The following is the original posting to bugtraq about spoofed/indirect/idle scan method. See the HPING2-HOWTO for more informations. antirez --- Hi, I have uncovered a new tcp port scan method. Instead all others it allows you to scan using spoofed packets, so scanned hosts can't see your real address. In order to perform this i use three well known tcp/ip implementation peculiarities of most OS: (1) * hosts reply SYN|ACK to SYN if tcp target port is open, reply RST|ACK if tcp target port is closed. (2) * You can know the number of packets that hosts are sending using id ip header field. See my previous posting 'about the ip header' in this ml. (3) * hosts reply RST to SYN|ACK, reply nothing to RST. The Players: host A - evil host, the attacker. host B - silent host. host C - victim host. A is your host. B is a particular host: It must not send any packets while you are scanning C. There are a lot of 'zero traffic' hosts in internet, especially in the night :) C is the victim, it must be vulnerable to SYN scan. I've called this scan method 'dumb host scan' in honour of host B characteristics. How it works: Host A monitors number of outgoing packets from B using id iphdr. You can do this simply using hping: #hping B -r HPING B (eth0 xxx.yyy.zzz.jjj): no flags are set, 40 data bytes 60 bytes from xxx.yyy.zzz.jjj: flags=RA seq=0 ttl=64 id=41660 win=0 time=1.2 ms 60 bytes from xxx.yyy.zzz.jjj: flags=RA seq=1 ttl=64 id=+1 win=0 time=75 ms 60 bytes from xxx.yyy.zzz.jjj: flags=RA seq=2 ttl=64 id=+1 win=0 time=91 ms 60 bytes from xxx.yyy.zzz.jjj: flags=RA seq=3 ttl=64 id=+1 win=0 time=90 ms 60 bytes from xxx.yyy.zzz.jjj: flags=RA seq=4 ttl=64 id=+1 win=0 time=91 ms 60 bytes from xxx.yyy.zzz.jjj: flags=RA seq=5 ttl=64 id=+1 win=0 time=87 ms -cut- .. . As you can see, id increases are always 1. So this host have the characteristics that host B should to own. Now host A sends SYN to port X of C spoofing from B. (using hping => 0.67 is very easy, http://www.kyuzz.org/antirez) if port X of C is open, host C will send SYN|ACK to B (yes, host C don't know that the real sender is A). In this case host B replies to SYN|ACK with a RST. If we send to host C a few of SYN it will reply to B with a few of SYN|ACK, so B will reply to C a few of RST... so we'll see that host B is sending packets! . .. -cut- 60 bytes from xxx.yyy.zzz.jjj: flags=RA seq=17 ttl=64 id=+1 win=0 time=96 ms 60 bytes from xxx.yyy.zzz.jjj: flags=RA seq=18 ttl=64 id=+1 win=0 time=80 ms 60 bytes from xxx.yyy.zzz.jjj: flags=RA seq=19 ttl=64 id=+2 win=0 time=83 ms 60 bytes from xxx.yyy.zzz.jjj: flags=RA seq=20 ttl=64 id=+3 win=0 time=94 ms 60 bytes from xxx.yyy.zzz.jjj: flags=RA seq=21 ttl=64 id=+1 win=0 time=92 ms 60 bytes from xxx.yyy.zzz.jjj: flags=RA seq=22 ttl=64 id=+2 win=0 time=82 ms -cut- .. . The port is open! Instead, if port X of C is closed sending to C a few of SYN spoofed from B, it will reply with RST to B, and B will not reply (see 3). So we'll see that host B is not sending any packet: . .. -cut- 60 bytes from xxx.yyy.zzz.jjj: flags=RA seq=52 ttl=64 id=+1 win=0 time=85 ms 60 bytes from xxx.yyy.zzz.jjj: flags=RA seq=53 ttl=64 id=+1 win=0 time=83 ms 60 bytes from xxx.yyy.zzz.jjj: flags=RA seq=54 ttl=64 id=+1 win=0 time=93 ms 60 bytes from xxx.yyy.zzz.jjj: flags=RA seq=55 ttl=64 id=+1 win=0 time=74 ms 60 bytes from xxx.yyy.zzz.jjj: flags=RA seq=56 ttl=64 id=+1 win=0 time=95 ms 60 bytes from xxx.yyy.zzz.jjj: flags=RA seq=57 ttl=64 id=+1 win=0 time=81 ms -cut- .. . The port is closed. All this can appear complicated to perform, but using two sessions of hping on Linux virtual consoles or under X makes it more simple. First session listen host B: hping B -r Second session send spoofed SYN: hping C -a B -S Sorry if my english is not so clear. However this posting is not adequate to describe exaustively this scan method, so i'll write a paper on this topic, specially about how to implement this in a port scanner (i.e. nmap), and about players characteristics and OS used. happy new year, antirez