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    (SOLVED) Snort detecting INDICATOR-COMPROMISE suspicious .null DNS query

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    • johnpozJ
      johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
      last edited by johnpoz

      And how would pfblocker know to look for something.null? It could maybe do a PTR for an IP..

      Oh you mean in one of its block lists? Having a null tld in a block list could be very problematic, since there is no way to resolve those without setting up use of OpenNIC

      An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
      If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
      Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
      SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.7.2, 24.11

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      • J
        jdeloach @tman904
        last edited by

        @tman904 As @bmeeks has recommended several times in this forum, you should turn off monitoring WAN in Snort and instead run it on the internal interfaces such as LAN and in this case DMZ. This will make it easy to see which device on your network is causing these alerts by looking at your internal IP addresses. Since everything is blocked by default on pFsense, running Snort on the WAN just duplicates what pFsense already does.

        NogBadTheBadN 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • T
          tman904
          last edited by

          NogBadTheBad
          The alert is only on my WAN but sourced from the WAN's IP.

          Johnpoz I turned log level up to 5 on the dns resolver, but I still havn't found anything.

          NogBadTheBadN johnpozJ 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • NogBadTheBadN
            NogBadTheBad @jdeloach
            last edited by

            @jdeloach said in Snort detecting INDICATOR-COMPROMISE suspicious .null dns query on my WAN:

            @tman904 As @bmeeks has recommended several times in this forum, you should turn off monitoring WAN in Snort and instead run it on the internal interfaces such as LAN and in this case DMZ. This will make it easy to see which device on your network is causing these alerts by looking at your internal IP addresses. Since everything is blocked by default on pFsense, running Snort on the WAN just duplicates what pFsense already does.

            @bmeeks also states that if you have open ports on the WAN interface to enable Snort on the WAN interface.

            Andy

            1 x Netgate SG-4860 - 3 x Linksys LGS308P - 1 x Aruba InstantOn AP22

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            • NogBadTheBadN
              NogBadTheBad @tman904
              last edited by

              @tman904 said in Snort detecting INDICATOR-COMPROMISE suspicious .null dns query on my WAN:

              NogBadTheBad
              The alert is only on my WAN but sourced from the WAN's IP.

              Johnpoz I turned log level up to 5 on the dns resolver, but I still havn't found anything.

              Is there anything in the Snort log directory?

              Andy

              1 x Netgate SG-4860 - 3 x Linksys LGS308P - 1 x Aruba InstantOn AP22

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              • T
                tman904
                last edited by

                I thought you want to run snort on WAN if you have open ports which I do.

                Yes there is a directory for each interface. As well as an update log file. The gui did state the most recent update was successful.

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                • johnpozJ
                  johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @tman904
                  last edited by

                  @tman904 said in Snort detecting INDICATOR-COMPROMISE suspicious .null dns query on my WAN:

                  Johnpoz I turned log level up to 5 on the dns resolver, but I still havn't found anything.

                  Doesn't actually log queries... You have to set the query as stated in the option box..

                  logqueries.png

                  An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                  If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                  Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                  SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.7.2, 24.11

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                  • T
                    tman904
                    last edited by tman904

                    at the moment I have two ssh connections to the pfsense and I'm running.
                    tcpdump -ni em0 udp port 53 |grep .null -LAN
                    tcpdump -ni em1 udp port 53 |grep .null -DMZ

                    Hopefully that will grab it at some point.

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                    • johnpozJ
                      johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                      last edited by

                      That not going to catch anything.. Test it!!! Do a query with that in the fqdn..

                      An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                      If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                      Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                      SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.7.2, 24.11

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                      • T
                        tman904
                        last edited by

                        -LAN and -DMZ aren't in the command.

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                        • johnpozJ
                          johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                          last edited by

                          And again TEST it...

                          where do you think in that tcpdump the info of the query would be listed? So how could you grep for it.

                          An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                          If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                          Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                          SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.7.2, 24.11

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                          • T
                            tman904
                            last edited by tman904

                            well can you explain that to me?

