Slashdot Mirror
Windows/NetBIOS pop-up Spam:
bofus writes "This article from Wired News presents a new way to deliver unsolicited advertising content - the MS Windows Messenger service.
It appears that the client software hasn't been widely distributed yet, but it's probably only a matter of time before a free clone is circulating. This method could become the delivery method of choice for all kinds of unsolicited junk, given the number of unsecured PCs out there.
On the flip side, if you run a relatively secured machine and have some sort of firewall, this probably shouldn't concern you."
I wasn't sure how to take this message...
:(
Hello, would you like to get laid? Call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx
alas, now that I know it's spam.. my hopes have been crushed...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
echo echo echo
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
try "net send IPADDR"
it is a cli and batchable, this can be supremely irritating as the only info given with the popup is wins name which is useless unless you are in the same domain/ou.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
When my friends and I would play Starcraft, the winpopup was my secret weapon ;)
"I have customers who call me back and tell me they love it and it generates hundreds of calls right away," said Kovacs, who noted blah...blah...blah..
That sure is a funny way to say "death threats."
"The girls of the internet. Ooh, I'd go online with them anyday!"
-Homer Simpson
Is to go into the services panel, and turn off Windows Messenging Service.
/.
Or we could just bitch about it on
net send %1 "crapflood of info"
goto one
It was kind of amusing to watch. People would click the OK button on the message and as soon as it went away another popped up. The best thing is the beep that accompanies the message. Oh the assinine joy....
-Tolerate my intolerance
All it will take is a few pr0n campaigns through this thing, and backlash will be quick to follow.
You might be able to increase the intensity and speed of the backlash by sending a pr0n ad to a machine conennected to a WiFi network during a powerpoint presentation to stockholders or upper management. (teehee!)
Real easy to do this stuff... find a win2k or XP box connected directly to the 'net with port 139 open ...
c:\> net send \\ip_address "message"
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
While you're at it disable Remote Registry while you are at it. It truly amazes what services Microsoft deems the average user needs running. I find the whole concept of Remote Registry particularly disturbing.
"Cool this service allows people to modify my registry remotely, sweet!"
While I know there are some legitimate and possibly useful reasons to have these services enabled, why on earth are they enabled by default?
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
...we just talked about this :-)
There were many helpful suggestions in those posts.
THERE IS NO DATA. THERE IS O
C:\> net stop messenger
The Messenger service is stopping.
The Messenger service was stopped successfully.
Then when you're up for it, just disable the service entirely from the services administration tool. It won't break any workstation functionality.
So what's next? Spam on my HP Printer?
Much worse in my opinion. MSN Messenger could be uninstalled.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
Don't tell the spammers that there's already a utility that can abuse the messenger service. There is no such thing as the net.exe command line utility.
If your NETBIOS ports are open, getting spam should be the least of your worries. You'll be too busy dodging winnuke attacks and fileshare scans/cracking. Close off ports 137 and 138 on any WAN connections. Of course, any competent windows network admin already knows this.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
This is talking about Windows Messaging Service, which is part of Win NT/2K/XP, not the MSN Messenger program.
Honest mistake though. Oh yeah, and if you're in windows trillian does seem better overall.
"I have customers who call me back and tell me they love it and it generates hundreds of calls right away," said Kovacs.
What about the thousands of calls that go something like, "YOU MOTHER F*CKER!!! STOP MAKING THESE F*CKING POPUPS COME UP WHEN I'M PLAYING COUNTERSTRIKE OR I'LL F*CKING RIP OFF YOUR F*CKING HEAD AND F*CKING SH*T DOWN YOUR F*CKING NECK!!!!!"
Sorry, I don't have anything else to say. The stupid lameness filter is censoring my post for yelling.
1. Log on as administrator or at least with an account that has admin access.
2. Enter control panel
3. Enter "Administrative Tools"
4. Enter "Services"
5. Scroll down and find "Messenger"
6. Right click > properties > startup type > Disabled.
Scroll through the list and see if there's anything else you might want to disable. (You know, like remote registry editing and all that stuff that Microsoft enabled so you wouldn't have to be troubled to do it yourself :-)
... youll see that the messager service uses port 135, not 137 or 139.
