Lachesis

Lachesis is a work in progress web services mass scanner written in Rust.

This project was born as a test of the Rust's networking (and asynchronous I/O) performance, but later expanded with the intention of creating a sort of "little personal Shodan", an open scanner that collects statistical data on web services and exposes the outdated, vulnerable or misconfigured services publicly accessible around the web.

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                      v0.3.0
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Lachesis v0.3.0
Michele Federici (@ps1dr3x) <michele@federici.tech>

USAGE:
    lachesis [FLAGS] [OPTIONS] --dataset <FILE> --subnet <SUBNET>... --web-ui

FLAGS:
    -v, --debug      Print debug messages
    -h, --help       Prints help information
    -V, --version    Prints version information
    -w, --web-ui     Serve a web app (and a basic API) to visualize/explore collected data
                      

OPTIONS:
    -D, --dataset <FILE>                   The full path of the DNS dataset used for the requests. The accepted format
                                           is:
                                           
                                           {"name":"example.com","type":"a","value":"93.184.216.34"}
                                           {"name":"example.net","type":"a","value":"93.184.216.34"}
                                           {"name":"example.org","type":"a","value":"93.184.216.34"}
                                           
                                           An example of a compatible dataset is the forward DNS dataset by Rapid7
                                           (https://opendata.rapid7.com/sonar.fdns_v2/)
                                            
    -d, --def <FILE>...                    Default: all the files in resources/definitions
                                            
                                           Multiple definitions can be selected (eg. --def wordpress --def vnc)
                                           Accepted formats are:
                                             File name with or without extension (eg. vnc.json or vnc). The json file
                                           will be searched in directory resources/definitions/
                                             Full/relative path to file (eg. resources/definitions/vnc.json or
                                           /casual_path/mydef.json)
                                              
    -e, --exclude-def <FILE>...            If all the existing definitions are selected (no -d/--def values provided) is
                                           possible to exclude some of them using this argument.
                                           Accepted formats are:
                                             File name with or without extension (eg. vnc.json or vnc)
                                              
    -c, --max-concurrent-requests <NUM>    Sets a maximum number of concurrent requests
                                            [default: 0]
    -m, --max-targets <NUM>                Sets a maximum limit of targets
                                            
    -t, --req-timeout <NUM>                Sets a maximum timeout for each request (seconds)
                                            [default: 10]
    -S, --subnet <SUBNET>...               Scan one or more subnets
                                            
    -u, --user-agent <STRING>              Sets a custom user agent (http/https)
                                            [default: lachesis/0.3.0]

Roadmap / TODOs

• Optimise https, http and tcp requests, async/concurrency management and minimize overheads (e.g. SYN scan for ports, rustls instead of openssl)
• Add definitions and scan options (e.g. request methods, payloads, paths)
• Plugin system/API to expand or integrate the scanner's capabilities
• Additional information gathering on the known hosts (e.g. further scan after specific findings, periodic checks)
• Improve the web API and the Web UI (a geo map showing the findings would be nice)
• A more structured "agent mode" for continuous scanning

Build from source

Dependencies

• Rust: Can be compiled using an updated stable version
• Node.js, Npm: Needed for the Web UI (front end) part
• On Linux and BSD based OS:
  • pkg-config (pkg-config on deb, pkg-config/pkgconfig/pkgconf-pkg-config on rpm)
  • libssl (libssl-dev on deb, openssl-devel on rpm)
• Docker, Docker Compose: Needed for running the tests (test db)

Compile and run (development)

Web UI

If you don't intend to work on the Web UI (front end) part, you can do this only once. If you don't intend to use the Web UI, this can be skipped.

npm install
npm run build # or npm run watch

Lachesis

cargo run -- --help

Production build (Web UI + Lachesis)

./scripts/build-release.sh

Tests

docker-compose up -d
cargo test

Troubleshooting

"Too many open files" error

Some Linux distributions are pre-configured with a low limit on the number of maximum opened files. Depending on the number of concurrent requests and other factors, that limit might be reached, crashing the software.

The limits can usually be increased in the following files. This is only an example, depending on the machine configuration and overall load they can be set higher or lower, only for a user or only for root.

• PAM (/etc/security/limits.conf)

  * - nofile 99999 # or username - nofile 99999
  root soft nofile 99999
  root hard nofile 99999
  

• Systemd (/etc/systemd/user.conf and /etc/systemd/system.conf)

  DefaultLimitNOFILE=99999
  

Note: to make sure the modification is effective, a reboot is recommended. The current limits can be checked using the commands:

ulimit -Hn #hard
ulimit -Sn #soft