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.
UPDATE 10/6
I am working through all these suggestions. I am sorry for the slow responses, but I have my hands full with family weekend. I will post more next tomorrow. But I did do one thing that has me scratching my head and wondering if this may be a wild goose chase.
I ran the nmap again per below with a completely fictional IP address within my normal range. It gave the exact same results:
nmap -A -T4 -p- -Pn <Fictional IP>
Starting Nmap 7.93 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2024-10-05 13:36 BST Nmap scan report for <Fictional IP>
Host is up (0.054s latency).
All 65535 scanned ports on <Fictional IP> are in ignored states.
Not shown: 65525 filtered tcp ports (no-response), 10 filtered tcp ports (host-unreach)
Service detection performed. Please report any incorrect results at https://nmap.org/submit/ .
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 182.18 seconds
Others haven’t suggested this yet, but a single device, like your laptop, even with one connection, can have two IPs.
Thanks. It is neither the Ethernet nor the Wi-Fi on my windows laptop.,
Don’t just turn your devices off when testing - - unplug them. An off computer can still respond to network requests.
I did not think of this. I will have to go into the bios to turn off the battery of my work laptop.
There’s Power Over Ethernet too.
Home network or corporate?
Its a windows server, if you are using widows too you can try establishing a RDP connection with Remote Desktop Connection.
It is a home network. Configured by someone who understands the basics, but is mostly following recipeies rather than having deep knowledge.
Yeah and giving a potential attacker your account details while trying to log on?
Eyeballing the login screen may give some insight, you’re right that its probably unwise to try real creds if you don’t recognize the server.
The default home page for Microsoft IIS, the web server built into Windows Server (and probably some desktop builds too).
That is IIS, all it means is you are probably talking to a windows server. Is the traffic encrypted? What port is it going to?
It shows NOT SECURE in the browser window
Is the traffic encrypted?
If it is, look at the certificate. Which hostname is it for primarily? Which SAN (Subject Alternative Name - basically a list of all other hostnames the certificate is valid for) are set, if any? Which Certificate Authority issued the certificate or is it self signed?
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?
You can enable IIS on almost any windows flavor.
https://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-10/install-and-setup-a-website-in-iis-on-windows-10/
Fair point.
As a note, I don’t recall all of them saying ‘Windows Server’ in the top left of that page.
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.
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!
That is weird. Running development environments maybe? Docker with windows iis?
I have x-code loaded on a Mac, but that is the closest I have to that.
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 -ain 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.phpI 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 no. 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 192.168.1.1IIS 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.
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
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.
The router might have a page for fixed IP addresses.
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.
How insanely small was the transfer? Like 1 bit?
9 packets
does your router give you the MAC address of the device? You can look it up to see who manufactured it and then narrow down. This could be a device that has a web service running is all you are seeing right now.
It does not show up on the DHCP table, nor does it reflect pings.
You can always start looking at how to use WireShark to sniff the packets and learn more about what is coming and going from that system. WireShark can be a daunting tool but if you look at some videos or walk through you should be able to get a handle on how to make it reveal only the one devices network traffic
I have Wireshark, but haven’t really had a reason to learn it. I mostly just stare at the traffic rolling by the way they do on The Matrix. This is on the list to try.
How do you know it sent data? Any chance you have packet captures?
I had set my router to track IP Statistics. There were 9 packets sent and received to that IP.
Don’t need the router. If you’re on windows or linux, you just ping the ip then enter ‘arp -a <ip>’ it will show the MAC address for the IP from your machine’s arp cache.
If you can, power stuff off and check if that web page is still available. Start with any Windows machines. It could be a virtual machine running inside of something else though.
The mac address can also tell you the hardware vendor.
I shut off my only windows machine and it is still there.
I’d go around unplugging anything that might be connected to the network, like game consoles, smart TV, etc. It’s unlikely, but maybe something has copied that same screen to throw you off.
It is probably going to come to this.
