Re: (How) Does AntiSniff do what is claimed?

From: Kenneth Albanowski (kjahdsat_private)
Date: Tue Jul 27 1999 - 18:03:56 PDT

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    On Sun, 25 Jul 1999, Nick Lamb wrote:
    
    > How does AntiSniff detect sniffing?
    > http://www.l0pht.com/antisniff/tech-paper.html
    [...]
    > For "behaviour associated with sniffing" read:
    >
    > 1. IP stacks which behave differently (broken) when doing Promisc.
    >  Your attacker could avoid (or Fix!) broken stacks
    >
    > 2. DNS lookups in response to an invalid packet with an invented IP addr
    >  Sniffers can be modified to do DNS off-line, or ignore bizarre packets
    
    Or use several easily imagined techniques to spoof DNS queries so that
    they can't be traced back to the sniffer. This would still provide
    evidence that _somebody_ is sniffing the net, although it wouldn't prove
    who. Of course, the sniffer could just as easily not do any active DNS
    queries, and still get loads of information by passively watching other
    DNS requests.
    
    > 3. Slowdown in echo replies of sniffing machine during invalid flood
    >  This sounds unreliable, but I'll wait to see it in action
    >
    > NB Some network hardware will go promisc. to handle Multicast. This sucks
    > but it happens, so AntiSniff users shouldn't be surprised if they see a
    > red-light for method (1) above on old machines doing Multicast.
    
    There may be a fairly new provoking factor: I exepect a number folks will
    be using VMWare's "bridged network" mode, which lets the VM appear to live
    on the host's ethernet segment. This seems to operate by throwing the
    host's network card into multicast mode so that it can watch for input on
    a second address. As Nick said, depending on the hardware and driver
    implementation, this may or may not be equivalent to turning promisc mode
    on.
    
    --
    Kenneth Albanowski (kjahdsat_private, CIS: 70705,126)
    



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