Re: Is there user Anna at your host ?

From: Josha Bronson (dmuzat_private)
Date: Wed Sep 12 2001 - 10:12:56 PDT

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    On Wed, Sep 12, 2001 at 06:17:41PM +0400, Alexander A. Kelner said:
    > So, he can easy discover if user "anna" exists at your UNIX,
    > and try to play with her password, or send her spam etc.
    
    First off it looks like this was mentioned here:
    http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/vuln-dev/2000-q3/0094.html
    
    > This approach allows him get nesessary info instead of disabled
    > VRFY feature in your Sendmail !
    > 
    > Apache works quickly and IMHO doesnt provide any responce delays
    > for any kind of result code. So bad boy can check 1000 different
    > names for very short time !
    
    This will indeed allow you to enumerate usernames on systems that have
    this feature enabled. The obvious solution is to disable this feature by
    changing "UserDir public_html" (or whatever) to "UserDir disabled".
    However that might not be an option in many cases.
    
    > Sorry if I'm wrong, or this is something trivial.
    
    Wrong? No. Trivial? Up in the air. Enumeration of user names is
    definitely an important step in attacking a system, but just a username
    is not going to get you very much. Also, there are a number of other
    methods that could be used, like searching for '@domain.tld', VRFY in
    sendmail (as you mentioned) or good old fashion finger (yes a lot of
    people still run fingerd).
    
    If you are paranoid like me, then disable it. Or just run OpenBSD, which
    disables it by default.
    
    -- 
    josha.bronson(aka->dmuz) >> dmuzat_private
    networks/systems/security && CCNA, RHCE 
    josha.net || dmuz.angrypacket.com
    



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