Duncan's Security Blog An enthusiasts musings

2Feb/140

Website technology enumeration

I have been deliberating since my last post as to what this post should consist of. I knew I wanted to do some domain and technology footprinting, but there is so much extra stuff that can be included in the post. I have decided to limit the scope, therefore not including the extras(these posts will come later).

Information gathering

There is an abundance of web services that can be used to enumerate all sorts of information about anything on the web. For this post, I have specifically chosen to focus on what information can be enumerated from websites. Knowing information about the domain and technologies used for the website, can help you determine where the website is vulnerable.

To begin with, we have a website called Builtwith. Builtwith will scan the website headers, looking for clues as to what technologies are used. The standard results will include the web server type, CSS and html version. The more variable results will have information about any CMS systems used, frameworks, databases etc.

To use Builtwith, you enter a web address in the search field, and click on "Lookup".

Builtwith search

Builtwith search

Builtwith will scan the website, and return its findings as follows:

Some of the Builtwith results

Some of the Builtwith results

As you can see, we have already started building a picture in our minds as to how the website is put together. A little further digging and you will know what versions are being used. We can then search for vulnerabilities associated with those technologies. Try it out with a few of your favourite websites.

Netcraft

A second website that returns similar information, is Netcraft. Netcraft tends to miss some of the stuff that Builtwith returns, however it includes in its results some things that Builtwith does not.
netcraft
For example, information about the network and hosting. As can be seen here:

Netcraft results

Netcraft results

Domain registration details

Lastly, we may want some information about domain registration. There are a few websites that can give you this information, most of which are domain specific. Eg. Some will only be able to provide information from the .com domain, while others will be specific to a country. The website will perform a whois on the domain, and return the results. The kind of information you can expect to find will be billing history, names of people who registered the domain(sometimes helpful, it could be someone working in the company), their contact details, physical address of the person/company etc.

A commonly used tool is the whois function on InterNIC. InterNIC can provide whois information for the following domains: .aero, .arpa, .asia, .biz, .cat, .com, .coop, .edu, .info, .int, .jobs, .mobi, .museum, .name, .net, .org, .pro, or .travel.

For co.za, you can use the whois function on co.za.

On the face of it, not much can be done with all of this information. However, in the reconnaisance phase of an attack, any information is good information. The more you have, the more you can use to infer useful plans of attack.

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11Jan/140

The Internet Archive

The internet has seen many resources come and go since its inception, but where do these resources go when they are long forgotten? I stumbled across the answer(to a certain extent) a while back, and decided to share it. Archive.org is an internet library of web resources, and is a pretty cool website to play around on.

The Internet Archive

The Internet Archive

At first, I was looking for something that archived web pages. Sure, you get googles page cache; but this only reveals the last snapshot, which may or may not be of any use. What I ended up finding, was The way back machine. More on the way back machine later. For now, I would like to go over some of the other cool features of The Internet Archive.

The way back machine

The way back machine

The internet archive turned out to be an archive for not only websites, but also video, audio, text, and software. Things I have not seen for years where right there, available for perusal. Founded in 1996, The Internet Archive has been receiving data donations for almost twenty years. Just like other libraries, The Internet Archive also provides facilities for disabled users, maximising their audience.

Video

The video collection is a catalogue of present and past clips, videos, and even full length feature films(most of which are from the golden days). The content ranges from animation, to community videos, as well as educational and music videos. If you recall a video you once watched, and would like to find it again, this could be the place you will find it.

Computer security video, 1984

Computer security video, 1984

Audio

Likewise with audio, the range of available resources are vast: audio books, poetry, music, podcasts and more.

Software

In the software category, the main attraction was the games archive. Not only were there an abundance of the ol' computer games available, but there are also console games. Some of these older games also have a built-in emulator for you to play through your browser:
Historical games
Games aside, there is also a shareware CD archive, and a whole host of console emulators.

Text

The text section has over 5 million books and articles from over 1500 curated collections. The variety available is immense, and I think every possible category is covered.
Example book

The way back machine

Last, but not least, is The wayback machine. You may wonder what relevance this has to security, but it does indeed have its place. During the reconnaissance phase of an attack, adversaries will attempt to learn as many details about their target as possible. One of these methods, is called foot printing. No amount of information is ever too much, as each piece of information may contribute to the inference of new ideas to tackle the problem. In this case, we have a mechanism that has archived website snapshots over a long period of time. Information a company may have had on their website in the past, could potentially be of assistance in building a profile about a company, its technologies, or its employees. This information could since have been removed from the website, when it became known that such information could be harmful to the company. I wont provide an example of such information, but I have no problem showing the capability of the way back machine, with this blast from the past:

Netscape website, on 18 February 1999

Netscape website, on 18 February 1999

The way back machine is very useful for getting some historical context about a website, as well as the historical information that would come with it. Any snapshot ever taken by the way back machine is available for viewing, by selecting it on the time slider:

Netscape histogram. 4821 snapshots from 1996, till 2014

 

To conclude, I hope you check archive.org out, and trigger a bit of nostalgia. I am sure there is something there you will be interested to find.

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