Your Ad Here

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Tracing a Hacker ……

## Connections make the world go round ##



The computer world, at any rate. Every single time you open up a
website, send an email or upload your webpages into cyberspace, you are
connecting to another machine in order to get the job done. This, of
course, presents a major problem, because this simple act is what
allows malicious users to target a machine in the first place.



# How do these people find their victim?



Well, first of all, they need to get hold of the victim's IP Address.
Your IP (Internet Protocol) address reveals your point of entry to the
Internet and can be used in many ways to cause your online activities
many, many problems. It may not reveal you by name, but it may be
uniquely identifiable and it represents your digital ID while you are
online (especially so if you're on a fixed IP / DSL etc).



With an IP address, a Hacker can find out all sorts of weird and
wonderful things about their victim (as well as causing all kinds of
other trouble, the biggest two being Portnukes/Trojans and the dreaded
DoS ((Denial of Service)) attack). Some Hackers like to collect IP
Addresses like badges, and like to go back to old targets, messing them
around every so often. An IP address is incredibly easy to obtain -
until recently, many realtime chat applications (such as MSN) were
goldmines of information. Your IP Address is contained as part of the
Header Code on all emails that you send and webpages that you visit can
store all kinds of information about you. A common trick is for the
Hacker to go into a Chatroom, paste his supposed website address all
over the place, and when the unsuspecting victim visits, everything
about your computer from the operating system to the screen resolution
can be logged...and, of course, the all important IP address. In
addition, a simple network-wide port scan will reveal vulnerable target
machines, and a war-dialler will scan thousands of lines for exposed
modems that the hacker can exploit.



So now that you know some of the basic dangers, you're probably wondering how these people connect to a victim's machine?



## Virtual and Physical Ports ##



Everything that you recieve over the Internet comes as a result of
other machines connecting to your computer's ports. You have two types;
Physical are the holes in the back of your machine, but the important
ones are Virtual. These allow transfer of data between your computer
and the outside world, some with allocated functions, some without, but
knowing how these work is the first step to discovering who is
attacking you; you simply MUST have a basic knowledge of this, or you
won't get much further.



# What the phrases TCP/UDP actually mean



TCP/IP stands for Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol,
a TCP/IP packet is a block of data which is compressed, then a header
is put on it and it is sent to another computer (UDP stands for User
Datagram Protocol). This is how ALL internet transfers occur, by
sending packets. The header in a packet contains the IP address of the
one who originally sent you it. Now, your computer comes with an
excellent (and free) tool that allows you to see anything that is
connected (or is attempting to connect) to you, although bear in mind
that it offers no blocking protection; it simply tells you what is
going on, and that tool is NETSTAT.



## Netstat: Your first line of defence ##



Netstat is a very fast and reliable method of seeing exactly who or
what is connected (or connecting) to your computer. Open up DOS
(Start/Programs/MS-DOS Prompt on most systems), and in the MSDOS
Prompt, type:



netstat -a



(make sure you include the space inbetween the "t" and the "a").



If you're connected to the Internet when you do this, you should see something like:





Active Connections



Proto Local Address Foreign Address State

TCP macintosh: 20034 modem-123.tun.dialup.co.uk: 50505 ESTABLISHED

TCP macintosh: 80 proxy.webcache.eng.sq: 30101 TIME_WAIT

TCP macintosh MACINTOSH: 0 LISTENING

TCP macintosh MACINTOSH: 0 LISTENING

TCP macintosh MACINTOSH: 0 LISTENING





Now, "Proto(col)" simply means what kind of data transmission is taking
place (TCP or UDP), "Local address" is your computer (and the number
next to it tells you what port you're connected on), "Foreign Address"
is the machine that is connected to you (and what port they're using),
and finally "State" is simply whether or not a connection is actually
established, or whether the machine in question is waiting for a
transmission, or timing out etc.



Now, you need to know all of Netstat's various commands, so type:



netstat ?



You will get something like this:





Displays protocol statistics and current TCP/IP network connections.



NETSTAT [-a] [-e] [-n] [-s] [-p proto] [-r] [interval]



-a Displays all connections and listening ports.

