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Date:      Sat, 20 Dec 2008 16:52:21 -0600
From:      Paul Schmehl <pauls@utdallas.edu>
To:        questions@freebsd.org
Cc:        Richard Yang <kusanagiyang@gmail.com>
Subject:   Re: nessus report
Message-ID:  <22AC6248210F377B6C802CED@Macintosh-2.local>
In-Reply-To: <abd417bf0812192132l1e99cfccyc297f32f388428ea@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <abd417bf0812192132l1e99cfccyc297f32f388428ea@mail.gmail.com>

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--On December 19, 2008 11:32:51 PM -0600 Richard Yang=20
<kusanagiyang@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> hi,
> when i ran nessus against my bsd box, nessus can detect "the remote host
> is
> up".
> i don't understand how nessus can detect it...
> does anyone know how it is done?
> thanx
>

There are several ways to detect if a host is up.  Responses to icmp=20
packets is one.  Almost all hosts will respond to pings unless they're=20
prevented by a firewall.

Another way is the type of response to a probe of a port.  Sometimes=20
services will respond differently if they're firewalled than if they're=20
not listening on a particular port.  Also, very few computers have no=20
ports at all listening.  For example, most unix boxes will be running=20
syslogd and listening on port udp/514.  That is the default for that=20
daemon.  Unless you reconfigured syslogd to listen on localhost only, it=20
will respond to probes.

Sometimes a host will respond to a problem with RSETs.  It's very, very=20
hard to configure a box in such a way that it's impossible to detect that=20
it's up and running.

Run sockstat and look at what's listening on your computer.  Then see if=20
you can figure out how to get it to stop listening on those ports.

Paul Schmehl (pauls@utdallas.edu)
Senior Information Security Analyst
The University of Texas at Dallas
http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/security/

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