Chaostables for confusing nmap scans

Chaostables is a recently released collection of code that provides a means to confuse an nmap scan. The author, Jan Engelhardt, has provided these capabilities as both netfilter modules for Linux 2.6.18-20 and as iptables rules. He has an excellent description of what he is trying to accomplish and how he does it, as well.

Utilities like nmap (described in an LWN article last year) are often used by those with malicious intent to discover available hosts, open ports, OS versions, and the like to help target their attacks. Chaostables seeks to generate confusing results to these probes. To that end, Engelhardt has derived a set of behaviors that correspond to these types of scans and a set of rules to detect and deflect them.

Since 2.4, the standard way of doing Linux packet filtering is by using the iptables utility which provides a userspace interface to the netfilter kernel modules. Netfilter provides a set of kernel hooks for examining and manipulating network packets and is the framework for Linux firewall implementations. Administrators define rules that identify particular kinds of packets and specify what to do with them; those rules are ordered and collected into chains which are then grouped into tables. All of this packet policy can then be pushed into the kernel via the iptables utility.

The chaostables rules start with dropping some ICMP packets that could reveal the existence of the host and then start concentrating on the kinds of packets sent by scanning utilities. Techniques like TCP stealth, SYN, connect and grab scans are detected and dropped to attempt to hide the host while still allowing 'real' network traffic. These rules are then rolled up into the 'portscan' netfilter module in order to reduce the complexity of the chains that need to be installed.

A second kind of chain provides ways to disguise the underlying system by making Linux appear to be another OS entirely. Network scanning utilities often try to throttle their scans when they detect a system that limits the number of ICMP or RST packets sent per second. Linux is not one of those kinds of systems, but the CHAOS chain makes it look as if it is by limiting RST and ICMP packets to two per second. It also uses the 'random' netfilter rule to generate negative responses on closed ports only some of the time. The net effect is that the scanner will get inconsistent results, sometimes ports will appear closed and sometimes not with the added bonus of potentially slowing down the scan.

The CHAOS chain can be combined with the TARPIT chain to cause ports to appear to be open when in fact they are not. This can slow down a network scan as it attempts to elicit additional information from a seemingly open port. The TARPIT chain can consume router and/or firewall resources by appearing to be an open connection, so chaostables provides the DELUDE chain. It will make ports appear to be open on an initial connect (SYN), but revert to their true closed state for any additional traffic.

Chaostables is quite an interesting use of the netfilter technology and probably uses it in ways that the authors never expected. It may be that only the most paranoid of system administrators will want to implement these chains, but they will be available if needed. In addition, the techniques and code provided in the package are very useful as examples for other applications.

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