide: http://www.seifried.org/lasg/, includes many obvious topics of interest, including firewalling, passwords and authentication, PAM, and more.

  Securing Red Hat: http://tldp.org/LDP/solrhe/Securing-Optimizing-Linux-RH-Edition-v1.3/index.html

• Tools for creating custom ipchains and iptables firewall scripts:

  Firestarter: http://firestarter.sourceforge.net

  Two related projects: http://seawall.sourceforge.net/ for ipchains, and http://shorewall.sourceforge.net/ for iptables.

• Netfilter and iptables documentation from the netfilter developers (available in many other languages as well):

  FAQ: http://netfilter.samba.org/documentation/FAQ/netfilter-faq.html

  Packet filtering: http://netfilter.samba.org/documentation/HOWTO/packet-filtering-HOWTO.html

  Networking: http://netfilter.samba.org/documentation/HOWTO/networking-concepts-HOWTO.html

  NAT/masquerading: http://netfilter.samba.org/documentation/HOWTO/NAT-HOWTO.html

• Port number assignments, and what that scanner may be scanning for:

  http://www.linuxsecurity.com/resource_files/firewalls/firewall-seen.html

  http://www.sans.org/newlook/resources/IDFAQ/oddports.htm

  http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers, the official assignments.

• General security sites. These all have areas on documentation, alerts, newsletters, mailing lists, and other resources.

  Linux Security.com: http://www.linuxsecurity.com, loaded with good info, and Linux specific. Lots of good docs: http://www.linuxsecurity.com/docs/

  CERT, http://www.cert.org

  The SANS Institute: http://www.sans.org/

  The Coroner's Toolkit (TCT): http://www.fish.com/security/, discussions and tools for dealing with post break-in issues (and preventing them in the first place).

• Privacy:

  Junkbuster: http://www.junkbuster.com, a web proxy and cookie manager.

  PGP: http://www.gnupg.org/

• Other documentation and reference sites:

  Linux Security.com: http://www.linuxsecurity.com/docs/

  Linux Newbie: http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/security/index.html

  The comp.os.linux.security FAQ: http://www.linuxsecurity.com/docs/colsfaq.html

  The Internet Firewall FAQ: http://www.interhack.net/pubs/fwfaq/

  The Site Security Handbook RFC: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2196.txt

• Miscellaneous sites of interest:

  http://www.bastille-linux.org, for Mandrake and Red Hat only.

  SAINT: http://www.wwdsi.com/saint/, system security analysis.

  SSL: http://www.openssl.org/

  SSH: http://www.openssh.org/

  Scan yourself: http://www.hackerwhacker.com

  PAM: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/pam/index.html

  Detecting Trojaned Linux Kernel Modules: http://members.prestige.net/tmiller12/papers/lkm.htm

  Rootkit checker: http://www.chkrootkit.org

  Port scanning tool nmap's home page: http://www.insecure.org

  Nessus, more than just a port scanner: http://www.nessus.org

  Tripwire, intrusion detection: http://www.tripwire.org

  Snort, sniffer and more: http://www.snort.org

  http://www.mynetwatchman.com and http://dshield.org are "Distributed Intrusion Detection Systems". They collect log data from subscribing "agents", and collate the data to find and report malicious activity. If you want to fight back, check these out.

8.6. Editing Text Files

By Bill Staehle

All the world is a file.

There are a great many types of files, but I'm going to stretch it here, and class them into two really broad families:

 Text files are just that.
 Binary files are not.

    

Binary files are meant to be read by machines, text files can be easily edited, and are generally read by people. But text files can be (and frequently are) read by machines. Examples of this would be configuration files, and scripts.

There are a number of different text editors available in *nix. A few are found on every system. That would be '/bin/ed' and '/bin/vi'. 'vi' is almost always a clone such as 'vim' due to license problems. The problem with 'vi' and 'ed' is that they are terribly user unfriendly. Another common editor that is not always installed by default is 'emacs'. It has a lot more features and capability, and is not easy to learn either.

