Odd behaviour of Argus server.

Carter Bullard cbullard at nortelnetworks.com
Fri May 12 10:58:57 EDT 2000


Hey Russell,
   Hmmmm, so we have 2 argi that differ basically because
one is using '-d'.  One generates a huge amount of data
that references a subset of network events, for an extended
period of time, to the exclusion of reporting other network
events, and then recovers.  The other doesn't express any
of this behavior?

   All of this seems very strange/interesting.  Not an
infinite loop, but rather some kind of event that
messes with the internal hashing and flow tracking
queues.  That would be weird.  What did Argi #2 think was
going on during this period?  Pretty standard stuff?  Any
of the same stuff?

   You did mention that there was other traffic that was
being reported by Argi #1, during the problem period.
Did Argi #2 also report these same flows?

Did it appear that Argi#1 just lost one-half of all
the flows?

   This is a difficult problem, because we don't
really know what was being presented to Argi #1 to know
if argus() had a problem or if it was something else.
Is it possible that the 'attack' could have caused a
problem?

   One thing I would like to know is, "are the last times
reported for the problem flows also the same?"  Use
'ra -l' to get the last times, instead of the start times.
This may reveal something interesting.

Carter



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Russell Fulton [mailto:r.fulton at auckland.ac.nz]
> Sent: Friday, May 12, 2000 1:22 AM
> To: argus at lists.andrew.cmu.edu
> Subject: Odd behaviour of Argus server.
> 
> 
> Greetings,
> 	  A couple of days ago we had a strange incident where one 
> address in our address space was targeted for what looked like udp 
> scans from 12 different IP addresses (all in .edu sites and most in 
> resnets or dorms).  The 'attack', if that is what it was lasted 10 
> minutes and was detected by a perl script that watches 'ra -S 
> localhost'. 
> 
> That was odd enough but the argus server kept repeatedly 
> reporting the 
> traffic and failed to report real traffic for the next 4 
> hours and then 
> carried on normally as if nothing had happened.
> 
> The argus server in question logs the traffic via -w <file> and this
> file is mv'ed on the hour and run through raconnections and gzip.
> Both the ra that was listening to the server via a socket and the log
> files show the repeated traffic (time stamps are the same).
> 
> I have two argus servers, the one that had this problem which 
> incidentally runs without the -d option and another on 
> another machine 
> that runs with -d 60.  This argus server reported the initial 
> 10 minute 
> burst of traffic and nothing else for that address.
> 
> The files written by the problem server for the next four hours are
> nearly identical containing the udp traffic to the 'attacked' address
> and a handful (50 - few 100) other udp session and only a few tcp
> session fragments (lone SYN or FIN) or icmp traffic (port unreachables
> from the target host) - nearly all of these bore timestamps around the
> 'attack'.
> 
> 
> Here is the end of the file in which the 'attack' was first detected,
> The 'attack' started at 16:19 and continued until 16:27 according to
> the other argus server.  You can see all the URP generated by the
> 'attack'.
> 
> 10 May 00 16:22:26     icmp  130.216.11.148        ->   
> 152.16.242.51       1      0    udp_port  16556       URP
> 10 May 00 16:22:26     icmp  130.216.11.148        ->  
> 141.219.85.236       1      0    udp_port  2678        URP
> 10 May 00 16:22:26     icmp  130.216.11.148        ->  
> 141.219.85.236       1      0    udp_port  8824        URP
> 10 May 00 16:22:26     icmp  130.216.11.148        ->  
> 141.219.85.236       1      0    udp_port  23620       URP
> 10 May 00 16:22:26     icmp  130.216.11.148        ->   
> 131.123.57.92       1      0    udp_port  19225       URP
> 10 May 00 16:22:26      tcp   161.142.78.81.60753  o>     
> 130.216.1.7.80    1      0       0         0        s
> 10 May 00 16:22:26     icmp  130.216.11.148        -> 
> 129.120.228.193       1      0    udp_port  20050       URP
> 10 May 00 16:22:26     icmp  130.216.11.148        -> 
> 129.120.228.193       1      0    udp_port  22448       URP
> 10 May 00 16:22:26     icmp  130.216.11.148        ->   
> 152.16.227.51       1      0    udp_port  28975       URP
> 10 May 00 16:22:26     icmp  130.216.11.148        -> 
> 129.120.228.193       1      0    udp_port  31042       URP
> 10 May 00 16:22:26     icmp  130.216.11.148        ->   
> 152.16.227.51       1      0    udp_port  1971        URP
> 10 May 00 16:22:26      tcp   208.210.86.12.4353   o    
> 130.216.191.1.25    0      1       0         0        S
> 
> 
> What ever caused the problem it righted itself after 4 hours.
> 
> Here is where things return to relative normality:
> 
> 10 May 00 16:22:27      udp 129.120.228.193.1460   ->  
> 130.216.11.148.23344 1      0       12        0        TIM
> 10 May 00 16:22:27      udp  207.62.155.108.1690   ->  
> 130.216.11.148.27941 1      0       12        0        TIM
> 10 May 00 16:22:27      udp 129.120.228.193.1460   ->  
