New (More) Annoying Microsoft Worm Hits Net

A new worm seems to be running rampant Unlike Code Red, it attempts to hit boxes with many different exploits (including what looks like an attempt to exploit boxes still rooted by Code Red). It looks like each IP tries 16 attempts on its neighbors. There is also a new mail worm mailing WAV files or something with bits of what appears to be the registry... it may or may not be related. Got any words on this? Shut down those windows boxes and stop opening attachments. And make that 21. Got another one while writing this story. All my hits are coming from 208.n.n.n (where I am) I'm sure it'll keep moving to nearby boxes. Update: 09/18 16:40 GMT by J : It now has a name: "Nimda." More info here, here, and here.

Here are examples of the requests it's sending:

GET /scripts/..%%35%63../winnt/system32/cmd.exe?/c+dir
GET /msadc/..%255c../..%255c../..%255c/..%c1%1c../..%c1%1c../ ..%c1%1c../winnt/system32/cmd.exe?/c+dir
GET /_vti_bin/..%255c../..%255c../..%255c../winnt/system32/cmd.exe?/c+dir

While writing this story I was hit a total of 4 times, 16 GET attempts per attack. In only 4 minutes. Also of interest, My desktop has now been hit about 500 times today, all from 208.x.x.x IPs. This might be really bad. I still haven't read anything about this anywhere else, so you heard it here first ;)

Update Web servers compromised by this worm apparently attach a "readme.eml" to all web pages served... and due to a bug in IE5, it will automatically execute the file! Yay Internet Explorer!

Comments

408 worm too?

[libertynews]

I'm seeing massive numbers of timed out requests on my sytems this morning. It started at exactly 9:06 eastern time.

I checked one of the IPs and it said 'Fuck USA Government, Fuck PoisonBOx' and opened a second window with what looked like a MIME buffer overflow attempt. I run Opera on Linux so it didn't effect me. It looks like we may be getting hit in a shotgun approach. My systems are in the 207.227 range and 208.

Brian

Outlook Express 6.0 can prevent spread

[savaget]

With the new Outlook Express 6.0, you can now prevent the user from opening any attchments.

Here is how it is done:

Tools>Options>Security>check "Do not allow attchments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus"

Yep, we're seeing them here too.

[Olinator]

David Korpiewski, our Windoze martyr, is hard at work on this one (I Don't Do Windows:-), and had this to say:

Evidence from compromised boxes elsewhere on campus seems to indicate that this bug will create a ton of *.eml files on the computer and they are all about 78k. Wehaven't received an .eml file in hand yet, to view the contents. A variety of .eml files are created, including "desktop.eml", "readme.eml", etc.

A compromised system will attach a readme.eml file to the bottom of all web pages served. This is because there is currently a bug out for IE5 that will auto execute any given .eml file.

More Info

[Nater]

When the dir command succeeds (or rather, when the worm believes it has succeeded), the next request has a tftp command embedded in it which attempts to install a file called Admin.dll. Following that, there is a request for the dll itself, which presumably kick starts the worm.

I'll take a look at Admin.dll later today.

Re:Wrong name

[platinum]

If you try to access a vulnerable server it attempts to send you a 'readme.eml' file with a .wav content type. This file (using strings) appears to contain numerous registry entries plus all the strings used to find and infect other servers.

Worm Un-named no longer

[GodHead]

From NTBugTraq

w32.nimda.amm

There are currently 4 known means of propogation

[jedinite]

The best site to track this incident IMO (incidents.org) now has a pretty good picture of what's going on from a technical perspective.

A short summary:

The Nimda worm is now known to propogate four ways:

(1) An IIS vulnerability propagation mechanism where the worm attempts to exploit a large number of IIS vulnerabilities to gain control of a victim IIS server. Once in control, the worm uses tftp to fetch its code in a file called Admin.dll from the attacking server.

(2) Email propogation. The worm harvests email addresses from the address book and potentially the web browser history and sends itself to all addresses as an attachment called readme.exe. These executables are automatically executed if the receipient who opens (or previews) the email is running Internet Explorer 5 or 6. Note that the worm may spoof the source address on the emails.

(3) When a web server is infected, the worm replaces all web pages on the server with a binary encoded as a wav file, which can infect each client that connects to the server. The wav file is called readme.eml. Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 and higher will automatically execute the malicious file.

(4) The worm is network aware and propagates via open shares. It will propagate to shares that are accessible to username guest with no password.

See: www.incidents.org/react/nimda.php for the full details.

- YASP (Yet Another Security Professional) who is fighting this pretty heavily at work - nothing here infected, of course, but the traffic itself is threatening to become a pretty nice distributed DOS - our Internet Router (a decently-hefty CSCO 6500-series) is sitting at ~60% processor utilization.

URLScan

[Pinball Wizard]

I just found a very interesting tool at Microsoft's website, UrlScan. It is able to identify malformed requests, and thus is able to prevent against future, unknown worms. It discards the requests before they can be executed.

Anyone know if something like this exists for Apache? A tool like this, if widespread, could effectively contain future buffer-overrun type attacks.