198.32.64.12 -- Harmless mis-route or potential exploit?

Wed Sep 3 12:42:48 UTC 2008

 well, actually....   this was the IP address used for l.root-servers.net
from 1998-2008.  so i guess you could say its never been used for anything.

 we are not currently routing that prefix and there should currently be nothing
at that IP address.

--bill

On Tue, Sep 02, 2008 at 06:24:21PM -0400, Dan Mahoney, System Admin wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> While recently trying to debug a CEF issue, I found a good number of 
> packets in my "debug cef drops" output that were all directed at 
> 198.32.64.12 (which I see as being allocated to ep.net but completely 
> unused).
> 
> Sep  2 22:03:25: CEF-Drop: Packet for 198.32.64.12 -- no route
> Sep  2 22:03:25: CEF-Drop: Packet for 198.32.64.12 -- no route
> Sep  2 22:03:25: CEF-Drop: Packet for 198.32.64.12 -- no route
> Sep  2 22:03:25: CEF-Drop: Packet for 198.32.64.12 -- no route
> Sep  2 22:03:25: CEF-Drop: Packet for 198.32.64.12 -- no route
> Sep  2 22:03:25: CEF-Drop: Packet for 198.32.64.12 -- no route
> Sep  2 22:03:25: CEF-Drop: Packet for 198.32.64.12 -- no route
> Sep  2 22:03:25: CEF-Drop: Packet for 198.32.64.12 -- no route
> 
> Now, as nearly as I can tell, this IP address has never been used for 
> anything, but I see occasional references to it, such as here:
> 
> http://www.honeynet.org/papers/forensics/exploit.html
> 
> So the question is, should I just ignore this as a properly dropped packet 
> due to "no route" (this provider is running defaultless, so unless such a 
> route exists, it should be okay).
> 
> On the other hand, one of the other packets I'm seeing specifically refers 
> to a DNS exploit, so should I then dispatch to people to trace down the 
> source origin ?  (Suffice it to say the resources are there to find it 
> fairly easily, even if the source address is forged).
> 
> -Dan
> 
> -- 
> 
> --------Dan Mahoney--------
> Techie,  Sysadmin,  WebGeek
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> ---------------------------
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