Start -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management
When that comes up, expand 'Services and Applications', and click on Services.
Scroll down to find "Messenger". Right-click and go to Properties. Set 'Startup Type' to 'Disabled'. Hit 'STop' to stop the service. Click OK. Close Computer Management.
Done. You're now clear.
(Many people won't need this. But I'm sure at least one person will.)
Brazil has decided you're cute.
two weeks ago, we had a big hulabaloo here at uiuc.edu because of this. all the win2k/xp machines on all of campus still running the messenger service got a popup describing how great our lives would be if only we had a diploma from a non-accredited university. most of the "administrative" users assumed it was a virus and panicked. then three more of the same came in this morning.
i just wish windows would log things like the origin of said messages so the abuse could be addressed at its source.
Why don't you OS Zealots use it to spam all the MS users out there and inform them of how they're a plague upon humanity!?
If you've got a machine out on the internet and you've windows networking turned on, you've probably got bigger problems.
A couple years ago, a co-worker of mine were at his house when he turned on windows networking and set his domain to "WORKGROUP" did the obligatory reboot suffle and started surfing all the shares in the area. It was hilarious, people had their entire C:\ drives shared, etc. Needless to say, after we got him setup with a firewall (linux/maq box) sure enough the logs just rolled with people trying to connect to ports 137/138/139. In one regard may ISP's block the netbios ports on their ingress and egress gateways.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Firewall your damned machine! Allow in only what you need to allow in, or responses to requests sent outbound. Not only will it protect against this, but all the other crap people will figure out in the future as well.
One of our gateway boxes is terribly insecure, and gets these pretty much every day now.
It's usually selling "diplomas from prestigious non-accredited Universities, based on work experience. No testing or coursework required"
I guess not locking down the box, they just assume we'd be stupid enough to fall for it.
Every once in awhile I'll do a
"NET SEND * ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US"
Noone here has a clue what it means or where it came from.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Now that this is out, my NET SEND pranks in IRC won't be as much fun anymore!
Sorry but I use remote registry service daily. If you want to do performance monitoring on a remote pc you need remote registry right because the perfdata is a section of the registry. It's also nice when you have a busted uninstaller and need to cleanup the registry before a reboot for a remote client, it's saved me a couple days worth of travel time this year alone! Whether it should have the default permissions that MS sets is another matter, but that is true for just about any MS default.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Damn...if I had thought of it (and if I didn't think Internet advertising is evil), I could've made a mint off all of the lusers who let their servers get infected with Code Red! If I had figured out how to do something similar with Nimda, I could've made an even bigger killing!
(Details of my adventures with Code Red are up here. The live counter is gone now because my rusty SQL skillz resulted in MySQL thrashing away for more than a minute to generate four numbers.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Saw this a while ago, looks like it could be fun:
Slap:If your like me you run firewall software that tells you when someone tries to access your system. Sometimes I respond with a few packets of my own just to let them know that I am paying attention. I wrote Slap to make responding to these access attempts easier and more entertaining. Just enter the IP address of the person you wish to slap and click on the Slap button. The program will attempt to access all the ports in the list and send them a packet with a personal message. (The default message is 'Leave Me Alone!') Slap integrates with Black Ice and Zone Alarm and can use information received from these software firewalls to "Auto Slap" intruders and add their attacks to your list of responses. --Here is a cool Wav file to use with this.
$700? You've got to be kidding me. I'm not going to waste the time, but it wouldn't be to difficult to make a perl script that increments an IP address range and calls smbclient -M... In fact, it would be really easy for someone to do this one time and send a link to the tone of "Tired of annoying messages like this? Go to www.xxx.net to find out how to eliminate messages like this forever." And that would be the end of this problem. Unfortunately, if you did this as a regular citizen, you'd have the FBI crashing through your window in no time for "hacking"...
