Information Assurance

Clay Shields


front | classes | research | personal | contact

Information Assurance

back to projects page

Project 7
Attack Familiarization
Due April 26th, 2007


My experience in the military has convinced me that in order to defend against attacks, you need to be able to see your defences the way that an attacker will. You therefore need to understand how an attacker does this. This assignment is intended to allow you to experiment in reconnaissance and attack tools in a safe (for everyone else) environment.

You still have an account on the machine named ia-class.georgetown.edu. Your assignment is to log onto this machine, and to determine how you would go about breaking into the host named victim' (IP address 10.1.1.111) which is on a private subnet and is only accessible from ia-class. Notice I said "how you would" break in. Your assignment is not to break in, but to learn how it might be possible to do so.

I would suggest the following strategy:
  • Try and determine what the OS on victim is, and what services are running. A tool named nmap is installed, and I am happy to install any other software you find that you might want to try, though it must run on Linuix. Send me e-mail if there is something else you want to try.
  • Try and determine what user accounts are on victim. You might try using finger for this, or try connecting directly to one of the services on victim, if there is some way to get user information from it. You can connect directly to a specific port and type commands at it by using: telnet victim <port>, where port is the port the service runs on.
  • Using the above information, go online and determine what exploits are available and what is likely to work. Sites that can be helpful for this are plentiful, and include:

What to turn in:
  • A list of the services and accounts on the system, and any other system information you have determined.
  • A list of the vulnerabilites of the system, based on your research into the above services and their vulnerabilites.
  • An outline of how you would try and break in, if you were allowed to do so, which you are not. Don't forget the social engineering aspects!
IMPORTANT

It is possible to use the scanning tools on ia-class against other hosts on the Georgetown Campus and on the Internet. This is forbidden (verboten, prohibited, not allowed, banned) by class policy and by the Georgetown Acceptable Use Policy, and anyone caught doing this will receive a severe grade penalty. Don't think that I am not watching.

Additionally, remember the goal of the assignment is not to turn you into a computer attacker. It is instead to allow you to learn the basics of how attackers operate so that you may more successfully defend your systems in the future. Breaking into other computers, even if it is easy to do so, is a crime and is punishable under many state and federal laws.