-e Displays Ethernet statistics. This may be combined with the -s option.

-n Displays addresses and port numbers in numerical form.

-p proto Shows connections for the protocol specified by proto; proto
may be TCP or UDP. If used with the -s option to display per-protocol
statistics, proto may be TCP, UDP, or IP.

-r Displays the routing table.

-s Displays per-protocol statistics. By default, statistics are shown
for TCP, UDP and IP; the -p option may be used to specify a subset of
the default.





Have a play around with the various options, but the most important use
of these methods is when you combine them. The best command to use is



netstat -an



because this will list all connections in Numerical Form, which makes
it a lot easier to trace malicious users....Hostnames can be a little
confusing if you don't know what you're doing (although they're easily
understandable, as we shall see later). Also, by doing this, you can
also find out what your own IP address is, which is always useful.



Also,



netstat -b



will tell you what ports are open and what programs are connecting to the internet.



## Types of Port ##



It would be impossible to find out who was attacking you if computers
could just access any old port to perform an important function; how
could you tell a mail transfer from a Trojan Attack? Well, good news,
because your regular, normal connections are assigned to low, commonly
used ports, and in general, the higher the number used, the more you
should be suspicious. Here are the three main types of port:



# Well Known Ports These run from 0 to 1023, and are bound to the
common services that run on them (for example, mail runs on channel 25
tcp/udp, which is smtp (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) so if you find
one of these ports open (and you usually will), it's usually because of
an essential function.



# Registered Ports These run on 1024 to 49151. Although not bound to a
particular service, these are normally used by networking utilities
like FTP software, Email client and so on, and they do this by opening
on a random port within this range before communicating with the remote
server, so don't panic (just be wary, perhaps) if you see any of these
open, because they usually close automatically when the system that's
running on them terminates (for example, type in a common website name
in your browser with netstat open, and watch as it opens up a port at
random to act as a buffer for the remote servers). Services like MSN
Messenger and ICQ usually run on these Ports.



# Dynamic/Private Ports Ranging from 49152 to 65535, these things are
rarely used except with certain programs, and even then not very often.
This is indeed the usual range of the Trojan, so if you find any of
these open, be very suspicious. So, just to recap:





Well Known Ports 0 to 1023 Commonly used, little danger.

Registered Ports 1024 to 49151 Not as common, just be careful.

Dynamic/Private Ports 49152 to 65535 Be extremely suspicious.





## The hunt is on ##



Now, it is essential that you know what you're looking for, and the
most common way someone will attack your machine is with a Trojan. This
is a program that is sent to you in an email, or attempts to bind
itself to one of your ports, and when activated, it can give the user
your passwords, access to your hard drive...they can even make your CD
Tray pop open and shut. At the end of this Document, you will find a
list of the most commonly used Trojans and the ports they operate on.
For now, let's take another look at that first example of Netstat....







Active Connections



Proto Local Address Foreign Address State

TCP macintosh: 27374 modem-123.tun.dialup.co.uk: 50505 ESTABLISHED

TCP macintosh: 80 proxy.webcache.eng.sq: 30101 TIME_WAIT

TCP macintosh MACINTOSH: 0 LISTENING

TCP macintosh MACINTOSH: 0 LISTENING

TCP macintosh MACINTOSH: 0 LISTENING





Now, straight away, this should make more sense to you. Your computer
is connected on two ports, 80 and 27374. Port 80 is used for http/www
transmissions (ie for all intents and purposes, its how you connect to
the net, although of course it's a lot more complicated than that).
Port 27374, however, is distinctly suspicious; first of all, it is in
the registered port range, and although other services (like MSN) use
these, let's assume that you have nothing at all running like instant
messengers, webpages etc....you're simply connected to the net through
proxy. So, now this connection is looking even more troublesome, and
when you realise that 27374 is a common port for Netbus (a potentially
destructive Trojan), you can see that something is untoward here. So,
what you would do is:





1) run Netstat , and use:



Netstat -a



then



Netstat -an



So you have both Hostnames AND IP addresses.





