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CAIDA Released Code-Red Worm Post Mortem
davidu writes "David Moore at CAIDA (The Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis) was monitoring an entire /8 network while the code-red worm traversed the net. His findings are really interesting and show just how swiftly code-red moved across the net and infected hosts. It was the sheer stupidity of the worm's creator and the skill of some network admins which limited the worms attack and DoS potential.
note: Check the graphs, these pictures really do tell a thousand words."
Exaggeration. While this was true in the past, the rate of such bulletins has been slowing. I've received three for the entire month of July so far.
This patch in question requires SP1 to be installed as well. If the IIS server was up withoug SP1 then that requires 2 reboots to get the server patched.
And, as others have said, any system administrator worth his salt has already installed SP1 for Windows 2000. Therefore, it's really only one restart.
In many cases, the admins are overworked and cannot get to every patch all the time.
Indeed. That's why you put in extra hours to fix things. MS may not be the best server software in the world, but any competent MS system administrator applies the patches as they come out, maintains a reasonable schedule, and tells the bosses flat-out, "I'm installing this patch at such-and-such a time, and that's all there is to it." Few employers are willing to fire a system administrator who's doing their job.
Personally, I had 1 of 3 IIS servers at my job vulnerable and it was 'ploited.
Yes. Imagine how you would have felt if you'd stayed on top of it. It's easy to say that you don't have time to install the patch, but on any reasonable server-level machine, the patch takes maybe five minutes to install, and most of that is spindown/startup time.
I have enough on my plate then to jump at every damn MS Security Bulletin.
If this is your attitude, you need to find another line of work. I wouldn't want you administering anything of mine.
If you actually care about what you do, then you MAKE the time. Explain to people what you're doing. Encourage them to understand what's involved. Tell people to piss off, you're saving the company.
There are just so damn many of them!
39 this year. That averages to slightly more than one per week thus far. This is a lot, to be sure, but it is not "too many." The thought "too many" should be followed by the thought, "What are my alternatives?"
If you're that peevish about MS product security, then don't use MS products.
I am overworked as it is yet my CEO still asks "What exactly does he do again?"
Then quit. Get a job elsewhere. Do something else.
for many Fortune 1000 organizations, patching is a bad thing. They want stable systems and have a rigorous change control process to guard against problems.
Great. Do they have an artificially intelligent firewall, too? That's what it's going to take to allow people to run software with known security holes for very long.
Does anyone else remember the worms that were attacking unpatched Red Hat systems ~3 years ago? It was six months between the time the exploits were discovered/patched and the time that the worms started making their rounds. A more recent Red Hat attacking worm came out something like 3 months after the security holes it exploited were discovered. Now we've got an IIS security hole, with a worm exploiting it within a month.
Do you not see where this is going? We're at the point where virus/worm authors aren't just reusing each other's code, they're talking about writing modular hostile code in the first place! Take a "worm kernel", load in modules to install back door A, autonotification service B, and brand new exploit C, and send it off to the internet the same damn day you discover a new buffer overflow.
This is coming soon, and if you have computers hanging out on the internet, you need to be ready for it. Don't give me any BS about "rigorous change control". If you want to think of it in those terms, think about this: Running known exploitable, publically accessable software will cause your computer systems to undergo uncontrolled changes without your approval!
Throwing many MS OS/App patches into the mix without testing the effects of the patch on your systems environment is just as foolish as not installing the patch.
No, it really isn't. What's the worst that buggy MS patches can do to you, reformat your hard drive? Not installing the patch can result in your data being published to hostile destinations, your passwords being sniffed, other systems on your network being attacked by the compromised unpatched system, your network being flooded by the compromised system, and your business being brought to a halt for days while you explain to the feds why your computer was being used to try to crack *.fbi.gov. Oh, and for kicks, the attacker/worm might reformat your hard drive afterward anyway, to cover his tracks.
Simple. If a customer's machine is responsible for further spreading a virus, worm, etc. the ISP should CANCEL the customer's account without a refund. People would be more responsible if irresponsibility affected their wallets.
It was the sheer stupidity of the worm's creator and the skill of some network admins which limited the worms attack and DoS potential.
Riiiggght. This is the second time Code Red has been mentioned on Slashdot with a reference to the "stupid" author. Compared to the skilled network admins? What, the ones who let Windows NT boxen on their network? The ones who got HACKED by the silly virus author? Yeah, they're skilled all right, truely elite.
Mock the author as you will, but the fatal errors in Code Red were choices that the author made. His options for those choices could have been stopped, too. It wasn't really the stupidity of the virus author that saved whitehouse.gov, but the vigilance of some people doing things that might be illegal under the DMCA or some other law in the near future.
Remember that the next time you're feeling elite, yourself.
It was the sheer stupidity of the worm's creator and the skill of some network admins which limited the worms attack and DoS potential.
I'm sure that version 2.0 of the worm will fix all of the problems.
Wrote about the coming DDoS from Hell.
Best Slashdot Co
I'm surprised that no one is mentioning that the random infection part of Code Red is programmed to restart on the 1st of *every month*. Sure, by changing the IP of whitehouse.gov and short circuiting packets destined for the old IP to the bit bucket, the attack phase will never be a problem.
