Service-Fingerprinting mittels Fuzzing

Abstract

Service fingerprinting (i.e. the identification of network services and other applications on computing systems) is an essential part of penetration tests. The main contribution of this paper is a study on the improvement of fingerprinting tools. By applying mutation-based fuzzing as a fingerprint generation method, subtle differences in response messages can be identified. These differences in response messages provide means for the differentiation and identification of network services. To prove the feasibility of the approach, an implementation of a fingerprinting tool for ftp servers is presented and compared to preexisting fingerprinting tools. As a result of this study it is shown that mutation-based fuzzing is an appropriate method for service fingerprinting that even offers advantages over preexisting methods.