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Slashback: Feathers, Worms, Happy Returns
Like the end credits on a short, short film. gi_wrighty pointed out that "the winners from the 5K web page contest (announced a while back ) have now been announced." Here are the welterweight web winners.
A different kind of Apache Con From Slashdot's own jimjag: "Are you interested in the details concerning how www.apache.org was defaced, as reported right here? Here's how it was done from the definitive source. It just goes to remind all of us that sometimes the obvious things are the ones we don't see, and the ones that come back and bite us in the arse. I can imagine quite a few SysAdmins making some changes over the last 36 hours."
... because the old ones were invidious. Remember the flap over GPL code in non-GPL drivers released by NVidia? Well, happily, the company kept its promises. Kheldar_522 writes "LinuxGames.com is reporting that the new NVIDIA XFree86 4.0 drivers released tonight have had all the GPL code removed."
May the circle be unbroken. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, instead of subtracting code, Samsung is hoping to make sure some gets added. iKev contributed the news that "Last Sunday, Gmate, the creators of the [Linux-based PDA]Yopy, released a very preliminary SDK for the Yopy. You can check it out here (click on the Developer image). I haven't had a chance to try it (it's only for x86 linux)." iKev wondered whether the terms of the download violate the GPL, which is used for some parts of the SDK. Any takers?
You are near area 51. Leave. BenTheDewpendent wrote: "I was at gpspilot.com and found instructions on how to connect almost any GPS to a Pilot [including the construction of a null-modem cable if you need one - t] and I thought it could be handy for things like a nav system in a car or bike ... especially now that Clinton has ordered down selective avalability." Coupled with some decent mapping software, this might even help me get less lost, more often. Be warned, though -- this is not the only purveyor of Palm maps, and they do want to sell you some.
We han Cardly wait! For those who read paper books, this should be good news, contributed by Anonymous Coward after reading about the new Ender's Game sequel: "In a recent interview on otherview.com, OSC mentioned that he is also working on two more sequels to Ender's Game. Shadow of Death, the "final volume about Bean," and an unnamed Petra-and-Peter book. He mentions this on the third page of this article. Also interesting, OSC apparently is all in favor of e-books, though his publisher won't let him do it."
"Biting into some software and finding half a worm!" It's been a quiet couple of days for the administrators of Windows networks -- unless they have MS Outlook e-mail, in which case they don't feel Loved and it isn't Very Funny. Østergaard writes with "this piece, mainly as a reflection on the current worm mania filling the news (and mail-servers ;) around the world. I'd like to see what you people think." It's good reading, and very sobering if you're running the user agents at fault, or ones that could be, next time 'round.
Ehh I don't know that you could make it *that* much worse than what we've seen so far. These email worms aren't quite as effective as spreading, I guess, since there are enough non-idiots to stop it eventually. Something like the Morrison worm (except actually carrying a decent payload) would be ideal. So there are two problems to worry about: the payload, and the method of propagation.
.doc file (or maybe even a .vbs? hee hee). The trojaned .doc would then drop a virus which would play mind games with you (as mentioned earlier), as well as add itself to your autoexec.bat (or something) so that it can e-mail some of your friends at a later date. The key (ho ho) is to be pretty low key. Symantec and McAfee and what not might pick up on it after a while, but it takes some *serious* damage in order for it to make the news. Once someone commits suicide because of the mind-games the virus/worm is playing, then it might make it on CNN or maybe even 20/20 or something.
As for the payload, there's not a lot you can do (that's interesting) without *a lot* of patience. I suppose you could make a worm which reformats the hard drive, etc., which would force everyone to reinstall and dig out the back-ups. Not really all that more exciting than the ILOVEYOU worm. In order to do some *real* data damage, one would have to destroy back-ups, but those are usually stored off-site (e.g. not even in the same room as a computer), so that would make it pretty difficult. Plus, it wouldn't really be all *that* interesting.
What would be interesting is to get it to spawn a virus which would "play tricks" on you. You send an e-mail to your boss, and the virus randomly and subtly changes your message into something damaging. Or it could discreetly yet "sloppily" download child pr0n in order to get you arrested. It could discreetly send "realistic" emails to your friends and family, etc. in order to ruin your live. Combine that with the power of a good worm (so that it propagates on its own) and you would have some very interesting results. Trying to get any of these to work *well* though (so that your tampered e-mails to your boss are actually believable) would take an incredible amount of work and patience.
As for the method of propagation, it seems like it's getting harder and harder to get a good worm going. The Morrison worm was a wake-up call of sorts, and now almost all Unices have switched to (more or less) secure daemons. Plus the Unix market is so fragmented that a worm wouldn't get very far (e.g. you might be able to make a worm that gets through old Solaris boxes all right, but not on BSD boxes). Except through poorly configured web servers (and things like Back Orifice, which would be pretty difficult to put into a worm), it's hard to run arbitrary code remotely on a Windows box. DOSes are pretty common, but that doesn't do much good for a worm. Basically what you're left with on the Windows/MacOS/... side of things are these "worms" that require intervention by stupid computer users. Melissa and ILOVEYOU have shown us that there is quite a considerable number of idiots out there, but not quite enough I don't think.
If the worm were subtle, though, it might work a little bit better. Instead of sending out 50 e-mails immediately, trashing your hard drive, etc., let it stay dormant for a while. At random intervals (every week or so), let it change one of your emails so that it attaches "oh yes and here's document X which I think you should look at" along with a trojaned
Anyway it's not entirely clear as to whether this approach would to more damage than the "explosion" kind of damage that Melissa, ILOVEYOU and the Morisson worm did. Basically all they did is waste some man-hours and cause some headaches for sysadmins, but nothing really interesting/evil.
www.apache.org compromised; a windows virus spreads over the globe like a chain reaction on H2O (if such were possible). What's in common?
;)
Users are not careful. Systems must be secure by default. For all intents and purposes, system administrators are the users of the software their systems consist of (again, see apache.org incident).
Here's listening to OpenBSD. For all their arrogance they have that one right.
This is something every distribution should be based on. Every OS and software distribution. Do not open possibilities of exploit. Is it that hard to think about?
We'll live in a pretty ugly world pretty soon unless this simple principle gets generally accepted.
There is nothing stopping someone using Windows automation exploits, DDoS and such for possibly worse purposes than random harrassment. For what? Play more Illuminati
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
In order to do some *real* data damage, one would have to destroy back-ups, ...
And while it is dormant on your hard drive, it trashes your backups as they're being made. Then after a couple of months it trashes your hard drive.
Have you checked your backups lately?
Steve M