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Endlessh: An SSH Tarpit

nullprogram.com

101–110 of 118 posts

Re: Endlessh: An SSH Tarpit

#101
post #50

I can recommend setting up a server and do extensive logging. Then watch hackers as they attempt to break in. I had a server hacked last week and today i read the logs to figure out how they did. From first discovery, trying to figure out what system they're on, to gaining a shell, and figure out how to execute stuff, gaining network access. It was better then watching an actual movie. And a humbling experience. But…

Postmortem on your blog?

Re: Endlessh: An SSH Tarpit

#102
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you trying to achieve?

He's trying to crash a script-kiddy's box with fuzzing. It's a fun thought, though I'm not sure it's practical as you'd only get a few tries. Fuzzing is typically an approach of throwing it the wall and seeing what sticks; if your deep learning found something that crashed most ssh clients that would just be a zero-day.

It doesn't have to crash them all...just the one it's working on.

Re: Endlessh: An SSH Tarpit

#104

I like this! It's tiny, simple, yet effective. 2019-03-22T19:54:06.303Z ACCEPT host=::ffff:196.52.43.xx port=50327 fd=4 n=1/4096 2019-03-22T19:54:38.838Z CLOSE host=::ffff:196.52.43.xx port=50327 fd=4 time=32.535 bytes=199 2019-03-22T19:57:12.008Z ACCEPT host=::ffff:141.98.81.xx port=53646 fd=4 n=1/4096 2019-03-22T19:57:21.118Z CLOSE host=::ffff:141.98.81.xx port=53646 fd=4 time=9.110 bytes=30 The 141 bot never stays…

Do you realize that the thing does not process any attacker controlled input and thus all the hardening is completely pointless exercise?

Re: Endlessh: An SSH Tarpit

#105
post #104

I like this! It's tiny, simple, yet effective. 2019-03-22T19:54:06.303Z ACCEPT host=::ffff:196.52.43.xx port=50327 fd=4 n=1/4096 2019-03-22T19:54:38.838Z CLOSE host=::ffff:196.52.43.xx port=50327 fd=4 time=32.535 bytes=199 2019-03-22T19:57:12.008Z ACCEPT host=::ffff:141.98.81.xx port=53646 fd=4 n=1/4096 2019-03-22T19:57:21.118Z CLOSE host=::ffff:141.98.81.xx port=53646 fd=4 time=9.110 bytes=30 The 141 bot never stays…

Do you realize that the thing does not process any attacker controlled input and thus all the hardening is completely pointless exercise?

The number of times in my life that I have seen "this should never happen" scroll by on STDOUT suggests that it's time well spent.

Re: Endlessh: An SSH Tarpit

#106
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you trying to achieve?

He's trying to crash a script-kiddy's box with fuzzing. It's a fun thought, though I'm not sure it's practical as you'd only get a few tries. Fuzzing is typically an approach of throwing it the wall and seeing what sticks; if your deep learning found something that crashed most ssh clients that would just be a zero-day.

Maybe deep learning technobabble that might convince a script kiddie into "researching" what was coming back?

Re: Endlessh: An SSH Tarpit

#107
post #105
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you realize that the thing does not process any attacker controlled input and thus all the hardening is completely pointless exercise?

The number of times in my life that I have seen "this should never happen" scroll by on STDOUT suggests that it's time well spent.

If you cannot trust that 725 line program without any mention of recv() nor read() will never call recv() or read() on network socket then you have much larger reliability (not security, because whether something that is broken to the point of being unusable is secure or not is completely irrelevant) issue in your system that is not going to go away by applying random hardening options to said program.

Re: Endlessh: An SSH Tarpit

#108
Set this up on a server last night. In 20 hours I've got 75 connections. Took a capture of trying to connect to it from my laptop:

https://www.cloudshark.org/captures/b64150b66908

IP addresses have been change to protect the innocent. This is from macOS but definitely seeing some different behavior from other clients.

Re: Endlessh: An SSH Tarpit

#109
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether you own them or not is subject to a lot of debate and not clear cut. If you owned them, why would you need to fool ARIN into believing they are being utilised? The agreement you make to get an allocation requires a certain level of utilization depending on the size of the block to prevent squatting and exhaustion of resources. This is a good thing, and if it was actually respected we wouldn't be in a mad rush…

"Mad rush" - heh. I'd hate to see how long something rolled out at a leisurely pace would take!

> IPv6 is intended to replace IPv4. In December 1998, IPv6 became a Draft Standard for the IETF, who subsequently ratified it as an Internet Standard on 14 July 2017

it only took 20 years to standardize after all. we're seriously rushing here!

Re: Endlessh: An SSH Tarpit

#110
post #76
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even sophisticated/organized hackers have free time, and if someone "messed with them" and caused them to need to push a hotfix at 6pm on a Friday because their cluster got stuck on your tarpit, you can bet they'll give the tarpit operator some of their attention. Woe to you if they happen to find something that's not patched.

Turn it around. How would hackers adapt if nearly every host responded on ssh the same way? Maybe it’d be behavior worthy of being in openssh or elsewhere. Don’t make it cheap to cheat. This might not be the holy grail, but it’s a good avenue.

Seems to me like they'd just implement a timeout on waiting for the identification string. I don't know the SSH protocol that well, but from the article it sounds like it's easy to bypass this tarpit if you don't strictly follow the SSH standard. I doubt a timeout would have much impact when connecting to legitimate hosts since they probably respond quickly with their identification, so the fix is easy.
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