log4j-portscan

log4j-portscan is a simple little inverse port scanner to determine if you're blocking the default outbound ports that the log4j exploit (commonly known as log4shell):

CVE-2021-44228

For more information, check out:

• ITPNZ Tech Blog
• 1Newz TVNZ
• The ExpressVPN blog

If you run this tool and the test passes, that means that on your current Internet connection, your machine is not able to connect out on the default ports. Any attacker using those ports, will still be able to get your machine to request a malicious payload, but your machine won't be able to connect to the malicious server to download it.

This is not a silver bullet and only offers the most basic of protection, which is hopefully buying you enough time to get all of your software check and updated.

Certainly, you should not depend on this tool for anything important!

Quick demo

I run the test on a network that does not have any port blocking enabled and all the tests fail (as expected). I then connect to ExpressVPN (who have implemented port blocking - see the above blog post) and repeat the test. The tests pass as expected.

This test will work with any method used for blocking those ports, it doesn't have to be a VPN, a router or firewall will do. There is enough information on this page to implement the protection yourself - but if you'd rather just press a button, then using ExpressVPN would be a solid option.

Building the tool

You can build it simply with:

cargo build --release

However, I'm also a big fan of Earthly so you can also build it with:

earthly +build

Running the tool

Because the tool is hard coded to use the test server I set up, there isn't anything you need to do other than run it. The easiest way if you're running from source is:

cargo run

How it works

This tool tries to connect on the default ports this exploit uses, namely:

• 389
• 636
• 1099
• 1389
• 3268
• 3269

Note: If an attacker uses a different port, blocking the default ports (and hence the results of this test) are worthless.

The host the app tries to connect to these ports on an AWS instance I created at http://log4j.the.engineer . nginx is binding to all of the ports - there's nothing dangerous or malicious hosted.

But I want my own server...

Perhaps you'd rather set up your own test server? No problem, it's pretty straight forward. These instructions are based on a Debian install, but it will be almost identical on Ubuntu.

First get your machine or VM installed with Debian and then:

# Update and upgrade packages
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

# Install nginx (our pretend malicious server)
apt-get install nginx

# Edit the config file (described below)
vim /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

# Restart nginx
systemctl restart nginx

Remember to make sure that any firewall you have allows those ports through.

Here's the config I added to to the config file:

server {
        listen 80 default_server;

        # Extra ports to listen on
        listen 389 default_server;
        listen 636 default_server;
        listen 1099 default_server;
        listen 1389 default_server;
        listen 3268 default_server;
        listen 3269 default_server;

        listen [::]:80 default_server;

That should do it!

Note: Don't forget to update the tool to point to your server's IP address

You need to upgrade!

Regardless, please make sure you check and update your software! There are vulnerabilities everywhere, and blocking these outbound ports can only do so much...

Fun Experiment

I created this tool in the hope that it would be useful but also so that I could experiment a little with network control flow in Rust. It was pretty straight forward to put together, but I'm putting that down to the ease of working with Rust and the great selection of crates available.