Netgate Discussion Forum
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

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

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved IDS/IPS
    48 Posts 5 Posters 12.5k Views
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • 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

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

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

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • 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

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • 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"

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 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

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • 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.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • 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

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • 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.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • 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

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • 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

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • 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?

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • johnpozJ
                              johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                              last edited by johnpoz

                              pfsense would not have been trying to to some domain.null it only checks for updates, the rss feed if you have that setup and package updates. all would be pfsense/netgate domains.

                              Did you install any unofficial packages? Here is the thing trying to access any of the opennic tlds from some application would just be stupid - UNLESS!!! the documentation of said software gave you info on how to make sure you can resolve opennic tlds.. Its a pretty small use base in the big picture to be honest.. Other than say the browser addon users..

                              Guess the software could be hard coded to query an opennic NS... But you stated the queries were to root servers looking for whatever.null - which would never work.. Your just going to get back NX from roots for any of the opennic tlds

                              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

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

                                Here is the course of action I took, note this is after I enabled snort on the LAN interface.

                                Here's my thought process step by step. Hopefully it's understandable and will help someone in the future facing something similar.

                                ##########################################################################################################
                                cause found LAN snort compromise report in snort alerts - coming from 192.168.0.132 on the LAN interface

                                first course of action was to look at status->arp table - didn't yeld anything so client hasn't sent in roughly five minutes or so

                                second course of action was to look at status->dhcp leases - didn't have an active lease but found the IP in the expired leases

                                third course of action was to set the mac address from that lease for 192.168.0.132 to a static dhcp mapping to IP 192.168.0.250

                                fourth course of action was to create a rule under firewall->rules->LAN that passes any traffic sourced from 192.168.0.250. I also added a pass rule for 192.168.0.132 just in case the host doesn't request a lease for some reason. Finally I added a description saying this is the compromised host, and set all packets matching the rules to be logged for either of those two hosts. The reason I'm passing the traffic is to see a working example of what they are doing.

                                note - 192.168.0.250 finally sent packets see below.

                                LAN tcp 192.168.0.250:53028 -> 209.85.200.189:443 ESTABLISHED:ESTABLISHED 101 / 146 15 KiB / 25 KiB
                                WAN tcp X.X.X.X:XXXX (192.168.0.250:53028) -> 209.85.200.189:443 ESTABLISHED:ESTABLISHED 101 / 146 15 KiB / 25 KiB
                                ##########################################################################################################

                                To be honest I'm still not sure exactly what's going on yet. I think that it's just an https connection, when I do a whois on the destination IP it returns google.

                                Anyway for now that is how the situation stands.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • johnpozJ
                                  johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                                  last edited by

                                  Yeah that is google, and where is doing dns queries for 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

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

                                    Well I definitely found the culprit. Yesterday a snort alert showed up from the existing server for .win. I'm 99.9% sure it originated from the server and somehow got to the other segment. In any case I need to rebuild the server. Hopefully I can get by with some hot standby/swap kind of thing. Can't have much downtime. Wish me luck I'll need it lol.

                                    Thanks for everyone's help I really appreciate it.

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • johnpozJ
                                      johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                                      last edited by johnpoz

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

                                      I'm 99.9% sure it originated from the server and somehow got to the other segment. In any case I need to rebuild the server.

                                      What?

                                      So you have a packet capture of this query? "somehow" is a not good RCA for what is happening in your network.. Your saying its now doing queries for something.win, that is not a opennic tld? That is a valid normal new tld that you can register anywhere..

                                      Blocking queries to domains because you don't like the tld and its not .com or .org is sure fire way to break the internet for your users..

                                      Maybe its some legit software installed on the server checking to see if there update available.. And that company just happen to use .win for their tld because its cheap and hip ;)

                                      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

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

                                        I don't plan on blocking them. I found them in the snort alerts again, just .win this time. After this cropped up I discovered the Web mail panel for the server was exposed to the internet. Unfortunately it runs a product that also has a management ui for the mail server part on 443 also exposed. I blocked that port along with the Web mail. smtp/Imap is ok atm.

                                        I dug deeper and the server hasn't been patched for a few years. In the servers admin logs, it shows the firewalls lan ip successfully logged in at a time and date I didn't login. Thats when i got the permission to build a new firewall with pfsense. Also when we started using snort. This is why I think it's hacked. It was installed before I came on board. So I don't know the history, and almost no documentation of anything.

                                        Tldr version
                                        These dns queries, along with the web mail and admin panel facing the Internet. make me think the server may have been compromised.

                                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • johnpozJ
                                          johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                                          last edited by

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

                                          These dns queries,

                                          What was the query for? Can you not get this info from snort? just saying something.win is not very useful logging.. I can see the alert could be called that, but there should be a log of the actual query done.

                                          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

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

                                            Is there a way to filter under status dns resolver? Also if the dns request wasn't answered will it not show up in the log?

                                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                            • First post
                                              Last post
                                            Copyright 2025 Rubicon Communications LLC (Netgate). All rights reserved.