Description

An adversary uses a TCP FIN scan to determine if ports are closed on the target machine. This scan type is accomplished by sending TCP segments with the FIN bit set in the packet header. The RFC 793 expected behavior is that any TCP segment with an out-of-state Flag sent to an open port is discarded, whereas segments with out-of-state flags sent to closed ports should be handled with a RST in response. This behavior should allow the adversary to scan for closed ports by sending certain types of rule-breaking packets (out of sync or disallowed by the TCB) and detect closed ports via RST packets.

Prerequisites

FIN scanning requires the use of raw sockets, and thus cannot be performed from some Windows systems (Windows XP SP 2, for example). On Unix and Linux, raw socket manipulations require root privileges.

Mitigations

FIN scans are detected via heuristic (non-signature) based algorithms, much in the same way as other scan types are detected. An IDS/IPS system with heuristic algorithms is required to detect them.