SysAdmin: How to Hack UNIX [Part Two of series]

“Most networks have at least a few UNIX-based machines. These
UNIX servers typically provide infrastructure — network and
backend services (company database, etc.), which are a critical
component of most networks. Desktops, for example, are useless
without file and print servers. Many of these servers are publicly
accessible (e.g., DNS, email, and Internet servers) making them
easy to attack. Even if the server is internal and cannot be
attacked via the Internet, there is still the internal network to
worry about. Regardless of how well you use firewalls and other
filtering mechanisms to control server access, these tools are not
enough on their own. An attacker can walk into an office building,
find an unused Ethernet jack, plug in laptop connected to a cell
phone and then leave, thereby gaining the ability to attack the
network from the inside. Furthermore, a night janitor, for example,
could use scanners and probing software (such as Nmap, Nessus,
Saint, or Cheops) and quickly build a detailed model of your
network with minimal effort. (See Figure 1.)”

“Locking down access controls lists tightly enough so that only
legitimate connections occur is inadequate, and is also a lot of
work. An attacker could use the IP address of a “trusted” machine
and scan various hosts; simply cycling through network IPs at
random is sufficient in most cases. There is even specialized
scanner software for specific services, for example “scanssh”, a
scanner that looks for machines running SSH and tells you what
versions they are running. (Some older versions have significant
security flaws)”

Complete
Story