Professor 'Packetslinger' Assigns Questionable Task

mrowton writes "A professor at an undisclosed university recently assigned a practical for his computer-security class. The practical, which is worth 15 percent of the students final grade, requires students to perform reconnaissance on an internet server using tools available in the public domain. While the university is allowing the practical to continue it has also stated that the techniques should not be performed on their own web servers. If students are caught performing any scans against university computers then it would prompt: "Disabling their student account and referring them to the Student Dean of Corrections." The assignment was enough for SANS to dub him 'Professor Packetslinger of the School of Loose Screws.'"

Comments

What about criminology classes?

[IntelliAdmin]

They should have an assignment that each student rob, or break into a bank. Any attemps to break into school secured areas would result in immediate suspension.

A better way to teach this.

[StacyWebb]

Would be to have seperated the class into two teams with two networks and then have them secure their networks. Then launch attacks angainst one another. This way they see both the way attacks are made along with how to protect their network from them.

Re:A better way to teach this.

[fistfullast33l]

Interesting idea but I think that you'd run the risk of the geekiest students in the class taking over each team and the other kids not participating. Obviously this assignment was designed so that each student could prove they knew a little bit about portscanning and such. I think if you modified your approach to require like rounds where one student from each team launched an attack and another student had to respond it might guarantee more participation.

Completely blown out of proportion

[MrJynxx]

Ok,

so let's run through this scenario. The professor for a computer science security class wants students to scan some networks. This is the type of information he wants them to provide

"He wants them to write an evaluation of what they find: what ports are open and what service could be running on them, Host names and IP addresses, OS, version, last update, patch status, what shares are available, what kind of network traffic and what vulnerabilities they see."

Some people have suggested to setup a sandbox, my question is where are you going to get the servers? Do you think that shit appears magically? Who can verify the actual network sandbox was setup properly? The students? An outside consultant? You see all of this stuff costs $$$, I'm sure the professor has an already small budget to do his own research but that's about it.

The next point is how is this illegal? The students must use apps that are available on the public domain. And if you think some uber hacker must of written it you are incorrect. Did you know OSX has a port scanner built into it? I put in the address, it tells me all the open ports. Is that illegal? Oh and what type of services are running on them? Common, what is up with that, that's so easy to figure out! Just google the port num, and you'll get a listing of all the possible apps that could use this port.. It's not rocket science! You could also connect to it by telneting to the port and see if any user input returns a response from the server.

How is determining host names illegal?? A simple NSLOOKUP will tell you what the DNS name, and you can go even further and check those DNS lookup sites and figure out who the contact is. Try it.. It works pretty well!

All of the other information is easily accessable, if this equates to illegal hacking then I technically had no idea what illegal hacking really is..

Now if this guy wanted his students to actually try and break a system then yes, I don't agree with it. But if they're just simply exploring the different tools available to them on the internet what's the big deal?

MrJynxx

Isn't it his job to teach his students?

[Fefe]

How would you teach security if not by trying out the attack tools?

I don't see what the hoopla is about here. He asked them to do a scan, not open them up and format the hard disk or download files on it.

Maybe his next assignment is the ethics. Maybe it's just a test to see if any of his students find this ethically wrong and refuse to do it. Maybe he would have given them extra points.

I run several servers on the Internet, and I get port scanned all the time. Even more so at home, where my dynamic DSL IP is hit by worms many times each day.

Dear American proto-hackers, you are welcome to come to Europe and learn the tools of your trade here. We meet every year between Christmas and New Year at the CCC Congress, and we have a LAN there, so people can get acquainted with the tools.

We were encouraged...

[sr180]

When I did my engineering degree, with the computer science subjects we were encouraged to explore the network and understand its topology. We even had assignments where we HAD to do this and report back with what we knew about what was where.

Its a bit like open source software.. The information is public, what problems are there by students looking at it. As long as the dont actually compromise anything, they could be helping it security.

In this case, I think the IT Staff are being idiots.

Re:We were encouraged...

