Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sat, 04 Sep 2004 17:38:49 +0200
From:      Colin Alston <karnaugh@karnaugh.za.net>
To:        vxp <vxp@digital-security.org>
Cc:        freebsd-net@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: fooling nmap
Message-ID:  <4139E189.5080409@karnaugh.za.net>
In-Reply-To: <20040904094619.H37469@digital-security.org>
References:  <20040904093042.B37306@digital-security.org> <4139DCF0.7070008@karnaugh.za.net> <20040904094619.H37469@digital-security.org>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
vxp wrote:

>pretty much any sort of attack / intrusion attempt begins with information
>gathering on the machine. part of that, would be trying to figure out what
>OS runs on the machine. the more (accurate) information a potential
>attacker can gather on the machine, the more chances that his attempt will
>succeed. obviously, even with this change in place, you'd need to do some
>other things so as to prevent this for example:
>
>$ telnet localhost 22
>Trying ::1...
>Connected to localhost.digital-security.org
>Escape character is '^]'.
>SSH-1.99-OpenSSH_3.6.1p1 FreeBSD-20030924
>                         ^^^^^^^^^
>                         banners all over need to be changed
>
>but nevertheless, it'd be a step in the right direction in my opinion
>  
>

A great man once said to me "Security by obscurity is, after all, no 
security at all."

This is very much a step in the wrong direction.

-- 
Colin Alston <karnaugh@karnaugh.za.net>

About the use of language: 
  "It is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe.  It is 
  equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead."
   -- E.W.Dijkstra, 18th June 1975. (Perl did not exist at the time.)



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?4139E189.5080409>