Network Security Hacks

Block OS Fingerprinting

Keep outsiders on a need-to-know basis regarding your operating systems.

When performing network reconnaissance, one very valuable piece of information for would-be attackers is the operating system running on each system discovered in their scans. From an attacker’s point of view, this is very helpful in figuring out what vulnerabilities the system might have or which exploits may work on a system. Combined with the knowledge of open ports found during a port-scan, this information can be devastating. After all, an RPC exploit for SPARC Solaris isn’t very likely to work for x86 Linux—the code for the portmap daemon isn’t common to both systems, and they have different processor architectures. Armed with the knowledge of a given server’s platform, attackers can very efficiently try the techniques most likely to grant them further access without wasting time on exploits that cannot work.

Traditionally, individuals performing network reconnaissance would simply connect to any services detected by their port-scan, to see which operating system the remote system is running. This works because many daemons, such as Sendmail, Telnet, and even FTP, readily announce the underlying operating system, as well as their own version numbers. Even though this method is easy and straightforward, it is now seen as intrusive since it’s easy to spot someone connecting in the system log files. Additionally, most services can be configured not to disclose this sensitive information. ...