RE: Strange open ports on windows machines

From: Russ (Russ.Cooperat_private)
Date: Sun Oct 24 1999 - 19:09:51 PDT

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    Setting aside Michael's rather exuberant comments (both those about
    RPC, and the BO stuff);
    
    1027 and 1030 in the poster's system are, 99.9% assured, something
    like IIS Manager, Exchange Administrator, DNS Manager, etc... NT
    applications which also act like servers, running via RPC, thereby
    opening high ports (above 1024). If they're started up dynamically
    from the GUI, they're port numbers will change depending on the order
    they're started. If they're fired up from the Startup Group, or via
    the registry, then they're port numbers may be the same after each
    boot.
    
    Running Netstat -an 1 and starting and stopping the various GUIs an NT
    machine offers will allow you to see the ports opened and closed.
    
    There's a utility which Microsoft put together (its pretty crude) that
    will query the RPC end point mapper (TCP135) and return a list of
    available services. This does nothing to tell you what is listening to
    what port, simply what RPC services may be available from a given box.
    Email me if you want a copy of it (although you can get the same thing
    by simply learning to understand the registry).
    
    Most NT applications which use RPC rely on NT authentication in order
    to work, meaning they're not typically simply listening for any old
    connection. This typically means a connection via TCP139 to Net Logon
    is required prior to being able to use them (IPC$). The means that
    blocking access to that port may prevent some brute force attempts.
    Some services, however, like Exchange Server Information Store and
    Directory Store services (required to use Outlook in RPC mode) are
    RPC-based (begin connection via TCP135), but are able to perform
    authentication directly via they're dynamically (or statically)
    assigned ports (returned by the connection to TCP135).
    
    The bare minimum for any exposed NT box is to have router ACLs
    preventing access to T/U 135 and 137-139. This, of course, after
    applying the latest TCPIP.sys which not only improves ISNs (to reduce
    the risk of spoofing), but should also permit the use of the registry
    entry referred to in;
    
    http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q217/3/36.ASP
    
    which allows you to disable source routing. This fix was included in
    SP5, but since its a TCPIP registry parameter, and since the latest
    HotFix to TCPIP should be applicable to any system running SP4 or
    higher. See;
    
    http://www.microsoft.com/security/bulletins/MS99-046.asp
    
    for more details on the HotFix.
    
    Now after all of this is said and done, I have to comment on
    Christoph's message. Are things in Switzerland so bad these days?? Do
    all of your customers have BO and NetBus running on them? Do all
    security consultants that you know have defective versions of Norman
    Data Defense and Norton AntiVirus?
    
    There is only one solution to the problems presented by the scan
    results you saw on the machine in question.
    
    DESTROY THE HARD DRIVE, REPLACE IT WITH ANOTHER, KEEP THE MACHINE
    TURNED OFF UNTIL YOU;
    
    1. Define a Security Policy, within which, detection of BO or NetBus
    is considered a total compromise.
    2. Implement Router ACLs on the net connection (at a minimum).
    3. Do your customer a favor and suggest they find some competent
    consulting advice.
    
    This isn't a flame because your message states clearly you don't know
    what you're doing.
    
    Cheers,
    Russ - NTBugtraq Editor
    Search the NTBugtraq Archives - http://ntbugtraq.ntadvice.com/archives
    
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