Re: Firewall and IDS, (the second way).

From: Bryan Burns (bburnsat_private)
Date: Fri Mar 15 2002 - 23:44:28 PST

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    One trick I've heard of is sending data on the network, then waiting to see
    if someone does a DNS query against your IP (assuming you're in control of
    the DNS server, or at least within sniffing distance), the assumption being
    that it's a sniffer doing reverse-DNS of your IP before writing it to logs
    or somesuch.  It's not exactly the most foolproof method, but it's better
    than nothing.
    
    Also, I'm not particularly convinced of the ping method.  I imagine that
    there are so many other variables at play determining the round-trip ping
    time that the delay due to sniffing would be lost in the noise.  Also, it
    relies on having a database of ping times for all your machines, which is
    difficult to imagine actually existing anywhere.
    
    -Bryan
    
    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "Zow Terry Brugger" <zowat_private>
    To: <sekureat_private>
    Cc: <vuln-devat_private>
    Sent: Friday, March 15, 2002 6:27 PM
    Subject: Re: Firewall and IDS, (the second way).
    
    
    > > Hi,
    >
    > Hello!
    >
    > > I'm "walking" by the internet finding about paper/techniques that can be
    > > used to detect systemn with IDS installed. Try to detect
    > > snort/snort+aide/quinds/.../ somebody know something like it ??
    >
    > I recall Munge giving a talk at BlackHat Las Vegas in 2000 about something
    > they were doing at @stake/l0ft for detecting sniffers. The idea was to
    allow
    > sysadmins to detect if one of their machines had been hacked and was
    acting as
    > a sniffer. The idea was that by putting the interface into promiscuous
    mode,
    > the machine would take longer to respond to ping packets because there was
    > more traffic for the kernel's IP stack to analyze (whereas usually it'll
    be
    > filtered out by the NIC). The same should hold true for NIDS, with a
    couple
    > caviots:
    >
    > 1. You'd need to know what ping time to expect if the NIC wasn't running
    in
    > promiscuous mode in order to calculate a delta,
    >
    > 2. A popular technique to secure NIDS is to not allow them to respond to
    > traffic on the network that they're listening to (that is, bring up, but
    don't
    > configure) the interface. Doing so will pretty much eliminate the ability
    to
    > use this technique.
    >
    > In other words, I wouldn't go around trying to use such a technique to
    detect
    > NIDS - it'll probably have just the opposite effect of allowing them to
    detect
    > you.
    >
    > -"Zow"
    >
    > from StandardDisclaimer import *
    >
    >
    >
    



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