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The Origin Of Sobig (And Its Next Phase)
MrZeebo writes "According to this story at Canada.com, the FBI, along with other authorities, have traced the origin of the Sobig worm. The quick timeline: Apparently, an earlier version of the worm installed a backdoor on a home computer in British Columbia. The creator of the worm used this compromised computer to create a Usenet account with Easynews.com in Phoenix, using a stolen credit card. The worm spread from Usenet, and contained the IP addresses of 20 computers to contact on Friday, and to download an unknown program from those computers. Officials were able to take 19 of these computers offline before the mass-download. However, the 20th computer stayed online, and many copies of the worm were able to get the rogue program. Those that did were merely redirected to a porn site, no damage done. However, now infected computers will continue to try and connect to the other 19 every Friday and Sunday until the worm expires on Sept. 10th." Reader muldoonaz points out this brief Reuters story about the investigation, too.
Come on, if you're going to write a worm, do it right.
Don't use 20 predetermined machines from which to fetch updates; generate an unstructured network while you're spreading (remember who infected you, and trade connections randomly).
Don't fetch and install any updates provided to you; use RSA signatures to verify that they are legitimate.
Don't use canned, easy to filter, subject lines in your email messages; borrow subject lines from your host's mail spool (optionally, do so with only a small probability -- let evolution determine which subject lines are the most effective).
In short: If you're going to release some software which you want to see on millions of machines around the world, try not to embarrass yourself.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
OK, I have a quick question. These worms and virii are hitting a ton of Microsoft vulnerabilities, and that's why they *exist*, but to me it seems like they only succeed because office workers, mom (my mom's comp was hit by Blaster), guy down the street, etc. *don't harden their computers*, or because they can't seem to stop clicking on attachments.
So if this gets worse and worse, and hypothetically more people start running linux or mac or whatever as their desktop OS (which I think could happen in dribs and drabs now -- a shitload of folks I know HATE microsoft right now), what's to stop them from ignoring system security all over again? You have the whole Lindows run-as-root thing still, for example. I know there aren't nearly as many worms and shit written to exploit non-MS OS's, but that doesn't mean folks won't start, and I'd just like to know what would/could happen, and what exploits would then be available, if they do.
I'm tired, and cranky, and I love Linux. But I just don't know if I'd trust my mom to run a secure Mandrake box if she can't even do Windows fucking Update.
Don't put salt in your eyes.
Well, if you're just interested in who to blame, then blame the virus/worm writers. They wrote the darn things. But there will always be plenty of virus writers.
But if you're interested in how to have this kind of thing NOT HAPPEN, which I think is the more important issue for us in the IT field, then the blame falls squarely on microsoft's shoulders.
Sure, all software has bugs. But Microsoft's software is a little different. It's in 95%+ of the world's computers. They know this, that's their business. Governments use it. Nuclear plants use it. The electric company uses it. Your personal information is stored in it. Your medical history is stored in it. Microsoft has their fingers so deep into businesses around the world.
Yet they don't do anything particularly special to prevent these worms. They put in the same (or less) effort that the open source folks to find bugs. They sit idly buy when they could easily afford *thousands* of independent code audits. They leave ports open when they could easily ship them closed. They ship a mail client that runs foreign executables. Not off completely, or in a sandbox, or whatever. It is inexcusable that attachments can run as code. This is a bug in the design of the operating system (ANY operating system).
Microsoft needs to get their head out of the bank vault for about two seconds and realize this is something they *must* do, even if it doesn't mean any new revenue. They have a responsibility to every business out there. Even if you are a FreeBSD + Mac shop you are effected by this.
It's downright embarassing that a simple bit of code like these worms/viruses can even get out the ethernet port.
Microsoft, how about innovating a real *solution* to this that *isn't* Palladium? I know it's possible. Have you ever seen qmail or other programs by DJB? Everything is partitioned with simple interfaces between code modules, even if there are bugs, they are ineffective. Do the same in Windows. People will put up with the extra effort eventually, because they are SICK of this shit.
What really amazes me, is how many people seem to think Microsoft is "doing everything they can". They can do more, a lot more, and they must!
I just love this type of explanation of why MS is at absolutely ZERO fault for it's security problems. Compare the number of Apache worms/viruses with the number found in IIS. Why are there more in a single year for IIS than for Apache over several years? Why haven't appache worms/viruses brought the Internet to a crawl and hit the newspaper headlines big time?
Oh yeah.. because MS has such a huge market share making more targets. BZZZ.. Apache holds almost 2 times the market share for active web servers! Could it be that MS's IIS isn't as secure? No.. noo... it's because of hackers. It's all their fault.. Poor MS!
If you are going to use an analogy, try making it fit the facts:
Builder A builds a LOT of houses. To cut costs and because they truley believe they know best... they use locks from RustyLocks.com. They also use an alarm system from AlarmsAreUs.com. The lock experts and alarm system experts say, "Hey, don't use those.. they have a high risk of being compromised!"
Builder A argues that they haven't been compromised yet and that they are good enough for the home-buying public. They continue building tons of houses with these parts in place. They sell the homes with a HUGE profit margin and bill them as secure, safe and full of extras your family will love.
Builder B lets the lock experts design a good lock they think is hard to break. They let the alarm system experts design a good alarm which is hard to bypass. They use these in their houses and find that they don't actually run up costs, but instead lower them. They also put the design of the systems up for public review in case they missed something themselves. They sell the homes for a reasonable price and offer the blueprints and all other design materials to the public in case someone wants to build their own.
Soon building A's homes start getting broken into. They find a fix for the lock's current problem and offer it for free.. they even offer to install the fix. What they don't do is replace the locks with a better designed one because it's too expensive to. Of course this doesn't fix the security system problems or other problems with the locks. In the mean time they blame the crooks and also everyone who is broken into for not fixing their locks.
Because the lock and alarm system guidlines from Builder B are availble to any lock or alarm system expert, they are repeatedly reviewed by those who want. There are enough people willing to review because they live in these homes and want to be safe. Maybe they find problems with the locks, maybe they don't. But if they do, the locks are improved and everyone is told.
Eventually a few of builder B's locks get picked. The lock experts start tearing apart the locks and figure out if fixing them is good enough or if a whole new lock is warranted. Regardless of the answer, they make the new locks available for free with simple instructions on how to replace them.
In the mean time several more break-ins occur in builder A homes.
Builder A's reactive actions result in repeated security incidents. The Builder B community team's proactive actions result in occasional but rare security incidents.
Blame the crooks! Sure, they hold some of the blame, but both builders KNEW the crooks were out there. They both knew the crooks wanted into the houses to get the goodies inside. So, does builder A share any responsibliity? Hmmm... According to your post.. NO.
"People keep running the damned attachment like morons."
.trk file. But instead of just telling me to put the file in my "tracks" folder, they package it as a damned .exe install "wizard" that's so stupid, it has to ask the user where to install the file.
.exe in a zip file. So naturally, some people have to go install winzip, probably break someone's eula, run yet another POS installer.
Why do windows techies insist on packaging things as executables?
For example, I downloaded an addon track for a Windows racing game I like. It's a single
Not only that, but they add another layer of bs to the mix by putting the
Of course users click anything that says OK. That's what you do with windows. Click, click, crash, reboot, click, click, reinstall. It's just the way windows is done, sucky.