I found a weird IP address on my network that had transmitted an insanely small amount of data. I put the address in my browser and got this. what the heck am I looking at?

RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 329 points –

UPDATE 10/4 6:47 EDT

I have been going through all the comments. THANKS!!!!!! I did not know about the techniques listed, so they are extremely helpful. Sorry for the slow update. As I mentioned below, I got behind with this yesterday so work cut into my evening.

I ran a port scan. The first syntax, -p, brought no joy. The nmap software itself suggested changing to -Pn. That brought an interesting response:

nmap -Pn 1-9999 <Local IP Addr>

Starting Nmap 7.93 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2024-10-04 11:44 BST Failed to resolve "1-9999". Nmap scan report for <Local IP Address> Host is up (0.070s latency). All 1000 scanned ports on 192.168.0.46 are in ignored states. Not shown: 990 filtered tcp ports (no-response), 10 filtered tcp ports (host-unreach)

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 6.03 seconds

Just to be absolutely sure, I turned off my work computer (the only windows box on my network) and reran the same syntax with the same results.

As I read this, there is definitely something on my network running windows that is not showing up on the DHCP.

103

You are viewing a single comment
View all comments

As everyone else has said this is the out of the box default page that comes with Microsoft IIS web server on windows server.

Though I feel like you'd know if you had a copy of windows server running on your network somewhere—is the IP in your usual network subnet?

The only windows box on my network is my company laptop. It is on a different IP address than that one.

It IS in my normal range, but it is NOT listed on my Router’s DHCP client list.

Have you recently installed visual studio or are doing any .NET development? It could possibly be a containerised version of IIS

If you completely turn off your windows device and try to access the IP from another device does it still resolve?

Great Idea! My windows box is off and I can still see it from my phone.

Hmm

I'd maybe try systematically turning any other devices off you think could potentially have the grunt to run windows server in a container or VM.

Do you have a Mac/Linux machine handy? If you run arp -a in one terminal and ping the unusual IP in another, that should give you a corresponding MAC address for the device. You can then look up the MAC address and see if it gives you any more info about the device running it—it might not but you never know. You can use something like https://dnschecker.org/mac-lookup.php

I guess next you could look at taking that MAC and blocking it in your router control panel and see if anything starts complaining

I guess next you could look at taking that MAC and blocking it in your router control panel and see if anything starts complaining

I love the "see who screams" method, my coworkers do not. it's usually instant.

In addition, you might like to do a portscan on that IP address to see if any other ports reaveal something more interesting.

You can run this in cmd prompt, I think, if nmap is available on your windows machine:

nmap -p 1-9999 192.168.1.1

IIS can only run on a windows OS, so it must be a windows physical machine or VM connected to your network.

Thanks as you can tell, I’m not an expert in any of this.

I will run this as you described.

I did the nmap based on input from ChatGPT, it had me do a Ping base scan with nmap. It turned up nothing because that IP address did not return a Ping.

This has me really curious.

I’m concerned that the website I opened in Safari on my phone is bringing up a cache on my browser and is not actually live.

I tried to open it from an iPad and it did not load. Iit still loads off my phone even though I have rebooted everything.

In case it helps your troubleshooting, ICMP (ping) is typically disabled by default on Windows.

Thanks. It is not responding to ping.

Your command needs to look something like this:

nmap -Pn -sVC -p- (IP) -o scan

-Pn skips the availability check per ping

-sVC performs a version and a script scan so you get more information

-p- scans ALL ports

-o puts out a file called scan.nmap

If you want you can share that output afterwards for further info.

Edit: You can also try enumerating the directories on the server if you find no content. I can help you with that if you want.

That is weird. Running development environments maybe? Docker with windows iis?

Yeah, that's a company server, specifically for the local network group

It IS in my normal range, but it is NOT listed on my Router’s DHCP client list.

Why would an internal server change IP all the time? DHCP is for silly things like laptops that turn on and off eleventy times a day

Even if it isn't changing IP, you still want it in your DHCP table so that IP doesn't accidentally get assigned to something else. It's unlikely on a small network but it can happen.

Thanks! I did not know DHCP allocation was optional on a home network.

"home" isn't descriptive enough. you can run some VERY powerful, in depth stuff if you were so inclined on a "home" network.

It is more than your average home network. I have a dual WAN router with fiber on each to a different provider. (It is stupid overkill, but my wife and I both work from home and it is important not to be down). I use a pi-hole for ad blocking and unbound for recursive DNS resolution. Most of the devices are wired Ethernet, so I have a bunch of switches and kit to transform coax into fast Ethernet.

I don’t mess with the firewalls, because that seems like there is a big downside to messing about if you get it wrong. That is all vanilla out of the box.

nice. firewalls are easy though, most you can keep vanilla. if you've setup a pihole, configuring a firewall is a breeze. most are all in ones also, so the router/gateway/firewall is all one box, just plug in your modem, then it's a big switch basically with lots of options.

I run a ubiquiti usg pro 4, first gen and have a 24 port ubiquiti switch and access points. I love it. super advanced users will complain about some things, but ultimately it's perfectly fine for me without having to get meraki $tuff. I run a few small game servers, a seedbox and some vms, nothing crazy. it moves about 1 TB / day of data from various torrents and nzbs, soulseek. have a micro Dell PC setup as my DNS and pihole, Plex server thousands of movies/shows.

Any device can decide to set it's own IP so that's not too far fetched. Have any IoT crap like a water softener or colorful lights or speakers or cameras?

I have quite a few smart home devices. But the only “crappy IoT things” is an air purifier that is controlled by phone.

Unfortunately, I bought quite a few T-Link products before the IC revealed that they are dangerous.

It is worth exploring.

Edit TP-Link

Ah I have a TP-link router as well, two actually, and Im not monitoring my home network at all. Your experience makes me think I should!

I think you can enable IIS, or at least some version of it, under Windows Features for Windows 10 Pro/Edu installs.

But someone can correct me if I'm wrong about that.