ASS(1)

💖 ASS(1) — the autonomous system scanner, bestie edition 💖

okay so this is the manual page for ass, living in the General Commands Manual section of your friendly neighborhood Debian system. yes the name is like that. no we are not changing it. it's giving iconic, periodt. 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

ass — autonomous system scanner. that's it. that's the whole vibe. 🦋

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

ass [-v[v[v]]]  -i <interface> [-p] [-c] [-A] [-M] [-P IER12] -a
<autonomous system start> -b <autonomous system stop> [-S <spoofed
source IP>] [-D <destination ip>] [-T <packets per delay>]

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so like, this page is just a lil quick rundown of the ass command, bestie. it was written for the Debian distribution specifically because the original program literally does not have a manual page. so we made one. you're welcome. 🫶

ASS, the autonomous system scanner, is designed to find the AS of the router. she supports the following protocols: IRDP, IGRP, EIGRP, RIPv1, RIPv2, CDP, HSRP and OSPF. a whole roster. main character energy fr fr. 👑

🛋️ passive mode

in passive mode (./ass -i eth0), she just listens. that's it. she's eavesdropping on routing protocol packets — like broadcast and multicast hellos. lowkey the chillest mode. no cap.

🔥 active mode

in active mode (./ass -i eth0 -A), she tries to discover routers by asking for information. she does this by going to the appropriate address for each protocol (either broadcast or multicast addresses). if you specify a destination address, that one gets used — but heads up, it may be not as effective as the defaults. 🙈

🌀 the EIGRP situation (she's different)

EIGRP scanning is done differently, and honestly? she's built different. while scanning, ASS listens for HELLO packets and then scans the AS directly on the router who advertised himself. you can force EIGRP scanning into the same AS-Scan behavior as IGRP uses by giving a destination, or into multicast scanning by the option -M.

🎀 picking your protocols

for Active mode, you can select the protocols you want to scan for. if you don't select them, all are scanned. you select protocols by giving the option -P and any combination of the following chars: IER12, where:

• I = IGRP
• E = EIGRP
• R = IRDP
• 1 = RIPv1
• 2 = RIPv2

👀 reading the output (it's a whole aesthetic)

ASS output might look a little strange, but has it's meanings:

• Routers are identified by the sender's IP address of the packet. This may lead to several routers showing up as more then one since they used different sender interfaces. In the brackets, the protocols this router runs are shown.
• Routing protocols are shown as one or more indented lines. First, there is the routing protocol name (like EIGRP), followed by the autonomous system number in brackets. Aligned to the right is the target network if applicable.
• IGRP routing info shows the target network and in brackets the following values: Delay, Bandwidth, MTU, Reliability, Load and Hopcount.
• The IRDP info is limmited to the announced gateway (router) and it's preference
• RIPv1 info just gives you the classified target network (remember RIPv1 network boundaries) and it's metric
• RIPv2 info contains after the target network the following infos: Netmask, next hop, arbitrary tag, and the metric. An additional line may appear on the routers section that gives you the authentication if enabled in the protocol. For text auth, the password is there.
• The basic EIGRP just gives you the autonomous system number, the IOS and EIGRP version as found in the HELLO packet
• The EIGRP routes section depends on the type of route. All of them include the fields destination network, destination mask and in the last line (in brackets) the values for Delay, Bandwidth, MTU, Reliability, Load and Hopcount. External routes also include the originating router, the originating autonomous system, the external metric and the source of this route.
• HSRP info is not routing, therefore the third field is the virtual IP address of the standby group, followed by the state, the auth string, Hello, Hold and priority values.
• OSPF info includes the destination network as well as the Area in IP format, the authentication used (and, if applicable the auth string), netmask, designated and backup router and the values for Dead, Priority and Hello.

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🌈 OPTIONS 🌈

a summary of options is included below. strap in bestie, we're going through every single one. ⭐

• -h — Show summary of options. the little "help me" button, slay.
• -i <interface> — interface. the one you're scanning on. 💜
• -v — verbose mode. she talks more. and yes you can stack it (-v[v[v]]), iykyk.
• -A — Active mode scanning. she stops just listening and starts asking. 🔥
• -P <protocols> — Select protocols to scan. feed her a combo of IER12.
• -M — EIGRP systems are scanned using the multicast address and not by HELLO enumeration and direct query. the other EIGRP path. 🌀
• -a <autonomous system> — autonomous system to start from. your starting line.
• -b <autonomous system> — autonomous system to stop with. your finish line. 🏁
• -S <spoofed source IP> — maybe you need this. that's literally the description. mysterious. iconic. 🕵️
• -D <destination IP> — If you don't specify this, the appropriate address per protocol is used
• -p — don't run in promiscuous mode (bad idea)
• -c — terminate after scanning. This is not recommended since answers may arrive later and you could see some traffic that did not show up during your scans
• -T <packets per delay> — how many packets should we wait some milliseconds (-T 1 is the slowest scan, -T 100 begins to become unreliable)

bestie pls note: -p is flagged as a bad idea and -c is flagged as not recommended. the manpage is being so real with you. listen to her. 😭

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🫶 AUTHOR 🫶

This manual page was written by Vince Mulhollon <vlm@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🌸 this version dropped December 16, 2002 and it's still serving ASS(1) in the General Commands Manual section to this very day. go scan some autonomous systems, you absolute legend. 💖✨🎀