OS Fingerprinting/Identification for Windows XP Workstations

Hmmm... as long as the MSFirewall is up and configured properly, you _shouldn't_ be able to fingerprint a machine behind it...  The whole concept of a firewall is to protect the computer behind the "wall", with only small holes/ports poked in it for access from the "outside" - which in this case, is your internal network.  Nmap, Santa/Satan, etc. work by assessing what ports are open and the OS generated responses on those ports to do a "best guess" of what OS is behind it.

If you are running a Windows Domain and all systems are MS, you could try using MS Baseline Analyzer to check out your systems - it'll use most of the standard MS ports to communicate and assess the patch levels of your desktop systems...  Take a look here -->  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/tools/mbsa2/default.mspx

If you really want to use NMap, you could also use your Domain Security Policy to disable the firewall on all your domain systems (not recommended), then run your scans.  You can re-enable the firewall later, but could possibly lose any custom configs on the workstations... and you could also take it in the shorts if you've got any trojans/worms lurking on your network...

Good Luck,
Scooter

Is this nework a domain?

What information specifically are you looking for from the systems?

It is possible to write special scripts to return results. This requires creativity and a little know how.

Good suggestions but writing scripts would be to much work. I scan multiple subnets within my organization and need to do OS Fingerprint on workstations with firewalls installed. I do not need to identify if they are vunlnerable just the identifications of the station, their IP. NMap is a good tool but doesn't do anything when a user is running a firewall.

Scootter, MBSA did not work for us. We're not running a Windows Domain and but do use LDAP for certain authenticaiton schemess. I just ran the software and tested it on the network. It did not detect OS.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to detect devices on the network even if they have a software firewall????

We i was in a similar situation in a previous job and was able to construct a script to do the following:

1) Insert a scheduled task on a list of machines obtained from computer brower list from a server
2) The inserted task is nothing more than a batch file with the following command     IPCONFIG /ALL >> \\server\share\%computername%.txt

It was actually pretty easy but the first script was written in VB and i'm way to rusty now.

Try X-Probe which is an open source stuff;

http://sourceforge.net/projects/xprobe

Cheers,
Rajesh