43 - Pentesting WHOIS - HackTricks

# 43 - Pentesting WHOIS

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## Basic Information

The WHOIS protocol serves as a standard method for inquiring about the registrants or holders of various Internet resources through specific databases. These resources encompass domain names, blocks of IP addresses, and autonomous systems, among others. Beyond these, the protocol finds application in accessing a broader spectrum of information.

Default port: 43

    PORT   STATE  SERVICE
    43/tcp open   whois?

## Enumerate

Get all the information that a whois service has about a domain:

    whois -h <HOST> -p <PORT> "domain.tld"
    echo "domain.ltd" | nc -vn <HOST> <PORT>

Notice than sometimes when requesting for some information to a WHOIS service the database being used appears in the response:

Also, the WHOIS service always needs to use a database to store and extract the information. So, a possible SQLInjection could be present when querying the database from some information provided by the user. For example doing: `whois -h 10.10.10.155 -p 43 "a') or 1=1#"` you could be able to extract all the information saved in the database.

## Shodan

- `port:43 whois`

## HackTricks Automatic Commands

    Protocol_Name: WHOIS    #Protocol Abbreviation if there is one.
    Port_Number:  43     #Comma separated if there is more than one.
    Protocol_Description: WHOIS         #Protocol Abbreviation Spelled out

    Entry_1:
      Name: Notes
      Description: Notes for WHOIS
      Note: |
        The WHOIS protocol serves as a standard method for inquiring about the registrants or holders of various Internet resources through specific databases. These resources encompass domain names, blocks of IP addresses, and autonomous systems, among others. Beyond these, the protocol finds application in accessing a broader spectrum of information.

        https://book.hacktricks.wiki/en/network-services-pentesting/pentesting-smtp/index.html

    Entry_2:
      Name: Banner Grab
      Description: Grab WHOIS Banner
      Command: whois -h {IP} -p 43 {Domain_Name} && echo {Domain_Name} | nc -vn {IP} 43

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> Support HackTricks
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> - Join the 💬 Discord group or the telegram group or follow us on Twitter 🐦 @hacktricks_live.
> - Share hacking tricks by submitting PRs to the HackTricks and HackTricks Cloud github repos.