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DHCP Attacks

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by daleyj 1 view

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I have always been a big fan of DHCP versus static IP addresses on a network especially when implementing a Win2K or NT domain. The point has been raised, however, that implementing DHCP could leave our private network prone to attacks from hackers. Is anyone aware of such vulnerabity and how to prevent it?

I have read the RFC's past and present about DHCP plus a couple of books and can not see where there would be anything that could be exploited.

5 replies

by mebudman

Those links are not related to Microsoft DHCP. I have not seen an exploit that targets Microsoft DHCP, so if that is what you are using, then you should be fine. It is when you get into mixed networks (UNIX, AIX, MAC, Windows) and you are using a DHCP implementation that is not Microsoft that problems start to occur.

hope this helps.

by curlergirl

Never heard of any such vulnerability, particularly in a private Microsoft DHCP network. As long as you're not using DHCP to assign IP addresses to external systems you couldn't possibly be exposed. I know that a lot of NT administrators use DHCP to assign IP addresses to dial-up RAS users and VPN users, which I think might conceivably be a potential security problem. However, these are network management decisions, not built-in security holes in DHCP. Hope this helps!

by rkelly

The main to thing about with all attacks to services via hackers are how are they going to actually get access to the server. There are two obvious ways

1. Get into your building (usually surprisingly easy - I've done this at a few of my customer's sites when the receptionist don't know who I am) and implement an internal attack.

This is VERY unusual.

2. Attack via the internet

Implement a strong firewall strategy and ensure that your internal network is well protected from externalattack. Implement a DMZ if required to allow a two tier approach to firewalling.

As far as I am aware the MS DHCP stack is not particularly prone to attack, however the service can recieve denial of service attacks. To stop these attacks just check that your firewall only allows the packets that must be received into to network.

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