MEDIUM: Open CharGen Report

DESCRIPTION LAST UPDATED: 2023-12-07

DEFAULT SEVERITY LEVEL: MEDIUM

This report identifies hosts that have the CharGen service running and accessible on the Internet.

These services have the potential to be used in amplification attacks by criminals that wish to perform denial of service attacks.

The service is tested by sending a UDP packet containing a single carriage return to UDP port 19.

You can track current CharGen exposure on our Dashboard.

Severity levels are described here.

For more information on our scanning efforts, check out our Internet scanning summary page.

Filename(s): scan_chargen

Fields

  • timestamp
    Time that the IP was probed in UTC+0
  • severity
    Severity level
  • ip
    The IP address of the device in question
  • protocol
    Protocol that the DNS response came on (usually UDP)
  • port
    Port that the CharGen response came from
  • hostname
    Reverse DNS name of the device in question
  • tag
    Will always be chargen
  • asn
    ASN of where the device in question resides
  • geo
    Country where the device in question resides
  • region
    State / Province / Administrative region where the device in question resides
  • city
    City in which the device in question resides
  • naics
    North American Industry Classification System Code
  • hostname_source
    Hostname source
  • sector
    Sector the device belongs to
  • response_size
    Response size in bytes
  • amplification
    Describes the amplification factor

Sample

"timestamp","severity","ip","protocol","port","hostname","tag","asn","geo","region","city","naics","hostname_source","sector","response_size","amplification"
"2010-02-10 00:00:00",medium,192.168.0.1,udp,19,node01.example.com,chargen,64512,ZZ,Region,City,0,,,4334,4334.00
"2010-02-10 00:00:01",medium,192.168.0.2,udp,19,node02.example.com,chargen,64512,ZZ,Region,City,0,,,6123,6123.00
"2010-02-10 00:00:02",medium,192.168.0.3,udp,19,node03.example.com,chargen,64512,ZZ,Region,City,0,,,74,74.00

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