CAPEC-292: Host Discovery

Description
An adversary sends a probe to an IP address to determine if the host is alive. Host discovery is one of the earliest phases of network reconnaissance. The adversary usually starts with a range of IP addresses belonging to a target network and uses various methods to determine if a host is present at that IP address. Host discovery is usually referred to as 'Ping' scanning using a sonar analogy. The goal is to send a packet through to the IP address and solicit a response from the host. As such, a 'ping' can be virtually any crafted packet whatsoever, provided the adversary can identify a functional host based on its response. An attack of this nature is usually carried out with a 'ping sweep,' where a particular kind of ping is sent to a range of IP addresses.
Extended Description

RFC 793 defines the required behavior of any TCP/IP device in that an incoming connection request begins with a SYN packet, which in turn must be followed by a SYN/ACK packet from the receiving service. For this reason, like TCP Connect scanning, SYN scanning works against any TCP stack. Unlike TCP Connect scanning, it is possible to scan thousands of ports per second using this method. This type of scanning is usually referred to as 'half-open' scanning because it does not complete the three-way handshake. The scanning rate is extremely fast because no time is wasted completing the handshake or tearing down the connection. This technique allows an attacker to scan through stateful firewalls due to the common configuration that TCP SYN segments for a new connection will be allowed for almost any port. TCP SYN scanning can also immediately detect 3 of the 4 important types of port status: open, closed, and filtered.

Severity :

Low

Possibility :

Type :

Standard
Relationships with other CAPECs

This table shows the other attack patterns and high level categories that are related to this attack pattern.

CAPEC-169: Footprinting Footprinting CAPEC-285: ICMP Echo Request Ping ICMP Echo Request Ping CAPEC-294: ICMP Address Mask Request ICMP Address Mask Request CAPEC-295: Timestamp Request Timestamp Request CAPEC-296: ICMP Information Request ICMP Information Request CAPEC-297: TCP ACK Ping TCP ACK Ping CAPEC-298: UDP Ping UDP Ping CAPEC-299: TCP SYN Ping TCP SYN Ping CAPEC-612: WiFi MAC Address Tracking WiFi MAC Address Tracking CAPEC-613: WiFi SSID Tracking WiFi SSID Tracking CAPEC-618: Cellular Broadcast Message Request Cellular Broadcast Message Request CAPEC-619: Signal Strength Tracking Signal Strength Tracking
Prerequisites

This table shows the other attack patterns and high level categories that are related to this attack pattern.

  • The adversary requires logical access to the target network in order to carry out host discovery.
Skills required

This table shows the other attack patterns and high level categories that are related to this attack pattern.

Taxonomy mappings

Mappings to ATT&CK, OWASP and other frameworks.

ATTACK | Remote System Discovery
Resources required

The resources required will differ based upon the type of host discovery being performed. Usually a network scanning tool or scanning script is required due to the volume of requests that must be generated.

Related CWE

A Related Weakness relationship associates a weakness with this attack pattern. Each association implies a weakness that must exist for a given attack to be successful.

CWE-200: Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor

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