Patrick,

I suggest you fire up the server for a few hours and run a PCI scan on it...  

qualys.com and several other vendors will do one for free. 

and/or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nessus_(software) 

Also, at some point do a check for rootkit when you are booted from media that 
is locked for writing (a rescue cd) 

Good luck. 

Mark Engelhardt 
 


On May 12, 2011, at 5:18 PM, Patrick Litke wrote:

> Hello, Hello all!  This is my first post to the list serv, after much 
> encouragement from David Tisdell
> 
> I've taken a few classes with Dave covering Network Security and Linux, and 
> have been playing around with Linux for a few years now.  I wound up buying a 
> set of cheap hardware for a linux server (both my self and a friend did the 
> same) to be predominantly used as a VoD box / media server / Samba server.  
> I'm planning on using mine as a test bed for software development, and 
> subsequently need it connected to the internet.
> 
> We wound up using his server as a test box for everything.  We got Debian 
> installed, full lamp stack, nagios, webmin, samba, and a few others.  
> Everything was working fine - we had remote SSH access, full http access 
> (only over SSL though), remote access to webmin - the works.  We did not have 
> pasword-less logins (ie: using keys) for SSH logins though.   
> 
> A few days went by, and we got a phone call from ComCast about a report they 
> got from a company (whom they wouldn't name) basically saying that they were 
> being FTP attacked from our IP address.  So we pulled the server off line, 
> ran a rootkit scan which came back clean, did a little more tweaking, took a 
> look at our iptables config and our router set up (80, 443, 22, 125(3?), 
> 10000 were the ports we had forwarded) and everything seemed ok.  So we put 
> it back online.  The next day, we reviewed the router logs and there were 
> thousands of STORM ATTACK entries (we were being ddos'd?) and several unique 
> IP's that were foreign to us.  We did a few lookups/traces...
> 
>  
> pug@jabberwocky:~$ whois -H --verbose 79.115.177.0
> Using server whois.ripe.net.
> Query string: "-V Md5.0 79.115.177.0"
> 
> % This is the RIPE Database query service.
> % The objects are in RPSL format.
> %
> % The RIPE Database is subject to Terms and Conditions.
> % See http://www.ripe.net/db/support/db-terms-conditions.pdf
> 
> % Note: this output has been filtered.
> %       To receive output for a database update, use the "-B" flag.
> 
> % Information related to '79.115.132.0 - 79.115.187.255'
> 
> inetnum:        79.115.132.0 - 79.115.187.255
> netname:        RO-RCS-RDS-FIBERLINK
> descr:          RCS & RDS S.A.
> descr:          FiberLink Customers
> descr:          Bucuresti
> country:        RO
> admin-c:        RDS-RIPE
> tech-c:         RDS-RIPE
> status:         ASSIGNED PA
> mnt-by:         AS8708-MNT
> source:         RIPE # Filtered
> 
> role:           Romania Data Systems NOC
> address:        71-75 Dr. Staicovici
> address:        Bucharest / ROMANIA
> phone:          +40 21 30 10 888
> fax-no:         +40 21 30 10 892
> abuse-mailbox:  [email protected]
> admin-c:        CN19-RIPE
> admin-c:        VIG10-RIPE
> tech-c:         CN19-RIPE
> tech-c:         VIG10-RIPE
> nic-hdl:        RDS-RIPE
> mnt-by:         AS8708-MNT
> remarks:        
> +--------------------------------------------------------------+
> remarks:        |    ABUSE CONTACT: [email protected] IN CASE OF HACK ATTACKS, 
>  |
> remarks:        |    ILLEGAL ACTIVITY, VIOLATION, SCANS, PROBES, SPAM, ETC.   
>  |
> remarks:        | !! PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT OTHER PERSONS FOR THESE PROBLEMS 
> !! |
> remarks:        
> +--------------------------------------------------------------+
> source:         RIPE # Filtered
> 
> % Information related to '79.112.0.0/13AS8708'
> 
> route:          79.112.0.0/13
> descr:          RDSNET
> origin:         AS8708
> mnt-by:         AS8708-MNT
> source:         RIPE # Filtered
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> And our traceroute (from a different IP out of our routers logs)...
> 
> slippy@Slippy:~$ traceroute 79.115.187.255
> traceroute to 79.115.187.255 (79.115.187.255), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
>  1  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  2.476 ms  7.208 ms  7.600 ms
>  2  10.19.14.1 (10.19.14.1)  27.978 ms  29.492 ms  30.777 ms
>  3  static-64-222-84-42.burl.east.myfairpoint.net (64.222.84.42)  32.944 ms  
> 34.313 ms  35.889 ms
>  4  POS4-0-1.GW16.NYC9.ALTER.NET (208.192.176.205)  51.879 ms  53.312 ms  
> 54.770 ms
>  5  0.ge-3-0-0.XT1.NYC9.ALTER.NET (152.63.22.138)  56.072 ms  57.433 ms  
> 58.874 ms
