TCP Idle Scan (-sI) | Nmap Network Scanning

TCP Idle Scan (`-sI`)

	Note
	Volunteers have translated this section into Spanish and Portuguese (Brazil)

In 1998, security researcher Antirez (who also wrote the hping2 tool used in parts of this book) posted to the Bugtraq mailing list an ingenious new port scanning technique. Idle scan, as it has become known, allows for completely blind port scanning. Attackers can actually scan a target without sending a single packet to the target from their own IP address! Instead, a clever side-channel attack allows for the scan to be bounced off a dumb “zombie host”. Intrusion detection system (IDS) reports will finger the innocent zombie as the attacker. Besides being extraordinarily stealthy, this scan type permits discovery of IP-based trust relationships between machines.

While idle scanning is more complex than any of the techniques discussed so far, you don't need to be a TCP/IP expert to understand it. It can be put together from these basic facts:

One way to determine whether a TCP port is open is to send a SYN (session establishment) packet to the port. The target machine will respond with a SYN/ACK (session request acknowledgment) packet if the port is open, and RST (reset) if the port is closed. This is the basis of the previously discussed SYN scan.
A machine that receives an unsolicited SYN/ACK packet will respond with a RST. An unsolicited RST will be ignored.
Every IP packet on the Internet has a fragment identification number (IP ID). Since many operating systems simply increment this number for each packet they send, probing for the IPID can tell an attacker how many packets have been sent since the last probe.

By combining these traits, it is possible to scan a target network while forging your identity so that it looks like an innocent zombie machine did the scanning.

Idle Scan Step by Step

Fundamentally, an idle scan consists of three steps that are repeated for each port:

Probe the zombie's IP ID and record it.
Forge a SYN packet from the zombie and send it to the desired port on the target. Depending on the port state, the target's reaction may or may not cause the zombie's IP ID to be incremented.
Probe the zombie's IP ID again. The target port state is then determined by comparing this new IP ID with the one recorded in step 1.

After this process, the zombie's IP ID should have increased by either one or two. An increase of one indicates that the zombie hasn't sent out any packets, except for its reply to the attacker's probe. This lack of sent packets means that the port is not open (the target must have sent the zombie either a RST packet, which was ignored, or nothing at all). An increase of two indicates that the zombie sent out a packet between the two probes. This extra packet usually means that the port is open (the target presumably sent the zombie a SYN/ACK packet in response to the forged SYN, which induced a RST packet from the zombie). Increases larger than two usually signify a bad zombie host. It might not have predictable IP ID numbers, or might be engaged in communication unrelated to the idle scan.

Even though what happens with a closed port is slightly different from what happens with a filtered port, the attacker measures the same result in both cases, namely, an IP ID increase of 1. Therefore it is not possible for the idle scan to distinguish between closed and filtered ports. When Nmap records an IP ID increase of 1 it marks the port closed|filtered.

For those wanting more detail, the following three diagrams show exactly what happens in the three cases of an open, closed, and filtered port. The actors in each are:

the attacker, the zombie, and the target.

Figure 5.6. Idle scan of an open port

Step 1: The attacker sends a SYN/ACK to the zombie. The zombie, not expecting the SYN/ACK, sends back a RST, disclosing its IP ID. Step 2: The target sends a SYN/ACK in response to the SYN that appears to come from the zombie. The zombie, not expecting it, sends back a RST, incrementing its IP ID in the process. The zombie's IP ID has increased by two since step 1, so the port is open!

Figure 5.7. Idle scan of a closed port

Step 1: The attacker sends a SYN/ACK to the zombie. The zombie, not expecting the SYN/ACK, sends back a RST, disclosing its IP ID. This step is always the same. Step 2: The target sends a RST (the port is closed) in response to the SYN that appears to come from the zombie. The zombie ignores the unsolicited RST, leaving it IP ID unchanged. Step 3: The zombie's IP ID has increased by only one since step 1, so the port is not open.

Figure 5.8. Idle scan of a filtered port

Step 1: Just as in the other two cases, the attacker sends a SYN/ACK to the zombie. The zombie disclosed its IP ID. Step 2: The target, obstinately filtering its port, ignores the SYN that appears to come from the zombie. The zombie, unaware that anything has happened, does not increment its IP ID. Step 3: The zombie's IP ID has increased by only 1 since step 1, so the port is not open. From the attacker's point of view this filtered port is indistinguishable from a closed port.

