[1201] in bugtraq
STROBE v1.01 Super Optimised TCP port surveyor
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Julian Assange)
Wed Mar 8 13:32:26 1995
From: Julian Assange <proff@suburbia.apana.org.au>
To: bugtraq@fc.net
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 1995 01:53:22 +1100 (EST)
The man page really describes it. The archive is:
ftp://suburbia.apana.org.au:/pub/strobe.tgz
-Proff
===
STROBE 1.01(1) STROBE 1.01(1)
NAME
strobe - Super optimised TCP port surveyor
SYNOPSIS
strobe [ -vVmdbetnSilfs ] [host1 ... [hostn]]
DESCRIPTION
strobe is a security/network tool that locates and
describes all listening tcp ports on a (remote) host or on
many hosts in a bandwidth utilisation maximising, and pro-
cess resource minimising manner.
strobe approximates a parallel finite state machine inter-
nally. In non-linear multi-host mode it attempts to appor-
tion bandwidth and sockets amoung the hosts very effi-
ciently. This can reap appreciable gains in speed for
multiple distinct hosts/routes.
On a machine with a reasonable number of sockets, strobe
is fast enough to port scan entire Internet sub domains.
It is even possible to survey an entire small country in a
reasonable time from a fast machine on the network back-
bone, provided the machine in question uses dynamic socket
allocation or has had its static socket allocation
increased very appreciably (check your kernel options). In
this limited application strobe is said to be faster and
more flexible than ISS2.1 (an expensive, but verbose secu-
rity checker by Christopher Klaus) or PingWare (also com-
ercial, and even more expensive).
OPTIONS
-v Verbose output.
-V Verbose statistical output.
-m Minimise output. Only print hostname, port tuples.
Implies -d. Useful for automated output parsing.
-d Delete duplicate entries for port descriptions. i.e
use only the first definition.
-g Disable usage of getpeername(2). On solaris 2.3
machines this causes a core dump, for reasons
unknown. This behavior is fixed with solaris 2.4.
Under Linux and perhaps other unix implimentations,
false tcp connection positives may occurr when this
option is activated.
-s Statistical information describing the average of
all hosts surveyed is sent to stderr on completion.
-q Quiet mode. Don't print non-fatal errors or the (c)
message.
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STROBE 1.01(1) STROBE 1.01(1)
-d Display only the first description in the port ser-
vices entry file (Cf. -B).
-o file
Direct output (but not any messages which can be
affected by -q) to file.
-b number
Beginning (starting) port number.
-e Ending port number.
-t number
Time after which a connection attempt to a com-
pletely unresponsive host/port is aborted.
-n number
Use this number of sockets in parallel (defaults to
64). strobe attempts to figure out if number is
greater than the quantity of available sockets at
any point in time -- and if so, only use the amount
found. On some UNIX implimentations such as
Solaris, this appears not to work correctly and you
may find yourself with unusual errors such as NO
ROUTE TO HOST when you hit the socket ceiling.
Remember that strobe probably isn't the only pro-
cess on the system desiring a socket or two. Having
strobe pilfer all the spare sockets away from
inetd(8) and other daemons and clients isn't such a
crash hot idea, unless you want to stop all new
incoming and outgoing connections.
-S file
Change the default port services description file
to file. Note that if -S is not specified port
services are loaded from one of strobe.services,
/usr/local/lib/strobe.services, or /etc/services.
-i file
Obtain hostnames to strobe from file rather than
from the command line. Note that only the first
white-space seperated word in each line of file is
used, so one can feed in files such as /etc/hosts.
-l Probe hosts linearly (sequentually) rather than in
parallel. The actuall ports on each host are still
checked in a parallel manner (with a parallelism of
-n (defaults to 64)).
-f Fast mode, probe only the tcp ports detailed in the
port services file (see -S).
-a number
Abort and skip to the next host after ports to
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STROBE 1.01(1) STROBE 1.01(1)
number have been probed and still no connections
have occurred.
EXAMPLE
strobe -n 120 -a 80 -i /etc/hosts -s -f -V -S services -o
out
strobe all entries in /etc/hosts (identical ip addresses
are skipped automagically) using 120 sockets in parallel,
but only check the individual tcp ports mentioned in ser-
vices. If we have probed up to port 80 on a host and have
still not yet evidenced a connection, then skip that host.
Display speed/time statistics for each host and for the
totality of hosts to stderr. Place the regular output in
out.
BUGS
Strobe performs no other security functions (yet) and does
not verify route blocking against UDP or TCP handshake
sequence guessing one-way IP spoofing attacks.
AUTHOR
Julian Assange aka Proff
EMAIL:
strobe@suburbia.apana.org.au
proff@suburbia.apana.org.au
proff@four.net
proff@gnu.ai.mit.edu
HTML:
http://suburbia.apana.org.au/~proff
OFFICAL DISTRIBUTION
ftp://suburbia.apana.org.au:/pub/users/proff/original/strobe.tgz
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) Julian Assange 1995, All rights reserved.
This program maybe distributed only freely, in full and
without modification. It may not be bundled with any sort
of hardware or software, if a fee is charged for that
hardware or software directly or indirectly, in whole or
in part. If you would like to include this software in
such prohibited distribution then please contact the
author to negotiate reasonable terms.
The author shall not under any circumstances accept any
liability for this software, for its use, misuse, or any
failings it may have.
The author reserves the right to alter the aformentioned
conditions from time to time as he sees appropriate. The
author's most recent copyright notice and conditions for
3
STROBE 1.01(1) STROBE 1.01(1)
this software always supersede any issued previously.
Continued use of this software implies acceptance of the
above.
So there.
SEE ALSO
nslookup(1), host(1), dig(1), socket(2), bind(2), con-
nect(2), iss(1).
