Skip to Content
Network Security Assessment
book

Network Security Assessment

by Chris McNab
March 2004
Intermediate to advanced
396 pages
11h
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Network Security Assessment

Chapter 5. Assessing Remote Information Services

Remote information services can collect information for later use (such as username and internal IP address information) and run arbitrary commands on the target server by exploiting process manipulation vulnerabilities. This chapter focuses on the assessment of these services and lists relevant tools and techniques that can test and assure the security of your services.

Remote Information Services

Unix-based systems and various device platforms, such as Cisco IOS, run remote information services that provide system, user, and network details over IP. Such services can be probed to collate username listings and details of trusted networks and hosts, and, in some cases, compromise systems directly.

I derived a basic list of remote information services from the /etc/services file:

systat          11/tcp
netstat         15/tcp
domain          53/tcp
domain          53/udp
finger          79/tcp
auth            113/tcp
snmp            161/udp
ldap            389/tcp
rwho            513/udp
globalcat       3268/tcp

systat and netstat

The systat and netstat services are interesting because current network and system information can be found easily by connecting to the services using telnet. The /etc/inetd.conf file on a system running systat and netstat typically includes the following lines:

systats stream  tcp  nowait  root /usr/bin/ps      ps -ef
netstat stream  tcp  nowait  root /usr/bin/netstat netstat -a

The ps -ef and netstat -a commands are bound to TCP ports 11 and 15, respectively. Example 5-1 shows how to use telnet to connect to the ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Network Security Strategies

Network Security Strategies

Aditya Mukherjee
CCNA Cyber Ops SECFND #210-250 Official Cert Guide

CCNA Cyber Ops SECFND #210-250 Official Cert Guide

Omar Santos, Joseph Muniz, Stefano De Crescenzo

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 059600611XErrata Page