Active Connections

Proto Local Address Foreign Address State
TCP macintosh: 27374 modem-123.tun.dialup.co.uk: 50505 ESTABLISHED
TCP macintosh: 80 proxy.webcache.eng.sq: 30101 TIME_WAIT
TCP macintosh MACINTOSH: 0 LISTENING
TCP macintosh MACINTOSH: 0 LISTENING
TCP macintosh MACINTOSH: 0 LISTENING


Now, straight away, this should make more sense to you. Your computer is connected on two ports, 80 and 27374. Port 80 is used for http/www transmissions (ie for all intents and purposes, its how you connect to the net, although of course it's a lot more complicated than that). Port 27374, however, is distinctly suspicious; first of all, it is in the registered port range, and although other services (like MSN) use these, let's assume that you have nothing at all running like instant messengers, webpages etc....you're simply connected to the net through proxy. So, now this connection is looking even more troublesome, and when you realise that 27374 is a common port for Netbus (a potentially destructive Trojan), you can see that something is untoward here. So, what you would do is:


1) run Netstat , and use:

Netstat -a

then

Netstat -an

So you have both Hostnames AND IP addresses.


## Tracerouting ##

Having the attacker's IP is all well and good, but what can you do with it? The answer is, a lot more! It's not enough to have the address, you also need to know where the attacker's connections are coming from. You may have used automated tracerouting tools before, but do you jknow how they work?

Go back to MSDOS and type


tracert *type IP address/Hostname here*


Now, what happens is, the Traceroute will show you all the computers inbetween you and the target machine, including blockages, firewalls etc. More often than not, the hostname address listed before the final one will belong to the Hacker's ISP Company. It'll either say who the ISP is somewhere in there, or else you run a second trace on the new IP/hostname address to see who the ISP Company in question is. If the Hostname that you get back doesn't actually seem to mention an actual geographical location within its text, you may think all is lost. But fear not! Suppose you get a hostname such as

http://www.haha.com

Well, that tells us nothing, right? Wrong....simply enter the hostname in your browser, and though many times you will get nothing back, sometimes it will resolve to an ISP, and from there you can easily find out its location and in what areas they operate. This at least gives you a firm geographical location to carry out your investigations in.

If you STILL have nothing, as a last resort you COULD try connecting to your target's ISP's port 13 by Telnet, which will tell you how many hours ahead or behind this ISP is of GMT, thus giving you a geographical trace based on the time mentioned (although bear in mind, the ISP may be doing something stupid like not having their clocks set correctly, giving you a misleading trace. Similarly, a common tactic of Hackers is to deliberately have their computer's clock set to a totally wrong time, so as to throw you off the scent). Also, unless you know what you're doing, I wouldn't advise using Telnet (which is outside the parameters of this tutorial).

## Reverse DNS Query ##

This is probably the most effective way of running a trace on somebody. If ever you're in a chatroom and you see someone saying that they've "hacked into a satellite orbiting the Earth, and are taking pictures of your house right now", ignore them because that's just bad movie nonsense. THIS method is the way to go, with regard to finding out what country (even maybe what State/City etc) someone resides, although it's actually almost impossible to find an EXACT geographical location without actually breaking into your ISP's Head Office and running off with the safe.

To run an rDNS query, simply go back to MS-DOS and type

netstat

and hit return. Any active connections will resolve to hostnames rather than a numerical format.

# DNS

DNS stands for Domain Name Server. These are machines connected to the Internet whose job it is to keep track of the IP Addresses and Domain Names of other machines. When called upon, they take the ASCII Domain Name and convert it to the relevant numeric IP Address. A DNS search translates a hostname into an IP address....which is why we can enter "www.Hotmail.com" and get the website to come up, instead of having to actually remember Hotmail's IP address and enter that instead. Well, Reverse DNS, of course, translates the IP Address into a Hostname (ie - in letters and words instead of numbers, because sometimes the Hacker will employ various methods to stop Netstat from picking up a correct Hostname).

So, for example,

298.12.87.32 is NOT a Hostname.
mail6.bol.net.au IS a Hostname.

Anyway, see the section at the end? (au) means the target lives in Australia. Most (if not all) hostnames end in a specific Country Code, thus narrowing down your search even further. If you know your target's Email Address (ie they foolishly sent you a hate mail, but were silly enough to use a valid email address) but nothing else, then you can use the Country codes to deduce where they're from as well. You can also deduce the IP address of the sender by looking at the emails header (a "hidden" line of code which contains information on the sender)...on Hotmail for example, go to Preferences, and select the "Full Header's Visible" option. Alternatively, you can run a "Finger" Trace on the email address, at:

www.samspade.org

Plus, some ISP's include their name in your Email Address with them too (ie Wanadoo, Supanet etc), and your Hacker may be using an email account that's been provided by a Website hosting company, meaning this would probably have the website host's name in the email address (ie Webspawners). So, you could use the information gleaned to maybe even hunt down their website (then you could run a website check as mentioned previously) or report abuse of that Website Provider's Email account (and thus, the Website that it goes with) to

[email protected]

If your Hacker happens to reside in the USA, go to:

www.usps.gov/ncsc/lookups/abbr_state.txt

for a complete list of US State abbreviatons.