Remote And Local Access Explained

This tutorial will basically cover the differences between Local And Remote Access , because I know it can be quite a confusing subject at first for newbies. I think these two concepts are vital to understand because if your testing an exploit on your server and you need to run it locally , after reading this you will understand that you need to have some insider privelege before you run it.
ok lets get going


LOCAL ACCESS
Local Access is described as being logged into a shell. Or logged on as a user in the system.
For Example , lets say you wanted to rob a house (Just An example my friend) , There would be no point in breaking down a window if somebody gave you a key and said come back anytime right ? Right.
So it would be easier if you already could get inside without setting off alarms , then scope things out. Local access is also referred to as 'Privelege Escalation' Attacks. Because then the attacker would go from a legitimate user to uid0 (root)




REMOTE ACCESS
Remote Access is Described as having a connection via a network daemon or listening service at the application layer. (telnetd , SSH , FTP , rlogin) Sometimes there are flaws in ftp daemons and such , and to be exploited they need to be exploited remotely. This is sometimes where the confusion of how exploits work come around because newbies don't yet understand the difference of local and remote access , hopefully they will have an understanding after they read this tutorial. But anyway as I described before on insider access , and the analogy I used on robbing a house im going to try to do it again here to make it more clearly. ok you don't have a key , you don't have any access at all to this house and nobody will give you insider priveleges so you must try to get in remotely. Im still using analogy. Your typical Script Kiddie will throw every kind of rock and stone at this house to try to make a window shatter open alerting police and alarms all over the county and not even know why this worked. But a more clever person will go around knock on the window , see what type of glass it is. When the person leaves & comes home. Then after careful planning will get insider privileges and go from there. See what I am saying now ?




So basically what it comes down to is that REMOTE ACCESS means via a network daemon or some other communications channel. But LOCAL ACCESS means that you have privilege to that system already. Generally attackers exploit remotely to get local privileges.

And in my analogies and such , this tutorial did by no means hint malicious activities going on etc.I simply said what I said to help the people reading to grasp it more fundamentally.

Most of these concepts were taught to me by Hacking Exposed 2nd edition , and other google sources that I can't quite remember.

I worked really hard on this tutorial and did my best to make it come out clean.
But it is only my second one so if it needs any work at all , somebody PM me and let me know.

Good Day......

I had thought to neg you, however, I'll refrain from doing that... But I will ask the question if this really fits the mold of what is considered to be a tutorial. Seems more like a dictionary definition to me.

I, on the other hand am glad to see something like this. this board is for new people, as well as experts, these are some of those terms that are used all the time and rarely adequately defined.

acid- true enough. The information provided is valid and useful. That is why I did not give out any neg. points. However, I would think that something might be put together that adequately defines what is and what isn't a tutorial. I know that there was some disagreement last week over another tutorial that might have been avoided if guidelines on what is/not acceptable had been provided.

I happen to think that the info was usefull for newbies. Maybe we need a tutorial on writing tutorials? ;)

http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=244103

:) Didnt know there was a tutorial on posting and writing tutorials. Thanks cheyenne1212!

anytime ;)

Well , Maybe it wasn't in depth as I thought it would be. But some things i have a hard time getting on paper so to speak. Maybe i'll try harder and give it a go some other time. Thanks for your opinions though..
Good Day....

This question is a little confusing, so I'll try to make it simple because I think it has a simple answer. If I think my ftp port is vulnerable can I simply try to connect to my own ftp port on my computer? Is that still a remote access and will my vulnerability be able to be tested or do i have to go to another computer to do it? I don't really know how to test that so please excuse my ignorance.

Well what OS are you running. Because you can run Nessus from your linux box. It checks for lots of vulnerabilities and will probably let you know if your server has any vulnerabilities. But yes as long as your just regular connecting to it then it is considered remote access. But you can run the vulnerability scanners from your own computer and they should be able to find them.

thanks

You can normally log in to any port on your computer and simulate remote access by using your IP, or the IP 127.0.0.1 which is just a loop back to your machine. You'll find this is really helpful when you want to test network security tools such as nessus, other port scanners, sniffers etc. without targeting someone else's machine who may not appreciate you security auditing attemps none to much.

nice work well said the only fault is that he didnt post it on the tutorial section maybe give him another chance let him know where he should paste that tutorial the next time he does that then you can give him an neg points LOL

Who were you referring to ?

Depending on the situation access to your ports can be local or remote. Usually local machines use loopback when connection to ports on the local machine. People think of remote connections as being a seperate location but that not entirely true. Heres a MySQL example:

my ip for this example: 192.168.0.1


If I wish to connect to mysql on my local machine I can connect from the command line
% mysql
this will be a local connection using loopback to port 3306


now I could also specify the host I wish to connect to
%mysql -h 192.168.0.1
this is now an external connection, which even though on the local machine it is not going through the loopback

If you want to test your FTP as a remote attacker make sure you specify the full ip, so not to use the loopback.