/dev/null. Perhaps that would drive enough white hat hackers to spread a repair worm, and start that whole argument all over again.
However, since it appears the number of infections capped at about 359,000 machines, I would venture that at least a quarter of those machines will not be repaired/rebooted by August 1st. If the number of infections went from zero to 359,000 in a couple of days at most, imagine what kind of storm is going to kick off on August 1st when nearly 100,000 machines restart the infection phase of the worm! How long will it take for the estimated 6 *million* vulnerable IIS servers to be patched?
Just for the sake of gloom-and-doom, how long will it take before the Internet only becomes usable between the 20th and the end of each month, due to Code Red infection storms between the 1st and the 19th? I don't think the core Internet routers can perform stateful-enough inspection as to route "Code Red infection" attacks to
--
Steve Jackson
Intelligent Life on Earth
Take a look at the domains that were the most-infected -- they were, by and large, cable modem providers, and the study concludes that home and small business users (read: Microsoft's target market for most of their products) were responsible for most of the worm's spread.
It's really disturbing to think that the Internet's stability rests on the shoulders of these people, half of whom probably don't even understand the concept of keeping up-to-date with security patches.
The ironic thing is that this tide is probably being held back by the fact that in order to "legitimately" run a server off a broadband connection, you generally have to pay through the nose, meaning that those who don't have a vested interest or Daddy's money need not apply.
Disturbing all around, really...
Simple, just have Jon Katz write all the articles posted.
Speaking of being a jackass... don't blame it completely on the admins either. There is about 3 security bulletins from M$ per week. This patch in question requires SP1 to be installed as well. If the IIS server was up withoug SP1 then that requires 2 reboots to get the server patched. In many cases, the admins are overworked and cannot get to every patch all the time. Sure, the admins should be able to get the patch on before hell breaks loose but hindsight is always 20/20.
Personally, I had 1 of 3 IIS servers at my job vulnerable and it was 'ploited. Of course, when it the Code Red worm infected that server, the server took out one of my 2500 series Cisco routers. That was fun since it was still too early in the day to know that it was indeed the worm causing the problems. I am the only IT person here, supporting 75 users, 17 servers, 100+ workstations. I do support, net admin, and IT department management. I am currently upgrading the corporate website, doing a software audit, a hardware audit, reconfiging our routers, I have 30+ helpdesk issues in my queue and I am late on 4 projects. I also advise our development team on network related aspects and I am trying to put up a new FTP server, backup server and mail server. I have enough on my plate then to jump at every damn MS Security Bulletin. There are just so damn many of them! I am overworked as it is yet my CEO still asks "What exactly does he do again?".
In the future will I put a little more time at getting the patches on the IIS servers when they come out? Sure will. Did I learn a lesson? Yes. Did my company learn a lesson? Nope. Not until I leave this place and they have nobody around...
But we're not a typical cross-section of the public. People are used to buying something and having it work. They don't need to patch their TV every couple of months to prevent people abusing it, and they just don't (and probably never will) see why they should do this for their PC, which is just another appliance (to them at least). And I'll bet that 95% or more of Slashdotters wouldn't fix their car themselves if it started burning a lot of oil - it's all a matter of whether you're willing and able to do the job.
The only way you're going to stop people like this propagating worms or virii or whatever in this manner is by taking that need for vigilance out of their hands. Quite how you do that without infringing on their privacy is beyond me. But just think about the fuss that would be kicked up here on Slashdot if Microsoft wrote it's software to require MS full access to it's OS at all times over the phone line under the pretext of helping home users keep their machines up to date.
Don't criticise the regular consumers unless you've got a better solution. And I don't count banning them from the net as better (even if it does have a certain appeal).
how much you want to make a bet that a lot of folks are going to grab the 13 meg quicktime file?
The .fli file works just fine.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
If ever there was a more graphic proof why monopolies are bad...
What I find interesting is the parallels with biodiversity. One of the argument for biodiversity, especially in agriculture, is that a wide variety of species will slow the growth of any disease or epidemic. If everyone planted the exact same species and variety of wheat, a single organism could wipe out the global harvest; but if everyone used whatever species or variety they felt like, an opportunistic organism's growth would be blunted. The organism can't adapt and infect to a hundred varieties of a crop, so it will try to infect unideal hosts and fail.
This same argument can be said for software. If everyone uses the exact same software from the same company, then an opportunistic hacker or virus could rapidly take over everything; but if there were more companies and products out there, then the virus/worm would either have to learn how to hack a dozen or more different systems, or it is limited to growth among one particular system. So if MS gets its way, we'll get computer equivalents to AIDS and Ebola creating pandemics of worms and viruses. But if there were more competitors, then no single worm or virus could ever pose much of a threat.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
It was the sheer stupidity of the worm's creator and the skill of some network admins which limited the worms attack and DoS potential.
Once again, evil is thwarted because, just as on television, the villans are incompetent while the virtuous are strong and intelligent.
I wonder if the virus author also committed any of the following classic villan errors:
So, the world is safe again ... but ... for how long?
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