Re: HTTP attack looking for /sumthin ?

From: Johnny Calhoun (jcalhounat_private)
Date: Thu Oct 17 2002 - 16:37:29 PDT

  • Next message: Scott C. Kennedy: "Re: HTTP attack looking for /sumthin ?"

    This looks to be a banner grabbing attempt on your webservers.  Alot of 
    scanners/worms will do this in an attempt to find out what type of web server 
    you are running and compare it against a list of vulnerable servers for some 
    particular exploit.  The `"/sumthin" is placed within the GET command to 
    trigger a 404 error, which in turn reveals valuable information about your 
    server back the requestor.  If the information returned by your server is 
    useful to the scanner/worm you may see other exploits in the near future 
    targeted towards your box.  For a more practical example, consider the 
    sadmind worm which issues the following request for this purpose:
    "GET x HTTP/1.0."  If you want to see what is returned by your box, simply 
    telnet to your server on port 80 and issue the same request and hit ENTER 
    twice.  You should see something similar to:
    
    [root@calsys root]# telnet 127.0.0.1 80
    Trying 127.0.0.1...
    Connected to 127.0.0.1.
    Escape character is '^]'.
    GET /sumthin HTTP/1.0
    
    HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
    Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 11:21:35 GMT
    Server: Apache/2.0.40 (Unix)
    Content-Length: 286
    Connection: close
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
    
    . . .  and probably some 404 HTML error code too
    
    Notice how it revealed the Web Server type, Version and OS it runs on.
    
    I would consider this type of activity as an information gathering attempt, 
    because it isn't an attack or exploit.
    
    Hope this helps, 
    
    -- 
    Johnny Calhoun
    Information Security Analyst
    LURHQ Corporation
    
    
    
    On Thursday 17 October 2002 01:56 pm, cory wrote:
    > I have seen this on our servers, starting Oct 12 with 213.165.144.xxx
    > (only one ip) and then again on the 15th from 194.236.60.xxx (also one
    > ip) .
    >
    > Each time they hit they sent 5 to 6 attempts within one second, all
    > looking in the same place.
    >
    > 213.165.144.xxx - - [12/Oct/2002:05:40:01 -0500] "GET /sumthin HTTP/1.0"
    > 404 1086 "-" "-"
    > 213.165.144.xxx - - [12/Oct/2002:05:40:01 -0500] "GET /sumthin HTTP/1.0"
    > 404 1086 "-" "-"
    > 213.165.144.xxx - - [12/Oct/2002:05:40:01 -0500] "GET /sumthin HTTP/1.0"
    > 404 1086 "-" "-"
    > 213.165.144.xxx - - [12/Oct/2002:05:40:01 -0500] "GET /sumthin HTTP/1.0"
    > 404 1086 "-" "-"
    > 213.165.144.xxx - - [12/Oct/2002:05:40:01 -0500] "GET /sumthin HTTP/1.0"
    > 404 1086 "-" "-"
    > (6 times in all.)
    >
    > All logs look identical to your post.
    > What do we have here ?
    >
    > cheers,
    > cory
    >
    > jmaywood1975at_private wrote:
    > >Does anyone have any ideas what attack this might be?
    > >
    > >Below shows 4 seperate potential attacks by 3 different hosts, this is all
    > > the activity in my logs for those three hosts, nothing more anywhere
    > > related to those three ip address.
    > >
    > >It starts with a request for the directory /sumthin
    > >maybe tries a header exploit by sending a VERSION method?
    > >and connects ssl.
    >
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