Sad really.
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
not everyone needs it but it sure can be usefull. Our netapps have the ability to send a message before they are taken offline for maintenance (like we did recently when moving from a couple single filers to a f880 cluster). We also use it with our Samba server to notify the users when their print jobs have cleared the queue (great for plotters or very high traffic lasers).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Every exploit eventually produces a patch (or make people aware) to make the default OS settings a bit less brain-dead stupid open. People actually connect to the Internet these days.
Frankly, the only time I've seen it used is when I annoy the hell out of my co-workers by sending them anonymous popus using this lovely piece of Windows software.
that's cute, but often the ip you have is not the origin, but a hapless victim
which is being used to launch the attack and/or hide the tracks of the real blackhat
by sending data back to that ip, you may be unwittingly being used to help the intruder hide
and you may appear to be the intruder in the logs of the machine which the blackhat is using as a stepping stone
that's probably not what you are trying to do
and that's why I just add those ips to a droplist instead of sending data back
I used to use it to message people that weren't running ICQ and ask them to start it up so that I could talk to them.
May we never see th
I tried quite a few nbtstat tricks before I gave up reverse-mapping by NetBIOS name and determined they were external and not from a zombie host inside the firewall.
The tricky part is that they use UDP, since many firewalls "forget" to filter it unless you remind them with a CLI, sledgehammer, and repeated threats to use an etherkiller.
There's no reason to let UDP ports below 1024 in from outside your network, except for the specific services you're running, to the specific servers you're running them on.
Jouster
As for people saying "turn off the messenger service", there are actually valid uses for winpopups. At my last work, I set up a few perl scripts that would use smbclient to warn Samba users when they were over quota. Before that, users would go over quota and wouldn't know about it until things broke after the grace period.
Obviously, you should be filter Netbios ports at the firewall unless you have a damn good reason to have internet access to them. If someone in your network is using this program to spam, the LART them appropriately.
"... and then my computer was like beep beep beep and I was waist deep in a Nigerian money-laundering scheme!"
(Ellen Feiss parodies are destined to replace underpants gnome business plans.. Do not resist)
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I am glad that I don't have to worry about it here, XWindows baby.
If anything, a poorly configured X server would be even MORE annoying. If you let anyone attach to your X session remotely, they could display pretty much anything on your screen, not just annoying pop-up messages.
I love X, but you have to be careful with it too.
Cheers,
Vic
This is from my previous post at http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=42016&cid=4432 394
a d_license.htm. You will occasionally find that it interferese with pages that make heavy use of Javascript, but you can turn it off when needed. The added protection from annoying web sites is worth the small inconvenience it may sometimes cause.
Note, I'm not karma whoring, I could care less.
--
(You will have to graduate from newbie status in order to take advantage of my advice. This means that you will have to climb the learning curve and actually go read some stuff. You can spend a chunk of cash on products to avoid doing just that, but that's much less fun.)
If you're doing things like turning on file sharing or sharing printers, it's (supposedly) very easy to hack you. I say supposedly only because I haven't actually tried this. It's such an infamous hole though that I do believe it. To turn this off, unbind the NetBIOS protocol from the modem/network card that connects you to the Internet. In Windows 2000, that you means you go to the Properties for your network connection (in the Control Panel) and uncheck the 'File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks' option. (It's very easy to fix this in Win9x too using roughly the same technique.) You may have to reboot, I don't recall. That problem will then be solved.
Now to protect yourself from other intrusions and threats.
If you're just running a dial-up connection and don't leave your machine on the network for extended periods of time, then a product like ZoneAlarm (www.zonelabs.com - look for the free version) will serve you well. Actually, it serves you well in two ways: 1) it protects your machine from the outside world coming into your machine in an unauthorized fashion and 2) it protects adware on your machine from phoning home without your permission (actually it prevents everything from using the Internet until you grant permission, not just adware). This is sufficient for dialup.
