Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, 2nd Edition

The Whole Infrastructure

As always, details can be hidden in the bigger picture. A single host usually exists within some sort of infrastructure. Countermeasures such as intrusion detection systems (IDS) and intrusion prevention systems (IPS) can detect abnormal network traffic. Even simple log files on routers and firewalls can reveal abnormal connections that are indicative of an intrusion. In particular, the connection to port 31337 used in our connect-back shellcode is a big red flag. We could change the port to something that looks less suspicious; however, simply having a webserver open outbound connections could be a red flag by itself. A highly secure infrastructure might even have the firewall setup with egress filters to prevent outbound ...