[lucm]

what problems are there by students looking at it

If the assignment was to put a sniffer on the student's network adapter and watch the packets passing by, then it would do no harm. But probing is not passive, it is active, and it can be harmful to the target server. You might compromise a service without knowing it.

Every month thousands of idiots are probing the ports on my firewall, eating away my bandwith (which *I* pay for) and adding load on my firewall's CPU (which *I* paid for). And I am a home user with nothing interesting to steal from. Do you have any idea how much bandwith and CPU is wasted at Google, Yahoo or Microsoft because of the same kind of wannabe hackers?

SANS is French for without....

[Decius6i5]

The hyperbole displayed in this post is exactly the sort of behavior that computer security professionals should avoid engaging in. People who take undue offence at obviously innocent acts and run around making completely unfounded accusations of mal-intent and criminal liability are the sort of network operators who can make a workplace a living hell for people who are trying to get things done. Its a power trip and in a serious corporate environment it is totally inappropriate. Security professionals should be focused on real threats to business continuity rather then getting their rocks off by hunting down port scanners. It should be painfully obvious that nothing about this assignment is either illegal or immoral. The students are asked to perform a vulnerability assessment. They are asked to collect information; they are not asked to act on that information and break in. If you want to understand how security gets done it makes sense to take a look at someone who is doing it and see what they are doing. Its the kind of activity that might raise suspicion in the event that the intent was to use the information collected in the subsiquent commission of a crime, but that obviously isn't the intent here, so there is no REAL problem. If your Internet connected computer is so weak from a security standpoint that this kind of snooping is enough to impact your operation then I suggest you stop reading this and go check on it because you are probably offline right now. Obviously one needs to be careful in performing this sort of audit that one doesn't use aggressive tools that can impact the operation of a host, and students do need to understand the difference between collecting information and obtaining unauthorized access. It might make sense for this lesson to be bundled with a serious conversation about the ethical issues. Obviously, it would be preferable to ask students to look at a honeypot host rather then examining someone's live network, if for no other reason then this kind of probing is suspicious and, albeit EXTRMELY unlikely, could cause administrators to waste time investigating. However, to suggest that performing this kind of information collection against a remote host is a crime regardless of the intent of the exercise is, frankly, "just plain stupid and ignorant." Sans security ought to relax. The likelyhood that any of the targets of this exercise so much as noticed it is infinitesimal.

That disclaimer isn't enough.

[Flower]

My company's Internet connection is not your lab. I did not request your services and you are not compensating me for use of my resources for your education. We have no contract detailing the work you are permited to perform at my perimeter. As a matter of fact, I see nothing in that assignment which requires you to get permission from me to scan your network. Instead, I see instructions to be stealthy and only communicate with me if I notice you. This more than anything makes me question the ethics of this assignment.

I don't care if you're talented. You have no idea how a scan is going to affect whatever applications I have running off of that pipe. What may not break one network may most certainly break another. You, with all your talent, can still make a mistake. I've had it happen to me and the reason why I was able to quickly recover was because I KNEW I WAS BEING SCANNED BEFOREHAND! Vendor comes in and says "Oh, this is going to be harmless." and surprise one little Nessus scan brings down half the unix farm until I unplug the laptop. If I really want you pen-testing my network then I'll bring you in as an intern. That way I know about and accept the risk I want to take instead of the unknown.

You make this bold, sweeping statement about security through obscurity but reread your quote. "You may" not "You will" The students do not have to turn in their work to the company they scanned so there is no way for that organization to take those findings and improve their system. If this was some big noble cause why didn't the prof contact some local businesses and have them agree to a pen-test in return for a report? The fact that the administration reserves the right to discipline any student that uses this assignment to scan the school's network speaks volumes. Your comment about admins who oppose this are ones who routinely port scan the school's network is a fallacy on so many levels that I simply chose to ignore it.

I don't care if the prof is going to cash his Nobel check and give the money to the starving poor in Africa. The assignment was ill conceived from the start. It wasn't professional or academic and there were viable alternatives other than going out into the wild and poking around people's perimeters without permission. What? Haven't heard of a test lab?

Absolutely nothing in your post has dissuaded me from the opinion that this entire issue was just plain dumb.