You can not select more than 25 topics Topics must start with a letter or number, can include dashes ('-') and can be up to 35 characters long.
 
 
 
 
 
 

2.4 KiB

scan

scan1

You're going to do like Trinity in the movie The Matrix Reloaded. Except that you're not going to turn off the electricity in a city, and you probably don't wear as much leather, but that's okay.


By design and by default, most network entities have a high discoverability.

Whatever your motivations for exploring a network (hacking, curiosity...), you generally proceed in this order :

  1. Scan a network to find hosts
  2. Scan a host to get information (hardware, OS & exposed services)

1. can be done by analyzing the link layer of Internet protocols, in particular ARP in order to gather MAC addresses (the identifier of a network interface, such as Wi-Fi or Ethernet cards).

2. is usually performed by analyzing the network and transport layers, in particular the IP & TCP protocols with the nmap tool.

For the context, when you open a website, here are the protocols involved, from the highest to lowest level (the protocols at the top depend on those at the bottom):

  • HTTP: application layer (website data) - messages
  • TLS: application layer ("lock" sign) - secure connection
  • TCP: transport layer (port number) - reliable connection
  • IP: network layer (IP address) - global communication
  • ARP: link layer (MAC address) - local communication

For this challenge, you will focus on IP, ARP & TCP, and therefore on IP/MAC addresses and ports.

You will need to add these 2 VM :

You will only have control over "laptop". A port forwarding is set on 10122 so you can connect through SSH, the password is a single space.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to scan the network interface enp0s8 and find a way in the server, you will know you have succeeded when you see :

RRF-CONTROL> █

Because the VirtualBox Internal Network is very slow (10 Mbps, Ethernet is usually 1000 Mbps), expect long scan times :

  • ARP scanning takes up to 5 minutes
  • port scanning takes up to half an one hour with the option -T4 (even more without).

May the Fourth be with you.



scan2

Another depiction of the nmap tool: in Ocean's 8, Rihanna uses Kali Linux to steal a valuable diamond.

Same strategy, different styles