> 130.216.11.148.3334  1      0       12        0        TIM
> 10 May 00 16:22:27      udp  207.62.155.108.1690   ->  
> 130.216.11.148.25976 1      0       12        0        TIM
> 10 May 00 16:22:27      udp   152.16.227.51.2114   ->  
> 130.216.11.148.7340  1      0       12        0        TIM
> 10 May 00 16:22:27      udp  207.62.155.108.1690   ->  
> 130.216.11.148.27995 1      0       12        0        TIM
> 10 May 00 16:22:27      udp 129.120.228.193.1460   ->  
> 130.216.11.148.28979 1      0       12        0        TIM
> 10 May 00 16:22:27      tcp   203.97.74.108.1072   ?>    
> 202.37.88.17.80    1      0       0         0        E
> 10 May 00 16:22:27      udp  207.62.155.108.1690   ->  
> 130.216.11.148.19383 1      0       12        0        TIM
> 10 May 00 16:22:31      udp  198.82.113.192.1950   ->  
> 130.216.11.148.23647 1      0       12        0        TIM
> 10 May 00 16:26:40 *M   tcp   130.216.191.6.119   <o>     
> 203.97.37.7.38154 1368   2091    26784     1130548  E
> 10 May 00 16:32:26      tcp  202.180.93.168.1250   ?>  
> 130.216.35.202.80    1      0       0         0        E
> 10 May 00 16:36:02      tcp   130.216.191.6.8080   ?>   
> 130.123.128.4.3895  1      0       0         0        F
> 10 May 00 19:59:17      tcp 130.216.208.107.1148   ?>    
> 207.188.7.24.80    1      0       0         0        F
> 10 May 00 20:38:22 *    tcp 203.109.255.220.1480  <|      
> 130.216.3.5.80    74     87      4674      38678    ER
> 10 May 00 20:38:22 d    tcp   130.216.1.235.2478  <->   
> 130.216.1.238.561   42884  44464   0         6284760  E
> 10 May 00 20:38:22      tcp  130.216.191.46.4381  <o>   
> 203.109.252.4.80    10     9       0         0        E
> 10 May 00 20:38:22      tcp  130.216.191.46.4980   -> 
> 209.185.152.104.80    4      2       0         1075     EFC
> 10 May 00 20:38:22 d    tcp 203.109.195.115.1249   |>    
> 130.216.3.20.80    2      3       0         0        sSER
> 10 May 00 20:38:22      tcp     130.216.1.7.80     ?>  
> 203.96.111.202.6135  1      0       0         0        E
> 10 May 00 20:38:22      tcp   210.55.151.77.1472   |>     
> 130.216.1.7.83    4      2       419       292      EFR
> 
> Any ideas on what caused this or further tests I can perform on the
> remains. The ls -l of the files clearly shows the affected files:
> 
> ls -l data/2000.05.10
> total 31911
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus      935587 May 10 01:02 
> argus-2000.05.10.00.00.gz
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus      728068 May 10 02:00 
> argus-2000.05.10.01.00.gz
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus      526557 May 10 03:00 
> argus-2000.05.10.02.00.gz
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus      462354 May 10 04:00 
> argus-2000.05.10.03.00.gz
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus      449681 May 10 05:00 
> argus-2000.05.10.04.00.gz
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus      473947 May 10 06:00 
> argus-2000.05.10.05.00.gz
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus      483933 May 10 07:00 
> argus-2000.05.10.06.00.gz
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus      962268 May 10 08:00 
> argus-2000.05.10.07.00.gz
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus     1881503 May 10 09:02 
> argus-2000.05.10.08.00.gz
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus     2411654 May 10 10:04 
> argus-2000.05.10.09.00.gz
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus     2584735 May 10 11:05 
> argus-2000.05.10.10.00.gz
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus     2699908 May 10 12:06 
> argus-2000.05.10.11.00.gz
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus     2641171 May 10 13:06 
> argus-2000.05.10.12.00.gz
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus     2801275 May 10 14:06 
> argus-2000.05.10.13.00.gz
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus     2829599 May 10 15:05 
> argus-2000.05.10.14.00.gz
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus     2811024 May 10 16:06 
> argus-2000.05.10.15.00.gz
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus     1073073 May 10 17:03 
> argus-2000.05.10.16.00.gz
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus      226262 May 10 18:01 
> argus-2000.05.10.17.00.gz <---
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus      287259 May 10 19:01 
> argus-2000.05.10.18.00.gz <---
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus      284027 May 10 20:01 
> argus-2000.05.10.19.00.gz <---
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus      931625 May 10 21:01 
> argus-2000.05.10.20.00.gz <---
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus     1570734 May 10 22:02 
> argus-2000.05.10.21.00.gz
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus     1351584 May 10 23:01 
> argus-2000.05.10.22.00.gz
> -rw-r--r--   1 argus    argus     1093697 May 11 00:01 
> argus-2000.05.10.23.00.gz
> 
> They also show that we don't have a high bandwidth connection ;-)
> 
> Cheers, Russell.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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