For broadband users and users who want to leave their machine on the Internet for extended periods of time (more than a couple hours at a time), I recommend using an honest to goodness separate firewall. There is a lot that can be said about this, far more than I know really, but I well give you a couple pointers.
First of all, one of your options is to use a second PC as the firewall. It will need to have 2 network cards, you will need a router or hub for your home LAN, and you will have to get the cable modem (or DSL for that matter; with which I have no experience - shouldn't be too hard) working with that extra PC (via Windows would be easiest to start with). Once that's setup, go grab a Linux distribution like IPCop (or SmoothWall - they're very similar, in fact they were the same product at one time), and install it on that PC. It will require that you reformat the hard drive, so don't plan on storing any files on it. A small hard drive is sufficient. There are FAQs and forums on the IPCop and SmoothWall sites that will help get you setup.
Your second option in the category of 'real protection' (for home users anyway) is to just go buy a hardware firewall. So instead of a second PC, you just go buy a device that does essentially the same thing. I won't go into detail on these as I have no experience with them. I just thought you should know about them.
Two last points:
-PLEASE keep a current anti-virus product actively running on your machine and keep it up to date. If you need a free one, go to http://www.grisoft.com to get the free personal version of the AVG anti-virus product. This one has saved my butt several times from several infections. It may or may not be the best product out there, but it works for me.
-To protect yourself from browser window popups and other shenanigans, go grab WebWasher at http://www.webwasher.com/en/products/wwash/downlo
As always, this advice is just a starting point. Today's perfect security solution may be an open door tomorrow. It's up to you to keep yourself informed and to take action when problems arise.
Good luck and have fun!
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
The only time it's really a problem is Critical Mass.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
A lot of "Paper MCSEs" understand this because the networking exam covers the OSI model. The same thing goes for those "Paper CCNAs".
Here's how it works. When I do a net send "Message", the following occurs. Once the data portion of the net send information is formatted by the appropriate layers, it's handed down to the protocol layer and wrapped in a UDP header with a port number. UDP is the protocol responsible for maintaining a communication session between hosts. The port number is like an apartment number in a street address. A lot of services have to talk using the UDP protocol, so it's divided into port numbers (As an FYI, the same is done for TCP). This in turn is handed down to the network layer where it will get a source and destination address stamp (The IP addresses). That in turn is handed down to the data link layer which stamps on the source and destination MAC addresses (Your computer and the default gateway). From there, it hits the physical layer and is on the wire. Along the way, the data link layer changes every hop that is made because the MAC addresses involved change at each router hop. Once it gets to the destination IP address, the recipient strips off the layers to reveal the data. It knows to hand that data up to the NetBIOS services because they're the ones listening on UDP port 138. Finally, you get a little window trying to sell pr0n. Here's a picture that shows the different layers of a TCP packet and their function.
Here's a rundown on NetBIOS port usage.
UDP port 137 is used for NetBIOS name resolution.
UDP port 138 is used for browsing, domain authentication, and datagrams (This is what the messenger service uses).
TCP port 139 is used for the actual session. This is what you transfer files through.
TCP port 135 is the RPC service. Some people often confuse it with the NetBIOS ports. I don't know why.
So, technically, you'll want to block UDP ports 137 and 138 and TCP port 139. Unfortunately, a lot of home equipment is geared towards the novice and they don't separate the UDP and TCP protocols. You are forced to block both TCP and UDP for any given port number. Because of this, you end up blocking more than is required.
For those interested in this brief tutorial, I highly encourage you to get a CCNA study guide even if you're not going to get the certification. Lots of valuable networking info.