## Tracerouting ##



Having the attacker's IP is all well and good, but what can you do with
it? The answer is, a lot more! It's not enough to have the address, you
also need to know where the attacker's connections are coming from. You
may have used automated tracerouting tools before, but do you jknow how
they work?



Go back to MSDOS and type





tracert *type IP address/Hostname here*





Now, what happens is, the Traceroute will show you all the computers
inbetween you and the target machine, including blockages, firewalls
etc. More often than not, the hostname address listed before the final
one will belong to the Hacker's ISP Company. It'll either say who the
ISP is somewhere in there, or else you run a second trace on the new
IP/hostname address to see who the ISP Company in question is. If the
Hostname that you get back doesn't actually seem to mention an actual
geographical location within its text, you may think all is lost. But
fear not! Suppose you get a hostname such as



http://www.haha.com



Well, that tells us nothing, right? Wrong....simply enter the hostname
in your browser, and though many times you will get nothing back,
sometimes it will resolve to an ISP, and from there you can easily find
out its location and in what areas they operate. This at least gives
you a firm geographical location to carry out your investigations in.



If you STILL have nothing, as a last resort you COULD try connecting to
your target's ISP's port 13 by Telnet, which will tell you how many
hours ahead or behind this ISP is of GMT, thus giving you a
geographical trace based on the time mentioned (although bear in mind,
the ISP may be doing something stupid like not having their clocks set
correctly, giving you a misleading trace. Similarly, a common tactic of
Hackers is to deliberately have their computer's clock set to a totally
wrong time, so as to throw you off the scent). Also, unless you know
what you're doing, I wouldn't advise using Telnet (which is outside the
parameters of this tutorial).



## Reverse DNS Query ##



This is probably the most effective way of running a trace on somebody.
If ever you're in a chatroom and you see someone saying that they've
"hacked into a satellite orbiting the Earth, and are taking pictures of
your house right now", ignore them because that's just bad movie
nonsense. THIS method is the way to go, with regard to finding out what
country (even maybe what State/City etc) someone resides, although it's
actually almost impossible to find an EXACT geographical location
without actually breaking into your ISP's Head Office and running off
with the safe.



To run an rDNS query, simply go back to MS-DOS and type



netstat



and hit return. Any active connections will resolve to hostnames rather than a numerical format.



# DNS



DNS stands for Domain Name Server. These are machines connected to the
Internet whose job it is to keep track of the IP Addresses and Domain
Names of other machines. When called upon, they take the ASCII Domain
Name and convert it to the relevant numeric IP Address. A DNS search
translates a hostname into an IP address....which is why we can enter
"www.Hotmail.com" and get the website to come up, instead of having to
actually remember Hotmail's IP address and enter that instead. Well,
Reverse DNS, of course, translates the IP Address into a Hostname (ie -
in letters and words instead of numbers, because sometimes the Hacker
will employ various methods to stop Netstat from picking up a correct
Hostname).



So, for example,



298.12.87.32 is NOT a Hostname.

mail6.bol.net.au IS a Hostname.



Anyway, see the section at the end? (au) means the target lives in
Australia. Most (if not all) hostnames end in a specific Country Code,
thus narrowing down your search even further. If you know your target's
Email Address (ie they foolishly sent you a hate mail, but were silly
enough to use a valid email address) but nothing else, then you can use
the Country codes to deduce where they're from as well. You can also
deduce the IP address of the sender by looking at the emails header (a
"hidden" line of code which contains information on the sender)...on
Hotmail for example, go to Preferences, and select the "Full Header's
Visible" option. Alternatively, you can run a "Finger" Trace on the
email address, at:



www.samspade.org



Plus, some ISP's include their name in your Email Address with them too
(ie Wanadoo, Supanet etc), and your Hacker may be using an email
account that's been provided by a Website hosting company, meaning this
would probably have the website host's name in the email address (ie
Webspawners). So, you could use the information gleaned to maybe even
hunt down their website (then you could run a website check as
mentioned previously) or report abuse of that Website Provider's Email
account (and thus, the Website that it goes with) to



abuse@companynamegoeshere.com



If your Hacker happens to reside in the USA, go to:



www.usps.gov/ncsc/lookups/abbr_state.txt



for a complete list of US State abbreviatons.



