SECURING FIBRE CHANNEL FABRICS - Brocade

AttacksAttacksAttackers have many options and strategies at their disposal to attackIT assets. They can be very simple or highly sophisticated attacksdepending on the skill of the attacker and the target that under attack.The first step in any attack usually involves collecting information todetermine the best strategy to perform a successful attack on a system.Preparing for an AttackA typical technique used by hackers to collect information is a portscan. Port scanning refers to searching for open network ports on atarget system. This enables a hacker to know what services are runningon the system, information that can subsequently be used in anattack based on known vulnerabilities for these services. Another technique,known as OS fingerprinting, involves analyzing ping responsesfrom systems, which can provide clues to the type of operating systemthe target uses.A commonly used technique to obtain information used by more daringand sophisticated hackers is social engineering, discussed in the previoussection. Social engineering is highly effective since it does notrequire sophisticated tools, technology, or access to systems to obtaininformation-but goes directly to the individuals that have the informationalready at hand.Browsing is another common method of collecting information. Anattacker can search a person's workspace for passwords written onpost-it note or a piece of paper, files on a computer, or activate a GUI inread-only mode. For example, the Brocade Web Tools GUI prior to FOS5.3.0 displayed all switch information by default, once a switch's IPaddress was entered into a browser window.Types of AttacksHackers can be very creative individuals and there are many ways inwhich they can attack and compromise a system. There is an extensive“black hat” community whose members share information across theInternet and make it available to any interested person. The list ofattacks is quite long; here are a few attacks that can be used in a SANenvironment:• Back doors• Sniffing• Denial-of-service (DoS)• Man-in-the-middle (MITM)• SpoofingSecuring Fibre Channel Fabrics 59