                            There they are
                            07:33:13.204333 IP 192.168.0.141.57062 > 192.168.0.2.53: 57715+ [1au] A? test.null. (38)
                            07:33:13.241310 IP 192.168.0.141.57062 > 192.168.0.2.53: 57715+ A? test.null. (27)
                            07:33:54.634610 IP 192.168.0.141.59863 > 4.2.2.2.53: 5400+ [1au] A? test.null. (50)

                            guess I didn't need the -A

                            This is what I used
                            "tcpdump -ni em0 udp port 53 |grep .null"
                            "tcpdump -ni em1 udp port 53 |grep .null"

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                            • johnpozJ
                              johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                              last edited by johnpoz

                              Ok so now that you have validate your method can find an example - yeah lets see if you find anything at the time you see the snort log.

                              When I try that grep doesn't find my test

                              But without grep I see it
                              [2.4.4-RELEASE][admin@sg4860.local.lan]/root: tcpdump -ni igb0 udp port 53
                              tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
                              listening on igb0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 262144 bytes
                              06:39:44.111865 IP 192.168.9.100.61488 > 192.168.9.253.53: 11023+ [1au] A? test.domain.null. (57)

                              An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                              If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                              Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                              SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.7.2, 24.11

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                              • T
                                tman904
                                last edited by tman904

                                The same thing that the gui says lines up with the logs. But it says it's from the WAN IP. with grep .null on my dmz interface log file in /var/log/snort doesn't seem to have .null in it.

                                It took a few seconds after I ran the command. Also if you change the snap length it should get to grep quicker.

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                                • T
                                  tman904
                                  last edited by

                                  I just enabled snort on my LAN interface. If it's sourced from there it should line up in the logs for LAN and WAN.

                                  NogBadTheBadN 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                  • NogBadTheBadN
                                    NogBadTheBad @tman904
                                    last edited by NogBadTheBad

                                    @tman904 said in Snort detecting INDICATOR-COMPROMISE suspicious .null dns query on my WAN:

                                    I just enabled snort on my LAN interface. If it's sourced from there it should line up in the logs for LAN and WAN.

                                    Are your LAN and DMZ VLANS, if they are and both share the same parent interface you can just run Snort on the parent interface as it puts the interface into promiscuous mode.

                                    Andy

                                    1 x Netgate SG-4860 - 3 x Linksys LGS308P - 1 x Aruba InstantOn AP22

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                                    • T
                                      tman904
                                      last edited by tman904

                                      In my case LAN and DMZ are two physical interfaces. Hopefully by tonight the queries will be sent again. Maybe it's nothing but it doesn't seem normal to me.

                                      Thanks again for everyone's help with this issue. I'll report back if it's finds anything by tonight or tomorrow.

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                                      • johnpozJ
                                        johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                                        last edited by johnpoz

                                        I would be curious as well to what they are looking up.. but domain.null could be almost anything..

                                        Allowing for unbound to resolve opennic tlds is a simple as adding a few stub zones pointing to the opennic NSs..

                                        Here I added stub zones for geek and null so could get to search engine and fine a null site, etc..

                                        geekandnull.png

                                        That snort marks them as suspicious could be seen a few different ways... For starters anyone trying to do something bad, writing code so it could resolve opennic tlds would be "extra" work ;)

                                        But maybe its someone trying to circumvent something??

                                        It could be just honest sort of mistake where a search suffix is adding .null to something and causing the query to roots for whatever.com.null for example..

                                        You have my curiosity cat meowing ;) So please report back what you find...

                                        An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                                        If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                                        Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                                        SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.7.2, 24.11

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                                        • NogBadTheBadN
                                          NogBadTheBad
                                          last edited by NogBadTheBad

                                          Under /var/log/snort/snort_interfaceRANDOMNUMBER there should be a file with u2 in the file name, do a u2spewfoo FILENAME or a u2uboat FILENAME > output.pcap.

                                          The first command will dump the output to screen the second will create a file that can be read by Wireshark.

                                          Also I'd be tempted to use Balanced rather than Security.

                                          Andy

                                          1 x Netgate SG-4860 - 3 x Linksys LGS308P - 1 x Aruba InstantOn AP22

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                                          • T
                                            tman904
                                            last edited by tman904

                                            I'll run those commands and see if I spot anything in wireshark.

                                            As of today/tonight I haven't seen incidents on DMZ or LAN that line up with the WAN incidents. I wonder if it's simply because it hasn't happened again since I starting logging on LAN? That would make since since I was only logging on WAN and DMZ when it happened yesterday.

                                            What do you guys think? Could it have came from pfsense directly or is it more likely something on the LAN caused it when I wasn't logging there?

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