## List of Ports commonly used by Trojans ##



Please note that this isn't a complete list by any means, but it will
give you an idea of what to look out for in Netstat. Be aware that some
of the lower Ports may well be running valid services.



UDP: 1349 Back Ofrice DLL

31337 BackOfrice 1.20

31338 DeepBO

54321 BackOfrice 2000





TCP: 21 Blade Runner, Doly Trojan, Fore, Invisible FTP, WebEx, WinCrash

23 Tiny Telnet Server

25 Antigen, Email Password Sender, Haebu Coceda, Shtrilitz Stealth, Terminator, WinPC, WinSpy, Kuang2 0.17A-0.30

31 Hackers Paradise

80 Executor

456 Hackers Paradise

555 Ini-Killer, Phase Zero, Stealth Spy

666 Satanz Backdoor

1001 Silencer, WebEx

1011 Doly Trojan

1170 Psyber Stream Server, Voice

1234 Ultors Trojan

1243 SubSeven 1.0 - 1.8

1245 VooDoo Doll

1492 FTP99CMP

1600 Shivka-Burka

1807 SpySender

1981 Shockrave

1999 BackDoor 1.00-1.03

2001 Trojan Cow

2023 Ripper

2115 Bugs

2140 Deep Throat, The Invasor

2801 Phineas Phucker

3024 WinCrash

3129 Masters Paradise

3150 Deep Throat, The Invasor

3700 Portal of Doom

4092 WinCrash

4567 File Nail 1

4590 ICQTrojan

5000 Bubbel

5000 Sockets de Troie

5001 Sockets de Troie

5321 Firehotcker

5400 Blade Runner 0.80 Alpha

5401 Blade Runner 0.80 Alpha

5402 Blade Runner 0.80 Alpha

5400 Blade Runner

5401 Blade Runner

5402 Blade Runner

5569 Robo-Hack

5742 WinCrash

6670 DeepThroat

6771 DeepThroat

6969 GateCrasher, Priority

7000 Remote Grab

7300 NetMonitor

7301 NetMonitor

7306 NetMonitor

7307 NetMonitor

7308 NetMonitor

7789 ICKiller

8787 BackOfrice 2000

9872 Portal of Doom

9873 Portal of Doom

9874 Portal of Doom

9875 Portal of Doom

9989 iNi-Killer

10067 Portal of Doom

10167 Portal of Doom

10607 Coma 1.0.9

11000 Senna Spy

11223 Progenic trojan

12223 Hack´99 KeyLogger

12345 GabanBus, NetBus

12346 GabanBus, NetBus

12361 Whack-a-mole

12362 Whack-a-mole

16969 Priority

20001 Millennium

20034 NetBus 2.0, Beta-NetBus 2.01

21544 GirlFriend 1.0, Beta-1.35

22222 Prosiak

23456 Evil FTP, Ugly FTP

26274 Delta

30100 NetSphere 1.27a

30101 NetSphere 1.27a

30102 NetSphere 1.27a

31337 Back Orifice

31338 Back Orifice, DeepBO

31339 NetSpy DK

31666 BOWhack

33333 Prosiak

34324 BigGluck, TN

40412 The Spy

40421 Masters Paradise

40422 Masters Paradise

40423 Masters Paradise

40426 Masters Paradise

47262 Delta

50505 Sockets de Troie

50766 Fore

53001 Remote Windows Shutdown

54321 SchoolBus .69-1.11

61466 Telecommando

65000 Devil





## Summary ##



I hope this tutorial is useful in showing you both how to secure
yourself against unwanted connections, and also how to determine an
attacker's identity. The Internet is by no means as anonymous as some
people think it is, and although this is to the detriment of people's
security online, this also works both ways....it IS possible to find
and stop even the most determined of attackers, you just have to be
patient and keep hunting for clues which will help you put an end to
their exploits.

IF YOU LIKE THIS POST PLEASE REPLY

No comments:

Your Ad Here