Question

Terminal Services: Logging/Restricting access by IP address

Asked by: vpikula

Hi Experts,

Recently we have been under heavy attack by some outsider who is trying to get into our dedicated Win2K webserver via Terminal Services. These "brute-force" attacks have been going on for a few months and are increasing sharply. From the event log I can see that the attacker(s) is using different workstations when trying to log in, (poss. those are being hijacked).

Problem is that we DO use Terminal Services quite a lot to perform maintenance to our server, so we CANNOT shut it down altogether.

First Q to answer is: Win2000 doesn't log IP addresses with login failures -- how to turn that on?

Second, and the beef of this Question is: Would it be possible to restrict TS access simply by IP address? I know this must be a hard nut to crack, and I've heard it is impossible to do, but any other solution (even with 3rd party software) would be very helpful indeed. Maybe connect remotely with Symantec or similar?

500 extra points in a seperate Q for a solution to the second problem (restricting).

Thanks,
VictorP

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Asked On
2004-02-21 at 11:46:21ID20893241
Tags

ip

,

terminal

,

restrict

,

access

,

address

Topic

Web Servers

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
2

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Answers

 

by: fz2hqsPosted on 2004-02-23 at 01:38:59ID: 10430668

The simple answer here would be to get a firewall. The firewall would either deny or silently drop requests from the "hacker" and you can log those, simalarly you can define certain ACL's to allow you in

 

by: jeffkearnsPosted on 2004-02-25 at 21:00:00ID: 10457310

If you restrict access (with a firewall) to Terminal Services, you won't really need to log the IP anymore, as they won't be able to get to the server anymore.

However, if you really want to know the IP address of the attacker, use the logging function of the firewall to log the IP address of anyone trying to access the TS ports. First, restrict access to the TS ports to whatever IP you will be coming from. Second, set the firewall to log all attempts to access the TS ports from all other IP addresses.

Since you used the term "dedicated Win2K webserver" I assume this must be a remote server, and you can't install a hardware firewall - at least not without additional monthly fees. Here are some software firewalls that I've seen mentioned many times:

    http://www.zonealarm.com
    http://blackice.iss.net/
    http://www.famhost.com/support/pktfilter.zip (free)

If you can use a hardware firewall, definitely do so. However, if it's not possible, one of these should do the trick.

Good luck,

Jeff

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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