As to 'user friendly' editors, 'mcedit' and 'pico' are good choices to start with. These are often much easier for those new to *nix.

The first things to learn are how to exit an editing session, how to save changes to the file, and then how to avoid breaking long lines that should not be broken (wrapped).

The 'vi' editor

'vi' is one of the most common text editors in the Unix world, and it's nearly always found on any *nix system. Actually, due to license problems, the '/bin/vi' on a Linux system is always a 'clone', such as 'elvis', 'nvi', or 'vim' (there are others). These clones can act exactly like the original 'vi', but usually have additional features that make it slightly less impossible to use.

So, if it's so terrible, why learn about it? Two reasons. First, as noted, it's almost guaranteed to be installed, and other (more user friendly) editors may not be installed by default. Second, many of the 'commands' work in other applications (such as the pager 'less' which is also used to view man pages). In 'less', accidentally pressing the 'v' key starts 'vi' in most installations.

'vi' has two modes. The first is 'command mode', and keystrokes are interpreted as commands. The other mode is 'insert' mode, where nearly all keystrokes are interpreted as text to be inserted.

==> Emergency exit from 'vi' 1. press the <esc> key up to three times, until the computer beeps, or the screen flashes. 2. press the keys :q! <Enter>

That is: colon, the letter Q, and then the exclamation point, followed by the Enter key.

'vi' commands are as follows. All of these are in 'command' mode:

a    Enter insertion mode after the cursor.
A    Enter insertion mode at the end of the current line.
i    Enter insertion mode before the cursor.
o    Enter insertion mode opening a new line BELOW current line.
O    Enter insertion mode opening a new line ABOVE current line.
h    move cursor left one character.
l    move cursor right one character.
j    move cursor down one line.
k    move cursor up one line.
/mumble  move cursor forward to next occurrence of 'mumble' in 
         the text
?mumble  move cursor backward to next occurrence of 'mumble' 
         in the text
n    repeat last search (? or / without 'mumble' to search for 
     will do the same thing)
u    undo last change made

^B   Scroll back one window.
^F   Scroll forward one window.
^U   Scroll up one half window.
^D   Scroll down one half window.

:w   Write to file.
:wq  Write to file, and quit.
:q   quit.
:q!  Quit without saving.

<esc>   Leave insertion mode.
  
    

NOTE: The four 'arrow' keys almost always work in 'command' or 'insert' mode.

The 'ed' editor.

The 'ed' editor is a line editor. Other than the fact that it is virtually guaranteed to be on any *nix computer, it has no socially redeeming features, although some applications may need it. A _lot_ of things have been offered to replace this 'thing' from 1975.

==> Emergency exit from 'ed'

1. type a period on a line by itself, and press <Enter> This gets you to the command mode or prints a line of text if you were in command mode. 2. type q and press <Enter>. If there were no changes to the file, this action quits ed. If you then see a '?' this means that the file had changed, and 'ed' is asking if you want to save the changes. Press q and <Enter> a second time to confirm that you want out.

The 'pico' editor.

'pico' is a part of the Pine mail/news package from the University of Washington (state, USA). It is a very friendly editor, with one minor failing. It silently inserts a line feed character and wraps the line when it exceeds (generally) 74 characters. While this is fine while creating mail, news articles, and text notes, it is often fatal when editing system files. The solution to this problem is simple. Call the program with the -w option, like this:

pico -w file_2_edit

Pico is so user friendly, no further instructions are needed. It _should_ be obvious (look at the bottom of the screen for commands). There is an extensive help function. Pico is available with nearly all distributions, although it _may_ not be installed by default.

==> Emergency exit from 'pico'

Press and hold the <Ctrl> key, and press the letter x. If no changes had been made to the file, this will quit pico. If changes had been made, it will ask if you want to save the changes. Pressing n will then exit.

The 'mcedit' editor.

