Question

Been hacked? How to tell?

Asked by: TrondL

A lot of activity towards Win2000 IIS in DMZ on port 80.
Besides regular traffic, I have scanning on the computer towards standard settings like script folders, files etc.

I have standard IIS logging and a eventlog that indicates unautorised attacks from Spain and USA.
How might i track the hacker on my systems?
Honeypot is ok, but I need othe systems that is free.

How may I deside if I have been hacked or not?
I have only opened for port 80 to the DMZ.
Netstat commands shows nothing that is not legal.

I'm concerned for any rootkits, keyloggers, backdoors etc..
I have scanned, and not findings by Norton, Norman, Housecall or Panda,have also scanned with pest patrol, nothing found, but when thinking of what a "binder" could do.
I'm concerned.. Any tips?

Please help..

Trond

This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.

Subscribe now for full access to Experts Exchange and get

Instant Access to this Solution

  • Plus...
  • 30 Day FREE access, no risk, no obligation
  • Collaborate with the world's top tech experts
  • Unlimited access to our exclusive solution database
  • Never be left without tech help again

Subscribe Now

Asked On
2004-06-10 at 09:39:04ID21021156
Tags

how

,

hacked

,

tell

,

been

Topics

Miscellaneous Security

,

Consumer Firewalls

Participating Experts
6
Points
250
Comments
8

Trusted by hundreds of thousands everyday for fast, accurate and reliable tech support.

  • "The time we save is the biggest benefit of Experts Exchange to Warner Bros. What could take multiple guys 2 hours or more each to find is accessed in around 15 minutes on Experts Exchange." Mike Kapnisakis, Warner Bros.
  • "Our team likes having a resource that is more secure than just using Google and most experts using this service really know their stuff. It's nice to look here first versus using Google." Dayna Sellner, Lockheed Martin
  • "Anytime that I've been stumped with a problem, 9 out of 10 times Experts Exchange has either the accepted solution or an open discussion of the potential solution to the problem." Kenny Red, eBay Inc.

See what Experts Exchange can do for you.

Got a question?

We've got the answer.

Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Need individual assistance?

Our experts are ready to help.

If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Want to learn from the best?

Read articles from industry experts.

Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.

Screenshot of an Article

Working on a long term project?

Store your work and research.

Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Access the answers to your technology questions today.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

What Makes Experts Exchange Unique?

Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.

Trusted by the world's most respected brands.

image of each brand's logo

Faithfully serving IT professionals since 1996.

Experts Exchange Logo

Try it out and discover for yourself.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

Related Solutions

  1. USA
    I THINK IT'S NOT A COMPUTER RELATED QUESTION. I DONE MY BBA (BACHELOR OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION) AND PGDCA ( VB5, ORACLE, C, MS-OFFICE ). OVER A SPAN 3 YEARS EXPERIENCE IN APPLICATION SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT AND OFFICIAL OPERATIONS. I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW THAT I CAN APP...
  2. hacking
    Hello, This may be an uncomfortable question to answer for some, but I need to ask anyway. I have until monday to learn how to hack. The purpose of this is to pass tests, and gain generall knowledge of computer security to get into a certain unit which deals with computer s...
  3. Legal Action when my site gets hacked, any suggestions?
    This isn't technincal, but one of my companies sites was hacked... Here is a copy of the page: http://ootoaoo.no-ip.com/dump/hacked.htm They didn't delete anything thank god, and I'm going to implement ISA 2004, but my question is, can we take legal action? Does anyone kno...
  4. help with rootkit scan results
    I just ran a rootkit scan (twice, with the same results) and I need some guidance in interpreting the results. Just FYI, I was not running anything else at the time of the scan, although there may have been background tasks running that normally start with windows (WIN 2K). ...
  5. Disable rootkit
    I have installed rootkit on my server, it runs at midnight! now like to disbale this for now, i will turn it on later. I need some help (tips and command) to disable and enable this. Thanks in advance.

Free Tech Articles

  1. WARNING: 5 Reasons why you should NEVER fix a computer for free.
    It is in our nature to love the puzzle. We are obsessed. The lot of us. We love puzzles. We love the challenge. We thrive on finding the answer. We hate disarray. It bothers us deep in our soul. W...
  2. SCCM OSD Basic troubleshooting
    SCCM 2007 OSD is a fantastic way to deploy operating systems, however, like most things SCCM issues can sometimes be difficult to resolve due to the sheer volume of logs to sift through and the dispe...
  3. Migrate Small Business Server 2003 to Exchange 2010 and Windows 2008 R2
    This guide is intended to provide step by step instructions on how to migrate from Small Business Server 2003 to Windows 2008 R2 with Exchange 2010. For this migration to work you will need the fo...
  4. Create a Win7 Gadget
    This article shows you how to create a simple "Gadget" -- a sort of mini-application supported by Windows 7 and Vista. Gadgets can be dropped anywhere on the desktop to provide instant information, ...
  5. Outlook continually prompting for username and password
    There have been a lot of questions recently regarding Outlook prompting for a username and password whilst using Exchange 2007. There are a few reasons why this would happen and I will try to cover t...
  6. Backup Exchange 2010 Information Store using Windows Backup
    There seems to be quite a lot of confusion around the ability to backup Exchange 2010 using the built in Windows Backup feature. This stems from the omission of this feature prior to Exchange 2007 s...

