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Download Hacking For Dummies
Transcript
Chapter 8 War Dialing In This Chapter Controlling dial-up access Testing for war dialing weaknesses Preventing war dialing W ar dialing — the act of using a computer to scan other computers automatically for accessible modems — was made popular in the movie War Games. War dialing seems old-fashioned and less sexy than other hacking techniques these days; however, it’s a very critical test to run against your network. This chapter shows how to test for war dialing vulnerabilities and outlines countermeasures to help keep your network from being victimized. War Dialing It’s amazing how often end users and careless network administrators connect modems to computers inside the network. Some companies spend an astonishing amount of money and effort to roll out intrusion-prevention software, application firewalls, and forensics protection tools while ignoring that an unsecured modem on the network can render that protection worthless. Modem safety Modems are still on today’s networks because of leftover remote access servers (RAS) that provide remote connectivity into the corporate network. Many network administrators — hesitant to deploy a VPN — still have modems on their servers and other hosts for other reasons, such as for administering the network, troubleshooting problems remotely, and even providing connectivity to remote offices. Some network administrators have legitimate modems installed for third-party monitoring purposes and business continuity; modems are a low-cost alternative network access method if the Internet connection is down. Many of these modems — and their software — run in default mode with weak passwords or none at all.
