Tuesday 10 January 2017

TCP, UDP and ICMP Scan types and operation



Reference: Ethical Hacking and Penetration with Kali Linux


TCP Scan Types

  • Full scan: completes all 3 parts of the 3-way handshake. This is the most reliable scan but very noisy and can be easily picked up by IDS systems
  • Half open (syn) scan: only uses first part (syn) of the handshake to get syn-ack but won’t send the third part (ack) back. This also can be picked be IDS systems
  • Stealth Scan: Varies time and frequency of scan to avoid detection by IDS. This is not a full connect scan
  • Xmas Scan: malformed packet that sets fin, urg, and push flags; This is used to bypass firewalls
  • Ack Scan: Sending only an ack packet; receiving end won’t know how to respond as there was no handshake; causes open ports to return a reset
  • FIN Scan: Sending a packet with fin flag set; This can usually bypass the IDS systems
  • Null Scan: Sending a packet with no flag set; This can also bypass the IDS systems in most cases



UDP Scanning


  • Unlike TCP, UDP protocol doesn’t have too many controls and handshakes. The process of a UDP stream is much simpler.
  • Source device will send a UDP request and the destination will respond.
  • UDP scanning scans only for UDP packets
  • It is less reliable than TCP scanning
  • Maybe of limited value, since UDP or ICMP may be blocked at the firewall



ICMP Scanning

  • ICMP is the most common protocol to
  • Ping scanning is the most common way of scanning
  • Live hosts may respond to ICMP Type 0 or 8
  • Most network scanners include ping scans
  • Usually it will trigger IDS alerts and is detectable

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