>  6  0.so-6-0-2.XL3.NYC4.ALTER.NET (152.63.10.21)  60.336 ms  40.160 ms  
> 67.725 ms
>  7  GigabitEthernet4-0-0.GW1.NYC4.ALTER.NET (152.63.20.97)  43.537 ms 
> GigabitEthernet6-0-0.GW1.NYC4.ALTER.NET (152.63.20.49)  45.893 ms 
> GigabitEthernet4-0-0.GW1.NYC4.ALTER.NET (152.63.20.97)  46.337 ms
>  8  teliasonera-gw.customer.alter.net (157.130.60.14)  49.415 ms  49.822 ms  
> 53.146 ms
>  9  nyk-bb2-link.telia.net (213.155.130.244)  68.458 ms  70.546 ms  70.952 ms
> 10  kbn-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.247.120)  226.735 ms  239.932 ms  240.841 ms
> 11  hbg-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.249.207)  168.734 ms  170.594 ms  171.583 ms
> 12  win-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.246.25)  149.003 ms win-bb2-link.telia.net 
> (213.155.131.111)  151.061 ms win-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.246.25)  154.174 
> ms
> 13  buca-b1-link.telia.net (80.91.246.155)  192.605 ms  193.127 ms 
> buca-b1-link.telia.net (80.91.247.81)  174.068 ms
> 14  rcsrds-ic-141235-buca-b1.c.telia.net (213.248.83.170)  176.061 ms  
> 176.270 ms  177.728 ms
> 15  213-154-124-95.rdsnet.ro (213.154.124.95)  185.042 ms  186.032 ms  
> 186.439 ms
> 
> Our Routers logs have thousands of entries akin to the following
> [DoS attack: STORM] attack packets in last 20 sec from ip [213.161.192.51], 
> Tuesday, May 03,2011 11:29:17
> 
> [DoS attack: Smurf] attack packets in last 20 sec from ip [82.176.5.255], 
> Tuesday, May 03,2011 11:28:59
>  
> 
> Naturally, we emailed their ISP reporting the incident - but it's romania, 
> who cares?
> At any rate, this is where we began to scratch our heads.  A day or so later, 
> I was logged in remotely and just to see if I could see Dave logged in, I ran 
> a 
> pug@jabberwocky:~$ who -a
>                         2011-05-04 09:12               415 id=si    term=0 
> exit=0
>            system boot  2011-05-04 09:12
>            run-level 2  2011-05-04 09:12                   last=S
>                         2011-05-04 09:12              1048 id=l2    term=0 
> exit=0
> LOGIN      tty1         2011-05-04 09:12              1876 id=1
> LOGIN      tty6         2011-05-04 09:12              1881 id=6
> LOGIN      tty3         2011-05-04 09:12              1878 id=3
> LOGIN      tty4         2011-05-04 09:12              1879 id=4
> LOGIN      tty5         2011-05-04 09:12              1880 id=5
> LOGIN      tty2         2011-05-04 09:12              1877 id=2
> nagios   + pts/0        2011-05-04 15:19 00:06       14217 (79.115.177.0)
> pug      + pts/1        2011-05-04 12:40 00:16        7866 
> (pool-72-92-154-71.burl.east.myfairpoint.net)
> pug      + pts/2        2011-05-04 15:29   .         15633 
> (pool-72-92-154-71.burl.east.myfairpoint.net)
> pug@jabberwocky:~$ 
>  
> and saw our local nagios user logged in from that IP address.  So naturally, 
> we kicked him out.  
> 
> After that, we KNEW we had unauthorized remote access so we took the server 
> down again.   At this point, we called up our local comcast techie (the guy 
> that called us to inform us what was happening) and he said that he had the 
> same issue with his home server. He wound up banning the African, Asian and 
> South American continents with iptables - which is something that I would 
> like to do.
> 
> But this left us with questions.
> 
> 1) How did they gain access? I doubt that it would be possible for them to 
> bruteforce that password - it was 10 characters long, upper and lower case, 
> numbers and symbols.  So then what vulnerability did they exploit to get in?
> 
> 2) What else do I need to do to secure a Debian install for dedicated online 
> time plugged into the ebil interwebs?  
> 
> We now are starting over, on both servers.  We have fresh Debian installs (no 
> gui - why bother?).  The list of things to do that I have come up with is as 
> follows
> 
> Install Linux
> Install Snort-mysql and acidbase w/ addons & configure with/for IPTables
> Install Nagios (is there some vulnerability to this?) 
> Install Webmin
> Install Cactus
> Ensure that SSH is listening/accepting logins with keys ONLY (it is, now)
> This is all before we do anything else - our LAMP stack will be installed at 
> the end anyway having installed everything with snort.  Is there anything 
> else that we should be taking in to consideration / that we should do?  And, 
> having played around with a snort install... I am WAY over my head, I have no 
> idea how the classes of IP blocks break down, or how to set SNORT to listen 
> on a single adapter (as the router only forwards ports to the server, nowhere 
> else on the network).  
> 
> I'm looking forward to the next meeting as I am thinking about showing up! :)

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