Nilesh Kumar

NetBIOS an acronym for Network Basic Input/Output System. It provides services related to the session layer of the OSI model allowing applications on separate computers to communicate over a local area network. As strictly an API, NetBIOS is not a networking protocol. [Reference:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBIOS] Risks of NetBIOS: 1)NetBIOS Null Session Enabled: A NetBIOS null session allows users to connect to a host remotely with no username and password and perform a limited set of administrative tasks. Null sessions allow the remote user to gather information such as: 1. List users 2. List groups 3. List shares (including hidden shares) 4. Policies (such as minimum password length, etc.) While the enumerated information is not an immediate risk, much of the information can be leveraged to launch an attack to gain user or administrative privilege. All steps should be taken to eliminate the vulnerability and/or reduce the information available to the attacker. 2)NBTSTAT : All Mic...

This is written for specific scenario so may differ from yours. There are few ways to find if SSH is enabled on the remote machine or not. 1). Log onto the Linux machine and type the following command: netstat –a or netstat –a | grep ssh It will list down all the services running on the machine. Look for ssh or port 22, if that is enabled you can see like ftp and smtp: 2). Another way is to use Putty to connect the remote Linux machine. Select ssh and port 22 and try to connect. If connection established, then ssh is there otherwise, probably not-It's not a fool proof method however. 3) One more option is run port scanner such as nmap. It will list down all the services running on the machine.

Some basic insecure protocols and risk associated with them: FTP/Telnet/Rlogin/rsh/Rexec : These are insecure protocols because they use plain text authentication. This means that when you authenticate to the telnet or ftp server you send your login and password across the network un-encrypted or "in the clear". Data and even the password are transmitted as plain text. In addition to sending the login and password in the clear telnet and ftp also send the data or payload in the clear as well. There are commonly available programs that constantly monitor the network for packets that contains passwords. Preferably, all telnet and rlogin servers and clients should be removed from all machines. Disable them if not used. SNMP : Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a protocol for network management. SNMP lacks any authentication capabilities, which results in vulnerability to a variety of security threats. These include masquerading, modification of information, m...