Idle scan is the ultimate stealth scan. Nmap offers decoy scanning (-D) to help users shield their identity, but that (unlike idle scan) still requires an attacker to send some packets to the target from his real IP address in order to get scan results back. One upshot of idle scan is that intrusion detection systems will generally send alerts claiming that the zombie machine has launched a scan against them. So it can be used to frame some other party for a scan. Keep this possibility in mind when reading alerts from your IDS.

A unique advantage of idle scan is that it can be used to defeat certain packet filtering firewalls and routers. IP source address filtering is a common (though weak) security mechanism for limiting machines that may connect to a sensitive host or network. For example, a company database server might only allow connections from the public web server that accesses it. Or a home user might only allow SSH (interactive login) connections from his work machines.

A more disturbing scenario occurs when some company bigwig demands that network administrators open a firewall hole so he can access internal network resources from his home IP address. This can happen when executives are unwilling or unable to use secure VPN alternatives.

Idle scanning can sometimes be used to map out these trust relationships. The key factor is that idle scan results list open ports from the zombie host's perspective. A normal scan against the aforementioned database server might show no ports open, but performing an idle scan while using the web server's IP as the zombie could expose the trust relationship by showing the database-related service ports as open.

Mapping out these trust relationships can be very useful to attackers for prioritizing targets. The web server discussed above may seem mundane to an attacker until she notices its special database access.

A disadvantage to idle scanning is that it takes far longer than most other scan types. Despite the optimized algorithms described in the section called “Idle Scan Implementation Algorithms”, A 15-second SYN scan could take 15 minutes or more as an idle scan. Another issue is that you must be able to spoof packets as if they are coming from the zombie and have them reach the target machine. Many ISPs (particularly dialup and residential broadband providers) now implement egress filtering to prevent this sort of packet spoofing. Higher end providers (such as colocation and T1 services) are much less likely to do this. If this filtering is in effect, Nmap will print a quick error message for every zombie you try. If changing ISPs is not an option, you might try using another IP on the same ISP network. Sometimes the filtering only blocks spoofing of IP addresses that are outside the range used by customers. Another challenge with idle scan is that you must find a working zombie host, as described in the next section.

Finding a Working Idle Scan Zombie Host

The first step in executing an IP ID idle scan is to find an appropriate zombie. It needs to assign IP ID packets incrementally on a global (rather than per-host it communicates with) basis. It should be idle (hence the scan name), as extraneous traffic will bump up its IP ID sequence, confusing the scan logic. The lower the latency between the attacker and the zombie, and between the zombie and the target, the faster the scan will proceed.

When an idle scan is attempted, Nmap tests the proposed zombie and reports any problems with it. If one doesn't work, try another. Enough Internet hosts are vulnerable that zombie candidates aren't hard to find. Since the hosts need to be idle, choosing a well-known host such as www.yahoo.com or google.com will almost never work.

A common approach is to simply execute a Nmap ping scan of some network. You could use Nmap's random IP selection mode (-iR), but that is likely to result in far away zombies with substantial latency. Choosing a network near your source address, or near the target, produces better results. You can try an idle scan using each available host from the ping scan results until you find one that works. As usual, it is best to ask permission before using someone's machines for unexpected purposes such as idle scanning.

We didn't just choose a printer icon to represent a zombie in our illustrations to be funny—simple network devices often make great zombies because they are commonly both underused (idle) and built with simple network stacks which are vulnerable to IP ID traffic detection.

Performing a port scan and OS identification (-O) on the zombie candidate network rather than just a ping scan helps in selecting a good zombie. As long as verbose mode (-v) is enabled, OS detection will usually determine the IP ID sequence generation method and print a line such as “IP ID Sequence Generation: Incremental”. If the type is given as Incremental or Broken little-endian incremental, the machine is a good zombie candidate. That is still no guarantee that it will work, as Solaris and some other systems create a new IP ID sequence for each host they communicate with. The host could also be too busy. OS detection and the open port list can also help in identifying systems that are likely to be idle.

Another approach to identifying zombie candidates is the run the ipidseq NSE script against a host. This script probes a host to classify its IP ID generation method, then prints the IP ID classification much like the OS detection does. Like most NSE scripts, ipidseq.nse can be run against many hosts in parallel, making it another good choice when scanning entire networks looking for suitable hosts.

While identifying a suitable zombie takes some initial work, you can keep re-using the good ones.

Executing an Idle Scan

Once a suitable zombie has been found, performing a scan is easy. Simply specify the zombie hostname to the -sI option and Nmap does the rest. Example 5.19 shows an example of Ereet scanning the Recording Industry Association of America by bouncing an idle scan off an Adobe machine named Kiosk.

