+1 on P2P protocols being tricky. A lot of them are designed to be very
sneaky. Same with Chat apps. A lot of those do behaviors that are,
frankly, virus-like. They have a big bag of hacker tricks built in so
that a receptionist can circumvent several layers of network security to
sit there and chat with her friends when she's bored.

We have big $$$$ commercial intrusion prevention systems (that obviously
ARE doing deep packet inspection) on our external public links, with
signatures updated daily at great expense to us - and those things have
only mixed results blocking this stuff. I've given up on trying to find
everything on the inside - I just make sure that I'm not seeing a sudden
spike in weird traffic like that.

C

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Burton Strauss
Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 7:09 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [Ntop] Why edonkey and Kazaa Traffic is coming

That's the most likely answer.  Esp. with p2p, VoIP and other protocols
that
use random high ports.  If there's enough traffic, there will be
collisions
between port #s.

You do need to keep an eye on things, as some of the trojan's use those
high
port #s for their servers - and if those are out there, the lower # may
well
be the random port of the reply channel.

Unfortunately, these P2P protcols are problematic, since even if we were
to
write the deep packet inspection code, there's no place on a switched
network to put the ntop sensor that would see all the traffic.  It's one
thing if you are acting as the router (read up on Linux's connection
tracking, for example), it's another if you are passively seeing
packets.
Since we can't be sure, we have to guess and that (lower port #
recognition)
is our "best guess" algorithm.

-----Burton



-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Vivek Kedia
Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 1:15 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [Ntop] Why edonkey and Kazaa Traffic is coming

Hi Burton,

You are right , it is usually a small amount of traffic (less than few
MBs
)that is shown as Kazaa / edoney, so basically in layman terms it means
that
there is no actual Kazaa/Edoney traffic but rather a misinterpretation
of
port #

regards
vivek

--- Burton Strauss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> If you check the article in docs/FAQ, you will see that ntop uses the
> lower port # of the packet for classification.
>
> Remember, part of the tcp/ip protocol involves a random port # - say
> you connect to x.y.com on port 80 - the return path uses a random port
#.
>
> This works great when one of the port #s (the lower #) is obvious. 
> But many protocols use two random port #s or have a high # as their
> 'well known #', and so ntop CAN be confused.  In some cases we do a
> deeper analysis on the packets (e.g. ftp), but not all.
>
> Port #s are just #s.  You CAN use a port for anything, as long as the
> two sides (sender and receiver) agree.  That can lead to unexpected
> classification.  Some protocols do this deliberately, i.e. AOL uses a
> variety of port #s if the default, 5190, is blocked for any reason.
>
> And so on.  This is usually a small amount of traffic.
>
> -----Burton
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
> Of Vivek Kedia
> Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 10:45 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [Ntop] Why edonkey and Kazaa Traffic is coming
>
> Hi All,
>
> I am using NTOP to moniter around 50 PCs in my office and some of the
> days i see edonkey and Kazaa traffic on few of the workstations even
> though dont have any file sharing software installed on them , what
> can be the reason that ntop is seeing some of the data trf. as being
> from kazaa / edonkey,
>
> can it be a virus / ntop misreading the data transfer.
>
> since the workstations keep on changing so i dont think that its a
> virus , maybe ntop?
>
> regards
> vivek
>
>
>       
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