Email Hacking

-: EMail Hacking :-

All email communications on the internet are possible by two protocols:
1) Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP port-25)
2) Post Office Protocol (POP port-110)

E-Mail hacking consists of various techniques as discussed below.

1) EMail Tracing :- Generally, the path taken by an email while travelling from sender to receiver can be explained by following diagram.



The most effective and easiest way to trace an email is to analyze it's email headers. This can be done by just viewing the full header of received email. A typical email header looks something like this:Email Header
From Barr Thu Jan 3 05:33:26 2008
X-Apparently-To: prasannasherekar@yahoo.co.in via 203.104.16.34; Thu, 03 Jan 2008 05:25:38 +0530
X-YahooFilteredBulk: 189.160.34.89
X-Originating-IP: [189.160.34.89]
Return-Path: <atiles@destatis.de>
Authentication-Results: mta113.mail.in.yahoo.com from=destatis.de; domainkeys=neutral (no sig)
Received: from 189.160.34.89 (HELO dsl-189-160-34-89.prod-infinitum.com.mx) (189.160.34.89) by mta113.mail.in.yahoo.com with SMTP; Thu, 03 Jan 2008 05:25:38 +0530
Received: from dvapa ([141.203.33.92]) by dsl-189-160-34-89.prod-infinitum.com.mx with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.0); Wed, 2 Jan 2008 18:03:26 -0600
Message-ID: <477C264E.3000604@destatis.de>
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 18:03:26 -0600
From: "Barr" <atiles@destatis.de> Add to Address Book
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 (Windows/20070728)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: prasannasherekar@yahoo.co.in
Subject: angel rubberneck
Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="------------030604060204000701040304"
Content-Length: 16433
The above email header gives us the following information about it's origin and path:

a) Sender's email address :- atiles@destatis.de

b) Source IP address :- 141.203.33.92

c) Source mail server :- dsl-189-160-34-89.prod-infinitum.com.mx

d) Email client :- Thunderbird 2.0.0.6


There are lots of ready-made tools available on the internet which performs email tracing very effectively and shows exact geographical location for email sender on the world map.

Recommended Tools
NeoTrace http://www.neotrace.com
VisualRoute http://visualroute.visualware.com
E-MailTracker http://www.visualware.com
-: EMail Forging :-

2) EMail Forging :- Email forging allows an attacker to disguise the source of an email and send it to the victim. Most attackers use this technique to fool the victim into believing that somebody else has send the particular email.
The SMTP protocol makes it extremely easy for an attacker to send forged emails to a remote user.
Typically an attacker carries out email forging by following steps:

1) Start Command Prompt and type the following command-
c:/>telnet smtp.mailserver.com 25 or c:/>telnet mail.domain.com 25
example:- c:/>telnet smtp.gmail.com 25
The above command opens a telnet connection to the specified remote mail server on port-25. Where port-25 is the default SMTP port on which outgoing mail daemon runs.

2) Once you are connected to the mail daemon of remote mail server, you would be greeted with a message similar to following:-


If you are not familiar with the smtp mail daemon commands then enter the keyword 'help' at daemon which may reveal all the supporting commands as shown below.



3) The correct sequence of commands to be executed is:-
a) helo mailserver1.com
b) mail from:abc@mailserver1.com
c) rcpt to:xyz@mailserver2.com
d) data
e) .(dot command represents end of mail body)
This all as shown in figure below:



EMail forging by this technique does not possible, if mail relying is disabled by it's service provider.

-: E-Mail Hacking :-

3) Spam :- Every e-mail account and network on the internet has limited space and bandwidth. This means that if an attacker is able to clog up all the inbox space and bandwidth of the target computer, it could cause lot of inconvenience and unnecessary trouble. Spam e-mails have slowly but surely started clogging up the bandwidth on the internet and the memory space in our inboxes.

MailBombing:- Mailbombing is a technique wherein the attacker floods victim's e-mail account with an extremely large (sometimes infinite) number of unsolicited meaningless e-mails. Two different types of mailbombing are-

a) Mass Mailbombing
b) List Linking Mailbombing
-: Wireless Hacking :-

Wireless networks broadcast their packets using radio frequency or optical wavelengths. A modern laptop computer can listen in. Worse, an attacker can manufacture new packets on the fly and persuade wireless stations to accept his packets as legitimate.
The step by step procerdure in wireless hacking can be explained with help of different topics as follows:-

1) Stations and Access Points :- A wireless network interface card (adapter) is a device, called a station, providing the network physical layer over a radio link to another station.
An access point (AP) is a station that provides frame distribution service to stations associated with it.
The AP itself is typically connected by wire to a LAN. Each AP has a 0 to 32 byte long Service Set Identifier (SSID) that is also commonly called a network name. The SSID is used to segment the airwaves for usage.