Example 5.19. An idle scan against the RIAA

# nmap -Pn -p- -sI kiosk.adobe.com www.riaa.com

Starting Nmap ( https://nmap.org )
Idlescan using zombie kiosk.adobe.com (192.150.13.111:80); Class: Incremental
Nmap scan report for 208.225.90.120
(The 65522 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)
Port       State       Service
21/tcp     open        ftp
25/tcp     open        smtp
80/tcp     open        http
111/tcp    open        sunrpc
135/tcp    open        loc-srv
443/tcp    open        https
1027/tcp   open        IIS
1030/tcp   open        iad1
2306/tcp   open        unknown
5631/tcp   open        pcanywheredata
7937/tcp   open        unknown
7938/tcp   open        unknown
36890/tcp  open        unknown

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 2594.47 seconds

From the scan above, we learn that the RIAA is not very security conscious (note the open PC Anywhere, portmapper, and Legato nsrexec ports). Since they apparently have no firewall, it is unlikely that they have an IDS. But if they do, it will show kiosk.adobe.com as the scan culprit. The -Pn option prevents Nmap from sending an initial ping packet to the RIAA machine. That would have disclosed Ereet's true address. The scan took a long time because -p- was specified to scan all 65K ports. Don't try to use kiosk for your scans, as it has already been removed.

By default, Nmap forges probes to the target from the source port 80 of the zombie. You can choose a different port by appending a colon and port number to the zombie name (e.g. -sI kiosk.adobe.com:113). The chosen port must not be filtered from the attacker or the target. A SYN scan of the zombie should show the port in the open or closed state.

Idle Scan Implementation Algorithms

While the section called “Idle Scan Step by Step” describes idle scan at the fundamental level, the Nmap implementation is far more complex. Key differences are parallelism for quick execution and redundancy to reduce false positives.

Parallelizing idle scan is trickier than with other scan techniques due to indirect method of deducing port states. If Nmap sends probes to many ports on the target and then checks the new IP ID value of the zombie, the number of IP ID increments will expose how many target ports are open, but not which ones. This isn't actually a major problem, as the vast majority of ports in a large scan will be closed|filtered. Since only open ports cause the IP ID value to increment, Nmap will see no intervening increments and can mark the whole group of ports as closed|filtered. Nmap can scan groups of up to 100 ports in parallel. If Nmap probes a group then finds that the zombie IP ID has increased <N> times, there must be <N> open ports among that group. Nmap then finds the open ports with a binary search. It splits the group into two and separately sends probes to each. If a subgroup shows zero open ports, that group's ports are all marked closed|filtered. If a subgroup shows one or more open ports, it is divided again and the process continues until those ports are identified. While this technique adds complexity, it can reduce scan times by an order of magnitude over scanning just one port at a time.

Reliability is another major idle scanning concern. If the zombie host sends packets to any unrelated machines during the scan, its IP ID increments. This causes Nmap to think it has found an open port. Fortunately, parallel scanning helps here too. If Nmap scans 100 ports in a group and the IP ID increase signals two open ports, Nmap splits the group into two fifty-port subgroups. When Nmap does an IP ID scan on both subgroups, the total zombie IP ID increase better be two again! Otherwise, Nmap will detect the inconsistency and rescan the groups. It also modifies group size and scan timing based on the detected reliability rate of the zombie. If Nmap detects too many inconsistent results, it will quit and ask the user to provide a better zombie.

Sometimes a packet trace is the best way to understand complex algorithms and techniques such as these. Once again, the Nmap --packet-trace makes these trivial to produce when desired. The remainder of this section provides an annotated packet trace of an actual seven port idle scan. The IP addresses have been changed to Attacker, Zombie, and Target and some irrelevant aspects of the trace lines (such as TCP window size) have been removed for clarity.

Attacker# nmap -sI Zombie -Pn -p20-25,110 -r --packet-trace -v Target
Starting Nmap ( https://nmap.org )

-Pn is necessary for stealth, otherwise ping packets would be sent to the target from Attacker's real address. Version scanning would also expose the true address, and so -sV is not specified. The -r option (turns off port randomization) is only used to make this example easier to follow.

Nmap firsts tests Zombie's IP ID sequence generation by sending six SYN/ACK packets to it and analyzing the responses. This helps Nmap immediately weed out bad zombies. It is also necessary because some systems (usually Microsoft Windows machines, though not all Windows boxes do this) increment the IP ID by 256 for each packet sent rather than by one. This happens on little-endian machines when they don't convert the IP ID to network byte order (big-endian). Nmap uses these initial probes to detect and work around this problem.

