Detecting HTTP Load Balancers using Halberd

We covered Load Balancing Detection using LBD in a previous video. In this one, we will cover a more advanced and stable tool called Halberd. Halberd detects HTTP based Load Balancing by using a host  of techniques - differences in HTTP response headers, timestamps, cookies and a couple other techniques. We will run Halberd on Msn.com and see how it is able to figure out that there are actually 15 servers behind the load balancer running various versions of the IIS web server.

I would highly recommend that you download Halberd and try it out. This tool is a must have when pentesting SaaS based installations.

Vivek Ramachandran is a security evangelist and has been working in computer security related fields for the past 7 years. In 2007, Vivek spoke at world renowned conferences Defcon (WEP Cloaking Exposed) and Toorcon (The Caffe Latte Attack). The discovery of the Caffe Latte Attack was covered by CBS5 news, BBC online, Network World etc news agencies.In 2006, Vivek was announced as one of winners of the Microsoft Security Shootout contest held in India among 65,000 participants. He has also been a recipient of a Team Achievement at Cisco Systems for his work on 802.1x and Port Security modules on the Catalyst 6500 switches. Currently he spends all of his time maintaining Security- Freak.Net , SecurityTube.Net and is the co-founder of Axonize. Vivek, is a Bachelor in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati.You can contact him at vivek[at]securitytube.net