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Capec-294 Detail

ICMP Address Mask Request

Detailed Software Typical Severity: Low

Parents: 292

Threats: T60 T65 T80 T258 T273 T288 T291 T302 T334 T392 T407

Description

An adversary sends an ICMP Type 17 Address Mask Request to gather information about a target's networking configuration. ICMP Address Mask Requests are defined by RFC-950, "Internet Standard Subnetting Procedure." An Address Mask Request is an ICMP type 17 message that triggers a remote system to respond with a list of its related subnets, as well as its default gateway and broadcast address via an ICMP type 18 Address Mask Reply datagram. Gathering this type of information helps the adversary plan router-based attacks as well as denial-of-service attacks against the broadcast address.

Extended Description

Many modern operating systems will not respond to ICMP type 17 messages for security reasons. Determining whether a system or router will respond to an ICMP Address Mask Request helps the adversary determine operating system or firmware version. Additionally, because these types of messages are rare, they are easily spotted by intrusion detection systems. Many ICMP scanning tools support IP spoofing to help conceal the origin of the actual request among a storm of similar ICMP messages. It is a common practice for border firewalls and gateways to be configured to block ingress ICMP type 17 and egress ICMP type 18 messages.
External ID Source Link Description
CAPEC-294 capec https://capec.mitre.org/data/definitions/294.html
CWE-200 cwe http://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/200.html
REF-33 reference_from_CAPEC Stuart McClure, Joel Scambray, George Kurtz, Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions (6th Edition), 2009, McGraw Hill
REF-139 reference_from_CAPEC http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc950.html J. Mogul, J. Postel, RFC950 - Internet Standard Subnetting Procedure, 1985--08
REF-123 reference_from_CAPEC http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc792.html J. Postel, RFC792 - Internet Control Messaging Protocol, 1981--09, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
REF-125 reference_from_CAPEC http://nmap.org/docs/discovery.pdf Mark Wolfgang, Host Discovery with Nmap, 2002--11
REF-34 reference_from_CAPEC Gordon "Fyodor" Lyon, Nmap Network Scanning: The Official Nmap Project Guide to Network Discovery and Security Scanning (3rd "Zero Day" Edition,), 2008, Insecure.com LLC, ISBN: 978-0-9799587-1-7

Not present

  1. The ability to send an ICMP type 17 query (Address Mask Request) to a remote target and receive an ICMP type 18 message (ICMP Address Mask Reply) in response. Generally, modern operating systems will ignore ICMP type 17 messages, however, routers will commonly respond to this request.
  1. The ability to send custom ICMP queries. This can be accomplished via the use of various scanners or utilities.

Not present

Authorization Access Control Confidentiality
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