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Built-in Tools ๐Ÿ”

Feb 09, 20255 min read

This note focuses on:

  • whois
  • dig, nslookup, host
  • traceroute/tracert

Before we start using the whoisย tool, letโ€™s look at WHOIS. WHOIS is a request and response protocol that follows the RFC 3912 specification. A WHOIS server listens on TCP port 43 for incoming requests. The domain registrar is responsible for maintaining the WHOIS records for the domain names it is leasing. whois will query the WHOIS server to provide all saved records. In the following example, we can see whois provides us with:

  • Registrar WHOIS server
  • Registrar URL
  • Record creation date
  • Record update date
  • Registrant contact info and address (unless withheld for privacy)
  • Admin contact info and address (unless withheld for privacy)
  • Tech contact info and address (unless withheld for privacy)

Pentester Terminal

           
pentester@TryHackMe$ whois thmredteam.com
[Querying whois.verisign-grs.com]
[Redirected to whois.namecheap.com]
[Querying whois.namecheap.com]
[whois.namecheap.com]
Domain name: thmredteam.com
Registry Domain ID: 2643258257_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.namecheap.com
Registrar URL: http://www.namecheap.com
Updated Date: 0001-01-01T00:00:00.00Z
Creation Date: 2021-09-24T14:04:16.00Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2022-09-24T14:04:16.00Z
Registrar: NAMECHEAP INC
Registrar IANA ID: 1068
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse@namecheap.com
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.6613102107
Reseller: NAMECHEAP INC
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited
Registry Registrant ID: 
Registrant Name: Withheld for Privacy Purposes
Registrant Organisation: Privacy service provided by Withheld for Privacy ehf
Registrant Street: Kalkofnsvegur 2 
Registrant City: Reykjavik
Registrant State/Province: Capital Region
Registrant Postal Code: 101
Registrant Country: IS
Registrant Phone: +354.4212434
Registrant Phone Ext: 
Registrant Fax: 
Registrant Fax Ext: 
Registrant Email: 4c9d5617f14e4088a4396b2f25430925.protect@withheldforprivacy.com
Registry Admin ID: 
Admin Name: Withheld for Privacy Purposes
[...]
Tech Name: Withheld for Privacy Purposes
[...]
Name Server: kip.ns.cloudflare.comName Server: uma.ns.cloudflare.com
DNSSEC: unsigned
URL of the ICANN WHOIS Data Problem Reporting System: http://wdprs.internic.net/
>>> Last update of WHOIS database: 2021-10-13T10:42:40.11Z <<<
For more information on Whois status codes, please visit https://icann.org/epp

As we can see above, it is possible to gain a lot of valuable information with only a domain name. After a whois lookup, we might get lucky and find names, email addresses, postal addresses, and phone numbers, in addition to other technical information. At the end of the whois query, we find the authoritative name servers for the domain in question.

DNS queries can be executed with many different tools found on our systems, especially Unix-like systems. One common tool found on Unix-like systems, Windows, and macOS is nslookup. In the following query, we can see how nslookup uses the default DNS server to get the A and AAAA records related to our domain.

Pentester Terminal

pentester@TryHackMe$ nslookup cafe.thmredteam.com
Server:		127.0.0.53
Address:	127.0.0.53#53
 
Non-authoritative answer:
Name:	cafe.thmredteam.com
Address: 104.21.93.169
Name:	cafe.thmredteam.com
Address: 172.67.212.249
Name:	cafe.thmredteam.com
Address: 2606:4700:3034::ac43:d4f9
Name:	cafe.thmredteam.com
Address: 2606:4700:3034::6815:5da9

Another tool commonly found on Unix-like systems is dig, short for Domain Information Groper (dig). dig provides a lot of query options and even allows you to specify a different DNS server to use. For example, we can use Cloudflareโ€™s DNS server: dig @1.1.1.1 tryhackme.com.

Pentester Terminal

pentester@TryHackMe$ dig cafe.thmredteam.com @1.1.1.1
 
; <<>> DiG 9.16.21-RH <<>> cafe.thmredteam.com @1.1.1.1
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 16698
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1
 
;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;cafe.thmredteam.com.		IN	A
 
;; ANSWER SECTION:
cafe.thmredteam.com.	3114	IN	A	104.21.93.169
cafe.thmredteam.com.	3114	IN	A	172.67.212.249
 
;; Query time: 4 msec
;; SERVER: 1.1.1.1#53(1.1.1.1)
;; WHEN: Thu Oct 14 10:44:11 EEST 2021
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 80

host is another useful alternative for querying DNS servers for DNS records. Consider the following example.

Pentester Terminal

pentester@TryHackMe$ host cafe.thmredteam.com
cafe.thmredteam.com has address 172.67.212.249
cafe.thmredteam.com has address 104.21.93.169
cafe.thmredteam.com has IPv6 address 2606:4700:3034::ac43:d4f9
cafe.thmredteam.com has IPv6 address 2606:4700:3034::6815:5da9

The final tool that ships with Unix-like systems is traceroute, or on MS Windows systems, tracert. As the name indicates, it traces the route taken by the packets from our system to the target host. The console output below shows that traceroute provided us with the routers (hops) connecting us to the target system. Itโ€™s worth stressing that some routers donโ€™t respond to the packets sent by traceroute, and as a result, we donโ€™t see their IP addresses; a * is used to indicate such a case.

Pentester Terminal

pentester@TryHackMe$ traceroute cafe.thmredteam.com
traceroute to cafe.thmredteam.com (172.67.212.249), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  _gateway (192.168.0.1)  3.535 ms  3.450 ms  3.398 ms
 2  * * *
 3  * * *
 4  * * *
 5  * * *
 6  * * *
 7  172.16.79.229 (172.16.79.229)  4.663 ms  6.417 ms  6.347 ms
 8  * * *
 9  172.16.49.1 (172.16.49.1)  6.688 ms 172.16.48.1 (172.16.48.1)  6.671 ms 172.16.49.1 (172.16.49.1)  6.651 ms
10  213.242.116.233 (213.242.116.233)  96.769 ms 81.52.187.243 (81.52.187.243)  96.634 ms  96.614 ms
11  bundle-ether302.pastr4.paris.opentransit.net (193.251.131.116)  96.592 ms  96.689 ms  96.671 ms
12  193.251.133.251 (193.251.133.251)  96.679 ms  96.660 ms  72.465 ms
13  193.251.150.10 (193.251.150.10)  72.392 ms 172.67.212.249 (172.67.212.249)  91.378 ms  91.306 ms

In summary, we can always rely on:

  • whois to query the WHOIS database
  • nslookup, dig, or host to query DNS servers

WHOIS databases and DNS servers hold publicly available information, and querying either does not generate any suspicious traffic.

Moreover, we can rely on Traceroute (traceroute on Linux and macOS systems and tracert on MS Windows systems) to discover the hops between our system and the target host.

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