Cloud Class Webinars

  1. Avoiding Bugs in Microsoft Access
    Alison Balter takes and in-depth look at avoiding bugs in Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the immediate window to debug your applications, invoking the debugger, using breakpoints to troubleshoot, stepping through code, setting the next statement to execute, ...
  2. Top 10 Best New Features in Visio 2010
    Scott Helmers gives live demonstrations of the top 10 new features in Visio 2010. This webinar will teach you how to create compelling diagrams by adding shapes to the page with a single click, linking the shapes in a diagram to data in Excel (or SQL Server, or SharePoint), ...
  3. IT Consultant Business Secrets Revealed
    Michael Munger, Experts Exchange tech pro and IT consultant, pulls back the curtain on his very successful businesses and answers question on every IT consultant and business owner should know about. He shares secrets on what he did to solve the 5 most common problems in IT, ...
  4. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
    Quest CTO, Mike Billon, gives an overview of the steps involved in building a dunamic disaster recovery plan. Through case studies and an examination of software/hardware tooles for monitoring and testing, you'll gain a better understandin of where you are, where you want ...
  5. Organize Your Visio Diagrams with Containers and Lists
    Scott Helmers uses cross functional flowcharts, wireframe diagrams, data graphic legends and seating charts to teach you: how to ustilize all three new structured diagram components in Visio 2010, the best practices for organizeing shapes in previous version of Visio, how to organize ...
  6. How to Us Objects, Properties, Events and Methods in Microsoft Access
    Alison Dalter gives an in-depbth look at objects, properties, events and methods in Microsoft Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the object browser, referring to objects, working with properties and methods, working with object variables, understanding the ...

Join the Community

Give a Little. Get a Lot.

Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.

Join the Community

Answers

 

by: Cyber-DudePosted on 2004-06-10 at 13:03:37ID: 11283309

Trond,

Had the same problem a couple a years ago... Todays hackers are using IP spoofing in-order to mimic true IP from other areas of the world and you wont be able to track them without the propper knoledge...

You mentioned DMZ... which means you are using Firewall... which Firewall is that?

Cyber

 

by: EvilAardvarkPosted on 2004-06-10 at 13:48:35ID: 11283607

Get HijackThis... http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html

Run it and post the log here.

I'm guessing if the traffic is incoming, that it's other infected computers trying to infect you.

If you're patched on IIS, IE, and Windows, you should be safe, but post your HiJackThis log here anyway, to make sure.  I'll check it out for ya.

 

by: richrumblePosted on 2004-06-10 at 17:35:13ID: 11284863

You could scan yourself with the tools most hackers are using, and see if your vulnerable
Nessus
and
GFI Languard are very popular.
McAfee has definitions beyond what Norton has, it can pick up keyloggers and password crackers, where notron and many others do not.

Even though port 80 is all that is open, M$ IIS and M$ SQL are the top 2 exploits on the net... so be sure your patched up with all M$ patches and updates, and run these tools to help clamp down on IIS. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=DDE9EFC0-BB30-47EB-9A61-FD755D23CDEC&displaylang=en

IP spoofing, works, but not in a way that hackers would like. You can spoof where your coming from, however if you do, nothing get's returned. What hackers do though that works better, is hack one PC, then hack another, and another, each time jumping from the new hacked pc the the next, this makes the tracks a little harder to trace, and allows data to get back to the hacker to use. Most DOS can use the benefit of spoofed source address, since you don't care to get the info back, you just want to flood...

Back to your question... there are ways to tell, usually by your servers behaving weirdly, or files out of place or missing, your web page being over written etc...
A tool like TDS3 is very good at heuristics and finding malicious programs or scripts. Anti-Virus software such as McAfee AV is great... but nothing beats a self audit with all the latest tools and tricks. I recommend the "Hacking Exposed" Series of books... not sure if they are translated into other languages yet though...

http://nsa2.www.conxion.com/ (good guides)
-rich

 

by: Newjack64Posted on 2004-06-13 at 00:25:35ID: 11299023

You might want to check out Microsoft Knowledge Base Q49500 at http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q49/5/00.ASP.  This has a good list of vendors that supply commercial antivirus products that will scan for and detect backdoor programs before they can cause damage.  When you are checking this, make sure you look for critical features such as binary signatures or Registry entries that are not typically altered by slow-witted attackers, and make sure that you always keep your antivirus databases up-to-date, else there isn't much use for them in regards to new and dangerous viruses and such floating around.