SENT (0.0060s) TCP Attacker:51824 > Zombie:80 SA id=35996
SENT (0.0900s) TCP Attacker:51825 > Zombie:80 SA id=25914
SENT (0.1800s) TCP Attacker:51826 > Zombie:80 SA id=39591
RCVD (0.1550s) TCP Zombie:80 > Attacker:51824 R id=15669
SENT (0.2700s) TCP Attacker:51827 > Zombie:80 SA id=43604
RCVD (0.2380s) TCP Zombie:80 > Attacker:51825 R id=15670
SENT (0.3600s) TCP Attacker:51828 > Zombie:80 SA id=34186
RCVD (0.3280s) TCP Zombie:80 > Attacker:51826 R id=15671
SENT (0.4510s) TCP Attacker:51829 > Zombie:80 SA id=27949
RCVD (0.4190s) TCP Zombie:80 > Attacker:51827 R id=15672
RCVD (0.5090s) TCP Zombie:80 > Attacker:51828 R id=15673
RCVD (0.5990s) TCP Zombie:80 > Attacker:51829 R id=15674
Idlescan using zombie Zombie (Zombie:80); Class: Incremental

This test demonstrates that the zombie is working fine. Every IP ID was an increase of one over the previous one. So the system appears to be idle and vulnerable to IP ID traffic detection. These promising results are still subject to the next test, in which Nmap spoofs four packets to Zombie as if they are coming from Target. Then it probes the zombie to ensure that the IP ID increased. If it hasn't, then it is likely that either the attacker's ISP is blocking the spoofed packets or the zombie uses a separate IP ID sequence counter for each host it communicates with. Both are common occurrences, so Nmap always performs this test. The last-known Zombie IP ID was 15674, as shown above.

SENT (0.5990s) TCP Target:51823 > Zombie:80 SA id=1390
SENT (0.6510s) TCP Target:51823 > Zombie:80 SA id=24025
SENT (0.7110s) TCP Target:51823 > Zombie:80 SA id=15046
SENT (0.7710s) TCP Target:51823 > Zombie:80 SA id=48658
SENT (1.0800s) TCP Attacker:51987 > Zombie:80 SA id=27659
RCVD (1.2290s) TCP Zombie:80 > Attacker:51987 R id=15679

The four spoofed packets coupled with the probe from Attacker caused the Zombie to increase its IP ID from 15674 to 15679. Perfect! Now the real scanning begins. Remember that 15679 is the latest Zombie IP ID.

Initiating Idlescan against Target
SENT (1.2290s) TCP Zombie:80 > Target:20 S id=13200
SENT (1.2290s) TCP Zombie:80 > Target:21 S id=3737
SENT (1.2290s) TCP Zombie:80 > Target:22 S id=65290
SENT (1.2290s) TCP Zombie:80 > Target:23 S id=10516
SENT (1.4610s) TCP Attacker:52050 > Zombie:80 SA id=33202
RCVD (1.6090s) TCP Zombie:80 > Attacker:52050 R id=15680

Nmap probes ports 20-23. Then it probes Zombie and finds that the new IP ID is 15680, only one higher than the previous value of 15679. There were no IP ID increments in between those two known packets, meaning ports 20-23 are probably closed|filtered. It is also possible that a SYN/ACK from a Target port has simply not arrived yet. In that case, Zombie has not responded with a RST and thus its IP ID has not incremented. To ensure accuracy, Nmap will try these ports again later.

SENT (1.8510s) TCP Attacker:51986 > Zombie:80 SA id=49278
RCVD (1.9990s) TCP Zombie:80 > Attacker:51986 R id=15681

Nmap probes again because four tenths of a second has gone by since the last probe it sent. The Zombie (if not truly idle) could have communicated with other hosts during this period, which would cause inaccuracies later if not detected here. Fortunately, that has not happened: the next IP ID is 15681 as expected.

SENT (2.0000s) TCP Zombie:80 > Target:24 S id=23928
SENT (2.0000s) TCP Zombie:80 > Target:25 S id=50425
SENT (2.0000s) TCP Zombie:80 > Target:110 S id=14207
SENT (2.2300s) TCP Attacker:52026 > Zombie:80 SA id=26941
RCVD (2.3800s) TCP Zombie:80 > Attacker:52026 R id=15684

Nmap probes ports 24, 25, and 110 then queries the Zombie IP ID. It has jumped from 15681 to 15684. It skipped 15682 and 15683, meaning that two of those three ports are likely open. Nmap cannot tell which two are open, and it could also be a false positive. So Nmap drills down deeper, dividing the scan into subgroups.

