Targeted Attack through Network Fingerprinting

Abstract

Nowadays, simple tools such as traceroute can be used by attackers to acquire topology knowledge remotely. Worse still, attackers can use a lightweight fingerprinting technique, based on traceroute and ping, to retrieve the routers brand, and use that knowledge to launch targeted attacks.
 In this paper, we show that the hardware ecosystem of network operators can greatly vary from one to another, with all potential security implications it brings. Indeed, depending on the autonomous system (AS), not all brands play the same role in terms of network connectivity and network usage (MPLS vs. standard traffic). An attacker could find an interest in targeting a specific hardware vendor in a particular AS, if known defects are present in this hardware, and if the AS relies heavily on it for forwarding its traffic.