Lucas
MCSE, CCNA, Ex-Microsoft NT Networking and Security Support Rep
In a business intranet, there may be uses for this service. But for a machine connected to the public internet (i.e. a spam target), there's simply no excuse for letting packets in unless they're running on a protocol you know you want to support across the net. For most couch potatoes at home, that means responses to outgoing queries, plus incoming packets on any Instant Messenger, Games, and P2P File Sharing type application you are running. If you're also running a web server, then there's that too. For couch potatoes at work, there may be all sorts of stuff, but there's no reason the business firewall should be letting them in from unknown sources.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
In this case, it doesn't sound like the spamware lets the spammer relay their traffic through another machine - it's probably coming directly from them. Slapping them may actually be fun - here you are, some poor slob who bought a package telling you how you can M8ke Munny Fast! by promoting your 1-900-sex-spam line, you start this thing up on your PC, and now you've got 500 popup windows on your screen telling you to stop bothering people, plus one more saying that all your base are belong to them.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
At the last place I worked, we had a number of IPs assigned. This made it painfully obvious in the logs when some script kiddie was port scanning us. On a couple occaisions we found that the machine scanning us had netsend active and availble, so we net sended them telling them to stop port scanning or we would take action. We could just picture the 13 year-old kid at the other end freakin out at this message popping up on their monitor.
What I did when I first became aware of the problem (yes I'm on a college LAN but we have a class A) is configured Tiny Personal Firewall to only allow UDP/TCP traffic on 137-139 and UDP on 135 (messenger service) to the samba servers and campus netblocks that I might use to access my computer (e.g., resnet, labs, etc), then add a filter rule to deny all other traffic on those ports - works like a charm =)
open up the advanced tab of you TCP/IP settings and goto the WINS tab and click 'disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP' and then 'OK'.
-witty
If you read the wired article and follow the link to the "dispute," AOL sued this company over their icq spam engine. It's important to notice, however, that they sued them over the *trademark* icq (which they infringed upon,) not the underlying spam problem.
Slashdot 's editors are dickheads
I think this may be more useful for most users (verified for 2000 and XP).
Right Click the icon for This Computer on the desktop. Click on manage.
Doubleclick Sessions and Services.
Doubleclick Services.
Scroll down to Messenger, doubleclick it.
Click on Stop. Change pull-down menu from Automatic to Manual.
Click on Apply.
You are done.
What about altering the service so that instead of just popping up a window that you can do nothing with but close, there would exist an additional button [REPLY] on the pop up message window, which would then allow you to respond to the alert message as you see fit? (Sending a message back to the source via the same net send facility that they used to send data to you).
Now I presume, of course, that an authorized administrator would have a large say in what services are going to be running on the computers in his domain, so if he wasn't interested in fielding replies to his authorized alert messages, he could simply have the requirement that the normal "one-way" messenger is the one that gets installed on the domain machines. Meanwhile, unauthorized sends would find themselves the target of maybe hundreds or thousands of replies, potentially causing a D.O.S. for them, even if they weren't actually running the messenger service themselves.
Of course, the new messenger service would also log the time, date, and originating IP of the sender, so that it can be confirmed later -- even if the sender does not happen to be running the messenger service himself.
Now I realize that this doesn't do a thing for handling people who fake their IP address, but I'd bet it go some distance to making this virtually unusable by most of the people who would just use such tools to spam.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The same spam I get in my Hotmail hit me last week through Windows messenger:
"U N I V E R S I T Y D I P L O M A S"
Notice the spacing designed to avoid word filtering? It looks like these guys are thinking ahead!
Anyone running with xhost access control is asking for trouble. If you're security conscious, tunnel your X session over ssh.
I come home one night to find one of these on my desktops... I thought it was funny and just happen to have taken a screen shot
Messenger_Service_Spam.gif
There is no
I'm glad to see this feature. When I was managing a very large multiuser application, from time to time, I would have to close some sessions were causing problems. Or I would see a problem going on, and would like to know more about what they see on their end. But armed with only an IP address and a vauge hostname, I could only track them reliably as far as what building they were in. "If only I could hit their walld", I said.
BTW, at the same time, UNIX users are in for a treat if their syslogd can accept outside messages. (Default behavior on many OSs, but has been changing.)
Think "kernel.crit".
I've seen several posts now where the following text is read wrong (either by reading to fast, or skimming, or something). Figgered I'd clear up the confusion...
