Detecting and defending against Web-server fingerprinting

Abstract

Cyber attacks continue to increase in sophistication. Advanced attackers often gather information about a target system before launching a precise attack to exploit a discovered vulnerability. This paper discusses techniques for remote identification of web servers and suggests possible defenses to the probing activity. General concepts of finger-printing and their application to the identification of Web servers, even where server information has been omitted are described and methodologies for detecting and limiting such activity are discussed.