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Quote of the Day (QOTD) Service Detection

medium Nessus Plugin ID 10198

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Synopsis

The quote service (qotd) is running on this host.

Description

A server listens for TCP connections on TCP port 17. Once a connection is established a short message is sent out the connection (and any data received is thrown away). The service closes the connection after sending the quote.

Another quote of the day service is defined as a datagram based application on UDP. A server listens for UDP datagrams on UDP port 17.
When a datagram is received, an answering datagram is sent containing a quote (the data in the received datagram is ignored).

An easy attack is 'pingpong' which IP spoofs a packet between two machines running qotd. This will cause them to spew characters at each other, slowing the machines down and saturating the network.

Solution

- Under Unix systems, comment out the 'qotd' line in /etc/inetd.conf and restart the inetd process
- Under Windows systems, set the following registry keys to 0 :
 HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\SimpTCP\Parameters\EnableTcpQotd HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\SimpTCP\Parameters\EnableUdpQotd Then launch cmd.exe and type :

 net stop simptcp net start simptcp To restart the service.

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 10198

File Name: quote.nasl

Version: 1.29

Type: remote

Published: 11/30/1999

Updated: 10/4/2019

Supported Sensors: Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Low

Score: 3.6

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

CVSS Score Source: CVE-1999-0103

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.5

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Vulnerability Information

Vulnerability Publication Date: 2/8/1996

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-1999-0103