'mcedit' is part of the Midnight Commander shell program, a full featured visual shell for Unix-like systems. It can be accessed directly from the command line ( mcedit file_2_edit ) or as part of 'mc' (use the arrow keys to highlight the file to be edited, then press the F4 key).

mcedit is probably the most intuitive editor available, and comes with extensive help. "commands" are accessed through the F* keys. Midnight Commander is available with nearly all distributions, although it _may_ not be installed by default.

==> Emergency exit from 'mcedit'

Press the F10 key. If no changes have been made to the file, this will quit mcedit. If changes had been made, it will ask if you want to Cancel this action. Pressing n will then exit.

8.7. nmap

Let's look at a few quick examples of what nmap scans look like. The intent here is to show how to use nmap to verify our firewalling, and system integrity. nmap has other uses that we don't need to get into. Do NOT use nmap on systems other than your own, unless you have permission from the owner, and you know it is not a violation of anyone's Terms of Service. This kind of thing will be taken as hostile by most people.

As mentioned previously, nmap is a sophisticated port scanning tool. It tries to see if a host is "there", and what ports might be open. Barring that, what states those ports might be in. nmap has a complex command line and can do many types of "scans". See the man page for all the nitty gritty.

A couple of words of warning first. If using portsentry, turn it off. It will drop the route to wherever the scan is coming from. You might want to turn off any logging also, or at least be aware that you might get copious logs if doing multiple scans.

A simple, default scan of "localhost":

 # nmap localhost

 Starting nmap V. 2.53 by fyodor@insecure.org ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ )
 Interesting ports on bigcat (127.0.0.1):
 (The 1507 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)

 Port       State       Service
 22/tcp     open        ssh                     
 25/tcp     open        smtp                    
 37/tcp     open        time                    
 53/tcp     open        domain                  
 80/tcp     open        http                    
 3000/tcp   open        ppp                     

 Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 2 seconds

 

If you've read most of this document, you should be familiar with these services by now. These are some of the same ports we've seen in other examples. Some things to note on this scan: it only did 1500+ "interesting" ports -- not all ports. This can be configured differently if more is desirable (see man page). It only did TCP ports too. Again, configurable. It only picks up "listening" services, unlike netstat that shows all open ports -- listening or otherwise. Note the last "open" port here is 3000 is identified as "PPP". Wrong! That is just an educated guess by nmap based on what is contained in /etc/services for this port number. Actually in this case it is ntop (a network traffic monitor). Take the service names with a grain of salt. There is no way for nmap to really know what is on that port. Matching port numbers with service names can at times be risky. Many do have standard ports, but there is nothing to say they have to use the commonly associated port numbers.

Notice that in all our netstat examples, we had two classes of open ports: listening servers, and then established connections that we initiated to other remote hosts (e.g. a web server somewhere). nmap only sees the first group -- the listening servers! The other ports connecting us to remote servers are not visible, and thus not vulnerable. These ports are "private" to that single connection, and will be closed when the connection is terminated.

So we have open and closed ports here. Simple enough, and gives a pretty good idea what is running on bigcat -- but not necessarily what we look like to the outside world since this was done from localhost, and wouldn't reflect any firewalling or other access control mechanisms.

Let's do a little more intensive scan. Let's check all ports -- TCP and UDP.

 # nmap -sT -sU -p 1-65535 localhost

 Starting nmap V. 2.53 by fyodor@insecure.org ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ )
 Interesting ports on bigcat (127.0.0.1):
 (The 131050 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)

 Port       State       Service
 22/tcp     open        ssh                     
 25/tcp     open        smtp                    
 37/tcp     open        time                    
 53/tcp     open        domain                  
 53/udp     open        domain                  
 80/tcp     open        http                    
 3000/tcp   open        ppp                     
 8000/tcp   open        unknown                 
 32768/udp  open        unknown                 

 Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 385 seconds

 

This is more than just "interesting" ports -- it is everything. We picked up a couple of new ones in the process too. We've seen these before with netstat, so we know what they are. That is the Junkbuster web proxy on port 8000/tcp and named on 32768/udp. This scan takes much,