Passive Asset Detection System Catalogs Hosts Offering Services

I'm happy to report successful use of Matt Shelton's Passive Asset Detection System (PADS). PADS watchs network traffic and tries to recognize and record services it sees. I was able to compile and run PADS on Red Hat 9.0 and FreeBSD 5.2.1. Here is a sample run with PADS in the foreground. Because I do not specify the network to watch (with the "-n" switch), PADS reports every host offering a service:

drury:/$ sudo pads -i fxp0

pads - Passive Asset Detection System

v1.1 - 08/14/04

Matt Shelton 



[-] Processing Existing assets.csv

[-] Listening on interface fxp0



[*] Asset Found:  IP Address - 10.2.2.99 / MAC Address

 - XX:30:48:XX:f9:56

[*] Asset Found:  Port - 0 / Host - 10.2.2.98 / Service

 - ICMP / Application - ICMP

[*] Asset Found:  Port - 80 / Host - 66.35.250.209 / Service

 - www / Application - Apache 1.3.26 (Unix)

[*] Asset Found:  Port - 80 / Host - 66.35.250.203 / Service

 - www / Application - Apache 1.3.27 (Unix)

^C

[*] 1587 Packets Received

[*] 0 Packets Dropped by Software

[*] 10 Packets Dropped by Interface



[-] Closing PCAP Connection

You can run PADS as a daemon by activating the "-d" switch. To view the results in an analyst-friendly manner, use pads-report:

drury:/$ pads-report -r assets.csv 

pads-report - PADS Text Reporting Module

1.1 - $Date: 2004/08/14 23:58:49 $

Matt Shelton 



1 ------------------------------------------------------

IP:       10.2.2.98

DNS:      mydns.mysite.com

ICMP:     Enabled



2 ------------------------------------------------------

IP:       10.2.2.99

DNS:      drury.mysite.com.

MAC(s):   XX:30:48:XX:f9:56  (2004/08/17 15:50:38)



3 ------------------------------------------------------

IP:       66.35.250.203

DNS:      sourceforge.net



Port  Service    Application                   

80    www        Apache 1.3.27 (Unix)          



4 ------------------------------------------------------

IP:       66.35.250.209

DNS:      projects.sourceforge.net



Port  Service    Application                   

80    www        Apache 1.3.26 (Unix)          

If you prefer to parse the results yourself, they are stored in a CSV file:

drury:/$ cat assets.csv 

10.2.2.99,0,0,ARP,XX:30:48:XX:f9:56,1092772238

10.2.2.98,0,1,ICMP,ICMP,1092772238

66.35.250.209,80,6,www,Apache 1.3.26 (Unix),1092772238

66.35.250.203,80,6,www,Apache 1.3.27 (Unix),1092772391

I believe this is a useful tool to run on sensors to quickly catalog the systems and services they see. Note that if a system in the watched network does not offer any services, and does not reply to ICMP echo packets with ICMP echo replies, PADS will not see them.

PADS makes it decisions using a pads-signature-list file which has entries like the following:

# WWW Signatures

www,v/Apache/$1//,Server: Apache\/([\S]+)[\r\n]

www,v/Apache/$1/$2/,Server: Apache\/([\S]+)[\s]+\((.*)\)

www,v/Apache/$1/$2/,Server: Apache\/([\S]+)[\s]+([\S]+)

www,v/Apache///,Server: Apache[\r\n]

PADS is unlike p0f in that p0f identifies operating systems passively, which PADS identifies hosts offering services. I'd like to see PADS do both, if possible.

Update: A buffer overflow vulnerability was found in PADS 1.1. Be sure to upgrade to 1.1.1.

Matt, if you see this, I can't get mail through to your matt at mattshelton dot com or mattshelton at users dot sourceforge dot net accounts. The error I see is:

    host smtp.secureserver.net [64.202.166.12]:

    553 sorry, that domain isn't in my list of allowed rcpthosts (#5.7.1)