Is your IP adres same as localhost and you are using Windows Pro, then probably IIS is installed on your device.
Depending on your router, it could have a docker setup with Windows on it. I’ve seen some strange shit on cheap routers with far too much processing power and storage.
I will probably have to shut all the devices off and put them back one by one. OMG that will take a long time.
It’s the default page for a Windows Server running IIS web server.
So, as others have saId this is just an unconfigured IIS server, which implies it’s either a windows machine, or a windows based VM, well or someone put the default IIS files on another server, but that’s unlikely.
When you say “weird” IP I’d wonder what you mean by that.
I think since it’s probably a windows machine, from another windows machine typing nbtstat -A <ip> should give you the computer name and workgroup or domain they belong to. See if it matches anything you expect on your network.
If not, maybe it’s time to change your WPA wifi key.
At least get WPA2
I don’t even think my current wifi kit has WPA (1) as an option. It’s WPA2 or 3 only I’m pretty sure.
It could be a configured one with the default greet page still up.
Thanks. I ran nbtstat and it came up empty.
Edit: Also, I am big on wired networks. I mostly save WI-FI for smart and mobile devices. There is a lot of stuff on Ethernet that does not need a password.
Hmm. That would mean it’s likely one of the following (well perhaps more options, but these spring to mind)
- A windows machine that has the network set as a public network, or netbios specifically blocked on LAN.
- A windows machine that has all the netbios services disabled.
- Not a windows machine, or a container as others suggested that’s running some kind of IIS install
- Not a windows machine at all but for some weird reason IIS files and a web server setup.
I think you suggested in another comment, that it’s not in your DHCP client list but has an IP in your normal range. Which suggests it is setup with a static IP. That is odd.
Some other people suggested it could be a container that is using a real IP rather than the NAT that docker etc usually use. I do know that you can use real IPs in containers, I’ve done it on my NAS to get a “proper” linux install on top of the NAS lite linux that is provided. But I would have expected that you’d know about that, since it would require someone to actually choose the IP address to use.
If you have managed switches you could find which port on which switch the MAC address (as found by lookuping up the arp record for the IP using arp -a) is on (provided the switch allows access to the forwarding tables). Of course, if they’re on Wi-Fi it’s only going to lead to the access point they’re connecting to.
This is where you find that shit is so bloated and pointlessly connected that it’s running on a washing machine.
Following, I want to know what god awful iot device this is. Refrigerator? Toaster oven? Vibrating dildo? The suspense is killing me
Nobody wants windows on a vibrating dildo
Maybe I want my vibrating dildo to take an hour to load and come with spyware
I have a Bluetooth controlled vibrator. Reverse engineered the app (which has a chat function) and it has a blacklist of words (mainly Chinese) you’re not allowed to text using the app.
I did not check if your horny chat gets copied to Chinese spy agencies, but I suspect that will be done on the server.
Hey, I’m not normally one to judge but it seems like a bad idea to call yourself spyware. Either you’re going to blow your cover or it’s just negative self talk.
blow
load and come
I mean, Windows already fucks us metaphorically
Besides the MAC lookup suggestion, have you tried to simply find hostname in local DNS by reverse IP lookup, maybe that would shed some light.
Not sure if there is anything useful, but in browser just check site source, maybe there is something useful there that could help with identification. Does site have certificate? It might include info that would help with identification. Do the standard browser network trace via dev tools F12, maybe something useful appears there.
In nmap you can attempt to guess OS, try that. Additionally it might be possible to get hostname as well.
And have you checked your router to see if this connection is connected to your Wi-Fi AP or Ethernet to narrow things down? If it is not possible to determine this from router, simply connect your main PC to Ethernet, disable AP in router settings and check if IIS site is still up. If it is not, enable AP again, does it come back early or it takes some time?
Lastly, if it still is a mystery, start powering off devices one by one to find the source. Based on comments it seems you have multiple devices, but I assume it would not take that long?
