UDP Port 88 – kerberos

About UDP Port 88

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) registers port 88 for kerberos. The IANA description reads: ‘Kerberos’. This port is referenced in 1 IDS rule and exhibits low malware activity in monitored traffic.

IDS Rule References

1 IDS / security rule reference UDP port 88. Treat that number as context, not a danger score. Many detection rules are written against groups of ports rather than one service, web ports especially, so common web alternate ports inherit large counts while genuinely sensitive services can show few rules or none. Presence in IDS rules does not mean traffic on this port is malicious.

Rule categories (top 1): trojan-activity (1).

Sample rule descriptions for UDP port 88:

• MALWARE-TOOLS GhostPack Rubeus kerberos request attempt

Malware Rule References

A small share of the IDS rules that reference this port are malware related.

1 of the 1 IDS rule that reference UDP port 88 are malware related. That describes detection coverage across the whole internet, not anything about your machine or your network.

Families observed (top 1): GhostPack (1).

Data Sources

This information is compiled from: IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry, Emerging Threats Open Ruleset (BSD 2-Clause / GPLv2 per SID range), Snort Community Rules (GPLv2), and MITRE ATT&CK (Apache 2.0).