SENT (2.6210s) TCP Attacker:51867 > Zombie:80 SA id=18869
RCVD (2.7690s) TCP Zombie:80 > Attacker:51867 R id=15685
SENT (2.7690s) TCP Zombie:80 > Target:24 S id=30023
SENT (2.7690s) TCP Zombie:80 > Target:25 S id=47253
SENT (3.0000s) TCP Attacker:51979 > Zombie:80 SA id=12077
RCVD (3.1480s) TCP Zombie:80 > Attacker:51979 R id=15687

The first subgroup is ports 24 and 25. The IP ID jumps from 15685 to 15687, meaning that one of these two ports is most likely open. Nmap tries the divide and conquer approach again, probing each port separately.

SENT (3.3910s) TCP Attacker:51826 > Zombie:80 SA id=32515
RCVD (3.5390s) TCP Zombie:80 > Attacker:51826 R id=15688
SENT (3.5390s) TCP Zombie:80 > Target:24 S id=47868
SENT (3.7710s) TCP Attacker:52012 > Zombie:80 SA id=14042
RCVD (3.9190s) TCP Zombie:80 > Attacker:52012 R id=15689

A port 24 probe shows no jump in the IP ID. So that port is not open. From the results so far, Nmap has tentatively determined:

Ports 20-23 are closed|filtered
Two of the ports 24, 25, and 110 are open
One of the ports 24 and 25 are open
Port 24 is closed|filtered

Stare at this puzzle long enough and you'll find only one solution: ports 25 and 110 are open while the other five are closed|filtered. Using this logic, Nmap could cease scanning and print results now. It used to do so, but that produced too many false positive open ports when the Zombie wasn't truly idle. So Nmap continues scanning to verify its results:

SENT (4.1600s) TCP Attacker:51858 > Zombie:80 SA id=6225
RCVD (4.3080s) TCP Zombie:80 > Attacker:51858 R id=15690
SENT (4.3080s) TCP Zombie:80 > Target:25 S id=35713
SENT (4.5410s) TCP Attacker:51856 > Zombie:80 SA id=28118
RCVD (4.6890s) TCP Zombie:80 > Attacker:51856 R id=15692
Discovered open port 25/tcp on Target
SENT (4.6900s) TCP Zombie:80 > Target:110 S id=9943
SENT (4.9210s) TCP Attacker:51836 > Zombie:80 SA id=62254
RCVD (5.0690s) TCP Zombie:80 > Attacker:51836 R id=15694
Discovered open port 110/tcp on Target

Probes of ports 25 and 110 show that they are open, as we deduced previously.

SENT (5.0690s) TCP Zombie:80 > Target:20 S id=8168
SENT (5.0690s) TCP Zombie:80 > Target:21 S id=36717
SENT (5.0690s) TCP Zombie:80 > Target:22 S id=4063
SENT (5.0690s) TCP Zombie:80 > Target:23 S id=54771
SENT (5.3200s) TCP Attacker:51962 > Zombie:80 SA id=38763
RCVD (5.4690s) TCP Zombie:80 > Attacker:51962 R id=15695
SENT (5.7910s) TCP Attacker:51887 > Zombie:80 SA id=61034
RCVD (5.9390s) TCP Zombie:80 > Attacker:51887 R id=15696

Just to be sure, Nmap tries ports 20-23 again. A Zombie IP ID query shows no sequence jump. On the off chance that a SYN/ACK from Target to Zombie came in late, Nmap tries another IP ID query. This again shows no open ports. Nmap is now sufficiently confident with its results to print them.

The Idlescan took 5 seconds to scan 7 ports.
Nmap scan report for Target
PORT    STATE           SERVICE
20/tcp  closed|filtered ftp-data
21/tcp  closed|filtered ftp
22/tcp  closed|filtered ssh
23/tcp  closed|filtered telnet
24/tcp  closed|filtered priv-mail
25/tcp  open            smtp
110/tcp open            pop3

Nmap finished: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 5.949 seconds

For complete details on the Nmap idle scan implementation, read idle_scan.cc from the Nmap source code distribution.

While port scanning is a clever abuse of predictable IP ID sequences, they can be exploited for many other purposes as well. Examples are peppered throughout this book, particularly in Chapter 10, Detecting and Subverting Firewalls and Intrusion Detection Systems.