A good tool maybe worth looking into is called The Cleaner by MooSoft Development (http://www.moosoft.com/cleaner.html).  It's relatively inexpensive and can eliminate over 1,000 different types of backdoor programs and Trojans.

When it comes to using netstat, although it may be a decent tool to use in determing what is connected to your computer, its weakness comes in that it doesn't really tell you what is really listening on the ports.  A prominent group called Foundstone (http://www.foundstone.com) has a tool called fport (which is free) that works like netstat, only it tells you what is listening on the ports.

Example with netstat:
Proto     Local Address                                            Foreign Address                                               State
TCP       0.0.0.0:135                                               0.0.0.0:0                                                         LISTENING
TCP       192.168.1.216:139                                     0.0.0.0:0                                                         LISTENING
...
UDP       0.0.0.0:31337                                            *:*

In this example, something is connected to port 31337, which is actually the popular trojan called Back Orifice.  But, a typical user would not know that if (s)he didn't know what port Back Orifice connects on.

Example with fport:
PID                      NAME                                      TYPE                               PORT
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
222                     IEXPLORE                                 UDP                                1033
224                     OUTLOOK                                 UDP                                1107
...
245                     MAPISP32                                 UDP                                 0
266                     nc                                            TCP                                 2222

Through using a tool like fport in this example, we can see that someone is listening on your system using a popular hacker tool called netcat on port 2222, which would have only been identified by just a port number using netstat.

When it comes to checking backdoor port numbers, I would recommend checking these sites out:
http://www.tlsecurity.net/main.htm
http://www.commodon.com/threat/threat-ports.htm
http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~rakerman/port-table.html

Another thing that might be good to check out is checking your Process List after hitting Ctrl Alt Del, and seeing if tools like nc, WINVNC.exe, etc. are running on your computer.  Hope this helps and good luck.

 

by: alwayssmilingPosted on 2004-06-21 at 20:15:15ID: 11365599

Assuming you're using a router or some other 'hardware' firewall, I would reccommend downloading and installing a software firewall on the "DMZ" computer.  

Good ones can be found at http://www.zonelabs.com (ZoneAlarm),  http://www.sygate.com (Sygate's Personal Firewall), or http://www.kerio.com (Kerio's Personal Firewall).  However, if your computer is part of a commercial network, you will need to purchase their "Pro" versions.  This way, you're keeping your setup legal.  And, in some cases, the Pro version is better anyhow.. It has more features and better tech support than their 'free' versions.

Personally, I've used all three.  If you're paranoid about what's happening on your computer, then Kerio is for you.. It monitors and applies security settings to internet connections, network connections, and even programs on your computer (at it's strongest settings).  If you want simple "Set it and Forget it" then Zone Alarm is probably the one for you.. However, Sygate is fairly close to Zone Alarm in the "Set it and Forget It" concept.  I can't reccommend one over another, because I like all three.. And, each has it's advantages depending on the situation I am using it in.  

The only software-based firewall I won't reccommend at all is "Black Ice".. I've seen too many security issues concerning this firewall, and Not enough fixes for them..  It's almost like not having one at all.

Finally, is there a specific reason the computer is in a DMZ state?  Is it possible to configure your hardware firewall to allow you to open the ports you need, without having to set the computer outside of the safety net it provides?  That's another option to look into.

Hope this helps you.
Patrick.

 

by: mgbyrne2004Posted on 2004-07-07 at 20:37:21ID: 11498460

*** advertising removed by Netminder, Site Admin ***

20120131-EE-VQP-002

3 Ways to Join

30-Day Free Trial

The Experts

98% positive feedback on 31,087 answers since March 2000. angeliii is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for his work with MS SQL Server & Develoment.

He has also proven his knowledge of Visual Basic Programming, PHP Scripting and Oracle Databases.

The Experts

97% positive feedback on 10,752 answers since July 2000. lrmoore has more than 18 years experience in the networking industry.

The six-time Mircosoft MVPs specialties include firewalls, virtual private networking, and network management.

Testimonials

"...and excellent source for support... Kind of like having your very own IT dept." Electriciansnet

Testimonials

"I was apprehensive at signing up at first. However... it has already made my life as an IT administrator much easier." JaCrews

Testimonials

"WOW! You guys have great, active, and knowledgeable people on here." moore50

Business Clients

Business Clients

In the Press

"If you’ve got a question... Experts Exchange can supply an answer.”

In the Press

"...an invaluable aid for both IT professionals and those who require tech support."

In the Press

"where IT professionals provide quick answers on just about any topic"

Business Account Plans

Loading Advertisement...