Zoltan Kovacs, founder of DirectAdvertiser.com, said the company has sold about 200 copies of the program since launching two months ago. According to Kovacs, the software is ideal for advertising 900-number and other telephone services.
"I have customers who call me back and tell me they love it and it generates hundreds of calls right away," said Kovacs, who noted that Direct Advertiser is a good alternative to bulk e-mail because its messages are not regulated by spam laws.
The above doesn't mean that Joe User, sitting at his desk receiving all the spam via this new method, is calling and saying how they love it -- as several posts have noted. It means that Joe Spammer, the lowest form of life on earth, is calling and saying how they love the 'product' that directadvertiser.com is selling. World of difference there.
bork bork bork!
Port 135 is not messenger. Messenger is an RPC service and port 135 is the RPC port locator on Windows (like portmap on unix). Messenger can use any port at all - blocking port 135 works because client machines connect to port 135 to locate the port that the messenger rpc service is running on. Blocking port 135 may stop a bunch of other things from working, but net stop messenger stops just messenger.
Not that I really care - I would just cut off the port and then worry about only if someone complains.
There is someone, somewhere, who is sitting in front of their computer thinking...
Their mind has wandered...
SEX...
Sex with the (wo)man of their dreams...
oh, how wonderful life could be... but alas no, not for this poor soul. For they only have a tiny small penis.
And right then, at that very moment just as their dream is being crushed by their own insecurities, up pops Windows Messaging Service:
++ INCREASE THE SIZE OF YOUR PENIS!!!! ++
++ New pill adds 3 inches to your cock! ++
How right it would be for them at that moment, to give this poor poor person some hope in life?
So my question is "Who are we to judge the rights and wrongs of this 'Mass advertising/marketing/spamming' product; a product that might give hope to just one or two of the thousands of millions spammed?"
That said, personally I couldn't give a rats-arse about some spotty virgin geeks' lack of sex - but hey, SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE must actually buy these products. Find that person, kill them, and the whole spamming problem is solved! Surely?!!
---
Lots of love, Zaiffy baby!
Moderators, dont mod +5 unless you know it works
The method described above does not disable netbios over tcp/ip - so it has no chance of stopping the popups.
If you firewall off or disable the netbios traffic you should be fine according to microsoft.
I just tested this at home and was unable to disable the popup messages on my win2k box. however firewalling the messanger port or disabling or messanger is a guranteed method of stopping this nonsense.
- Sam
What the hell are you talking about? The only point of a personal firewall is to prevent outside users from contacting servers on the computer. If your servers don't have holes, you don't have any problem.
OK a few points here. (1) personal firealls are good for lots of things, personally I use one to stop applications connecting OUT not IN (i.e. stopping apps "phoning home". Show me how to do that without a firewall please. Sure if you're running only O/S apps and have personally inspected the code of all of them to look for ring backs then you're fine. I run windows on several boxes, and that isn't possible. (2) It's better to be safe than sorry. My linux router/server does have a firewall, but it's services are also tightened up nicely. Why not use both? We've seen issues recently where trojanised apps open sockets during the install process, or later on, without people expecting it. With my firewall in place I really don't have to worry about that, sure my weekly scans will find any unexpected open sockets but the firewall will have blocked hem long before that.
I'd say that someone relying on a firewall for his security is a lot fucking worse off than someone with solid servers and no firewall in place, because all a firewall is going to let you do is filter the packets based on IP. Spoof an IP and hit something that can be affected with a small amount of data or manage to take control of a machine on the local network, and your "high security" system is toast. It's like the r-services with IP-based trust all over again.
And a fundamental misunderstanding of firewalls like that doesn't make you look smart. My firewall (for instance) will allow ftp access to the server from the internal net, but not from the external one. Is it IP based? partly. Could you spoof it? Of course not. Sure you can make your packet look like it's coming from 192.168.0.5 but how the hell do you make it look like it's coming from eth1 not eth0? Routers use IP based stuff, a secure firewall does as much as possible based purely on interface.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"