2) Channels :- The stations communicate with each other using radio frequencies between 2.4 GHz and 2.5 GHz. Neighboring channels are only 5 MHz apart. Two wireless networks using neighboring channels may interfere with each other.

3) Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) :- It is a shared-secret key encryption system used to encrypt packets transmitted between a station and an AP. The WEP algorithm is intended to protect wireless communication from eavesdropping. A secondary function of WEP is to prevent unauthorized access to a wireless network. WEP encrypts the payload of data packets. Management and control frames are always transmitted in the clear. WEP uses the RC4 encryption algorithm.

4) Wireless Network Sniffing :- Sniffing is eavesdropping on the network. A (packet) sniffer is a program that intercepts and decodes network traffic broadcast through a medium. It is easier to sniff wireless networks than wired ones. Sniffing can also help find the easy kill as in scanning for open access points that allow anyone to connect, or capturing the passwords used in a connection session that does not even use WEP, or in telnet, rlogin and ftp connections.

5 ) Passive Scanning :- Scanning is the act of sniffing by tuning to various radio channels of the devices. A passive network scanner instructs the wireless card to listen to each channel for a few messages. This does not reveal the presence of the scanner. An attacker can passively scan without transmitting at all.

6) Detection of SSID :- The attacker can discover the SSID of a network usually by passive scanning because the SSID occurs in the following frame types: Beacon, Probe Requests, Probe Responses, Association Requests, and Reassociation Requests. Recall that management frames are always in the clear, even when WEP is enabled.
When the above methods fail, SSID discovery is done by active scanning

7) Collecting the MAC Addresses :- The attacker gathers legitimate MAC addresses for use later in constructing spoofed frames. The source and destination MAC addresses are always in the clear in all the frames.

8) Collecting the Frames for Cracking WEP :- The goal of an attacker is to discover the WEP shared-secret key. The attacker sniffs a large number of frames An example of a WEP cracking tool is AirSnort ( http://airsnort.shmoo.com ).

9) Detection of the Sniffers :- Detecting the presence of a wireless sniffer, who remains radio-silent, through network security measures is virtually impossible. Once the attacker begins probing (i.e., by injecting packets), the presence and the coordinates of the wireless device can be detected.

10) Wireless Spoofing :- There are well-known attack techniques known as spoofing in both wired and wireless networks. The attacker constructs frames by filling selected fields that contain addresses or identifiers with legitimate looking but non-existent values, or with values that belong to others. The attacker would have collected these legitimate values through sniffing.

11) MAC Address Spoofing :- The attacker generally desires to be hidden. But the probing activity injects frames that are observable by system administrators. The attacker fills the Sender MAC Address field of the injected frames with a spoofed value so that his equipment is not identified.

12) IP spoofing :- Replacing the true IP address of the sender (or, in rare cases, the destination) with a different address is known as IP spoofing. This is a necessary operation in many attacks.

13) Frame Spoofing :- The attacker will inject frames that are valid but whose content is carefully spoofed.

14) Wireless Network Probing :- The attacker then sends artificially constructed packets to a target that trigger useful responses. This activity is known as probing or active scanning.

15) AP Weaknesses :- APs have weaknesses that are both due to design mistakes and user interfaces

16) Trojan AP :- An attacker sets up an AP so that the targeted station receives a stronger signal from it than what it receives from a legitimate AP.

17) Denial of Service :- A denial of service (DoS) occurs when a system is not providing services to authorized clients because of resource exhaustion by unauthorized clients. In wireless networks, DoS attacks are difficult to prevent, difficult to stop. An on-going attack and the victim and its clients may not even detect the attacks. The duration of such DoS may range from milliseconds to hours. A DoS attack against an individual station enables session hijacking.

18) Jamming the Air Waves :- A number of consumer appliances such as microwave ovens, baby monitors, and cordless phones operate on the unregulated 2.4GHz radio frequency. An attacker can unleash large amounts of noise using these devices and jam the airwaves so that the signal to noise drops so low, that the wireless LAN ceases to function.

19) War Driving :- Equipped with wireless devices and related tools, and driving around in a vehicle or parking at interesting places with a goal of discovering easy-to-get-into wireless networks is known as war driving. War-drivers (http://www.wardrive.net) define war driving as “The benign act of locating and logging wireless access points while in motion.” This benign act is of course useful to the attackers.
Regardless of the protocols, wireless networks will remain potentially insecure because an attacker can listen in without gaining physical access.

Tips for Wireless Home Network Security

1) Change Default Administrator Passwords (and Usernames)
2) Turn on (Compatible) WPA / WEP Encryption
3) Change the Default SSID
4) Disable SSID Broadcast
5) Assign Static IP Addresses to Devices
6) Enable MAC Address Filtering
7) Turn Off the Network During Extended Periods of Non-Use
8) Position the Router or Access Point Safely