The less information you reveal of a system, the more difficult it is to mount attacks. This is true for script-kiddies and sophisticated hackers alike so try to avoid leaving fingerprints if you can. Trying to blindly exploit a found problem in an unknown application on an unknown platform can be near impossible. Being able to deduce the OS, analyze the application code, and replicate the system can make even a one-shot-only attempt trivial.
Nothing will make your "sophisticated hackers" more happy than discovering a non-standard open-source attack surface. In the absolute majority of the cases these are not audited or mature, and will break when you pick them apart. Not being able to fingerprint them makes it a totally different problem.
I'm guessing you won't accept me saying this since you claim a greater understanding in the matter than you should, so I'll just say this once and then stay out of the discussion.
Kind regards, Fredrik Widlund Joshua Slive skrev:
On 1/24/07, Richard de Vries <richard_devries@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:I have modsecurity running on my apache instances, and I often see all kinds of IIS exploits hitting my box. This then gives me time to look thru my various apache and firewall logs, and take some corrective measures like for instance slapping some IPTables rules on the box to block that IP.Have you looked at some of the previous threads on this topic? I'm guessing no.Have you ever investigated how many people who DO NOT hide their apache Server identity also get hit by huge quantities of IIS attacks? The number is close to 100% from my observations. Here's the trick: There are basically two types of "crackers" you need to worry about, script-kiddies, and sophisticated hackers. The first type will try every possible exploit on every server they can find; they rarely if ever bother to look at the Server header or anything else. The latter type can easily figure out what kind of server you're running very unobtrusively whether or not you display the Server header. So in neither case will hiding the Server header buy you anything at all. Your argument seems to be that there may be a small number of crackers in between those two groups that might be delayed by a few minutes if you hide your Server header. I don't see any evidence that such crackers actually exist. And even if they did, your time would be much better spent worrying about real security issues than putting a tiny roadblock in their way. Joshua. ---------------------------------------------------------------------The official User-To-User support forum of the Apache HTTP Server Project.See <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/userslist.html> for more info. To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx " from the digest: users-digest-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
--------------------------------------------------------------------- The official User-To-User support forum of the Apache HTTP Server Project. See <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/userslist.html> for more info. To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx " from the digest: users-digest-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
|