CAPEC-296: ICMP Information Request

Description
An adversary sends an ICMP Information Request to a host to determine if it will respond to this deprecated mechanism. ICMP Information Requests are a deprecated message type. Information Requests were originally used for diskless machines to automatically obtain their network configuration, but this message type has been superseded by more robust protocol implementations like DHCP.
Extended Description

Many modern operating systems will not respond to ICMP type 17 messages for security reasons. Determining whether a system or router will respond to an ICMP Address Mask Request helps the adversary determine operating system or firmware version. Additionally, because these types of messages are rare, they are easily spotted by intrusion detection systems. Many ICMP scanning tools support IP spoofing to help conceal the origin of the actual request among a storm of similar ICMP messages. It is a common practice for border firewalls and gateways to be configured to block ingress ICMP type 17 and egress ICMP type 18 messages.

Severity :

Low

Possibility :

Type :

Detailed
Relationships with other CAPECs

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

Prerequisites

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

  • The ability to send an ICMP Type 15 Information Request and receive an ICMP Type 16 Information Reply in response.
Skills required

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

  • Low The adversary needs to know certain linux commands for this type of attack.
Taxonomy mappings

Mappings to ATT&CK, OWASP and other frameworks.

Resources required

Scanners or utilities that provide the ability to send custom ICMP queries.

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.

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