RE: Web server crashed, now is trying to contact an IP by port 80 every morning.

From: Levinson, Karl (LevinsonK@STARS-SMI.com)
Date: Tue Feb 25 2003 - 05:21:25 PST

  • Next message: Dan Hanson: "Incident Focus Area Article Announcement"

    Someone else here might have more knowledge on what that IP address is
    and why Windows might be contacting it.  All I can tell from
    www.network-tools.com and http://visualroute.visualware.com is that it
    appears to be from xo.com and may be located in or near Chicago IL, USA.
    It seems to have no DNS host name.  You've probably already checked the
    firewall logs to look for other traffic to or from that address or
    subnet.  
    
    This might not always be safe advice, but sometimes running nmap -O from
    www.insecure.org and/or a port scanner like SuperScan from
    www.foundstone.com/knowledge against that IP address might give
    additional clues.  +AFs-It would appear that IP is running SSH and the HTTP
    service mentions server: swcd/5.0.2206 which I'm not familiar with and
    couldn't find in Google either.+AF0-
    
    I'm guessing this is not malicious, but unless someone else here can
    confirm what this is, I might still try the things below to be safe.
    Start with the things listed at this URL:
    
    http://securityadmin.info/faq.htm+ACM-hacked
    
    Note that if your server had been compromised, theoretically someone
    could be seeing your keystrokes and start deleting evidence or worse.
    You could consider unplugging the network cable to be safe.
    
    I would consider using a sniffer to look at the contents of those
    packets.  Actually, in this case, temporarily installing www.sygate.com
    onto the server might be something to try first instead of a sniffer,
    because besides packet content, you might also be able to see which
    executable generated the traffic, which a sniffer would not tell you. 
    
    http://securityadmin.info/faq.htm+ACM-sniffers
    
    You could use Vision +AFs-or Fport+AF0- from www.foundstone.com/knowledge or
    Active Ports from www.webattack.com/get/activeports.shtml or pslist /
    pstools from www.sysinternals.com to see if there are any suspicious
    processes on your computer.  +AFs-Sygate would also already have told you
    this information.+AF0-  
    
    You could also inspect the running processes in Task Manager, look for
    recently changed files, and consider running an antivirus and
    anti-trojan scanner.  If you need links to free or not-free scanners,
    see here:
    
    http://securityadmin.info/faq.htm+ACM-antivirus
    http://securityadmin.info/faq.htm+ACM-trojan
    
    The free tools Filemon, Regmon and Process Explorer from
    www.sysinternals.com might be useful in letting you see activity on your
    server that you might not otherwise be able to see.
    
    To confirm that your server hasn't been compromised through an IIS
    exploit, you might check your IIS logs.  You could first look for any
    lines mentioning .EXE or +ACU- that also have a 200 or 502 status code
    +AFs-though those events would not always necessarily represent successful
    attacks+AF0-.
    
    http://securityadmin.info/faq.htm+ACM-iislogs2
    http://securityadmin.info/faq.htm+ACM-iislogs
    
    As you may know, just installing all the latest patches is not the only
    thing you should do to secure IIS.  You'd also want to run through a few
    hardening checklists, starting with the Baseline security checklists for
    IIS and Windows at www.microsoft.com/technet/security  Those are not
    comprehensive checklists, so URLs to other hardening checklists can be
    found at:
    
    http://securityadmin.info/faq.htm+ACM-harden
    
    HTH
    
    - karl
    
    
    -----Original Message-----
    From: Dan Harpold
    To: incidents+AEA-seacurityfocus.com
    Sent: 2/23/2003 10:20 PM
    Subject: Web server crashed, now is trying to contact an IP
    by port 80 every morning.
    
    My web server crashed the other day. Got a blue screen and on reboot
    NTLDR was missing. I reinstalled and reformatted the drive. Simple W2K
    Server with IIS 5 and current service packs. It sits in a DMZ.
    
    Now, each morning (only 2 days so far) at 12:00:45 AM, the machine is
    trying to contact an outside server via HTTP. The external request,
    which is being blocked by my firewall, is trying to go to 64.0.96.14. It
    logs about fifteen attempts over the next ten seconds, then doesn't
    appear until the next morning.
    
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