Earthstation5 Responds to Malware Claims

Zip In The Wire writes "Random Nut, AKA Shaun Garriok, the Author of Kazaalite, has been a vocal critic of Earthstation5 because of a continual online insult war between himself and some rowdy Earthstation5 fans. This has motivated him to be extremely critical of Earthstation5." (We reported yesterday Garriok's claims that Earthstation5 contains spyware.) "We at Earthstation5 desire and request criticism at any time in fact we demand it as we believe that is the only way to make software truly superior." Read on for the rest of Zip In The Wire (Filehoover, ES5's lead programmer)'s explanation, in which he also points to an updated version of the software, and challenges all takers to find spyware within it.

"We at Earthstation5 are not perfect, but we acknowledge that Shaun Garriok might be and thank him for helping us root out bugs.

The problem with the Earthstation5 software that Shaun Garriok found truly exists; however, the sordid motives he attributes to Earthstation5 are incorrect. The following functions were put into Earthstation5 to allow automatic, remote upgrade of the Earthstation5 software.

These functions are:

1. Reload Earthstation5
2. Shutdown Earthstation5
   
3. Delete a File

All of these functions are necessary to perform when upgrading software.

We have long been admirers of Shaun Garriok's ability to superbly investigate even a fully compiled program. We believe that he is capable of finding ANY sort of trojan, worm, or bug inside a compiled program. We are relieved that all he could find was these remote upgrade functions. He didn't find any bugs that send user data anywhere, no spyware, no adware, nothing, in fact, that gives away any personal information about the user using Earthstation5.

It is also a fortunate fact that since Earthstation5 protects you from the RIAA lawsuits and hackers by hiding your ip address, the exploit program he wrote can only be used against your own computer, which he states in his exploit. If you want to delete files from your own computer, we feel you have the right to do that.

We are glad he found this bug and pointed it out. We completely removed the automatic software upgrade code because as it turns out automatic upgrade is no longer popular as it once was because it gives people an uneasy feeling and rightly so.

Since Shaun Garriok seems to be concerned about everyone's security, and is not on a personal quest for revenge, we would be grateful if he would download the latest Earthstation5 (version 1.1.31), and verify that we have truly removed the remote-update function which his exploit program accessed. We think his dedication to the good of all concerned would motivate him to do this. Anyone else who is concerned can do the same; download the latest Earthstation5 and test the exploit code against it.

-- Filehoover, Lead Programmer of ES5."

Comments

This was addressed yesterday...

[LearningHard]

On the full-disclosure list. It seems that after ES5 found out people had discovered the malware contained in it. They decided to upload a new version which will probably have those functions taken out. I see this as a suspicious move and would be very hesitant to use any of their software myself.

Oh man this seems a bit weak as excuse go.

[aepervius]

I mean, I programmed this last month a test tool application on a LAN network, and frankly I *DO NOT* need to have a delete file command in the client. I mean,the client pretty well know which files it has to update (it is included in the update message) and it launch an updater application in background and stop itself so as to allow the files to be deleted/copied.

This is one solution, and I am pretty sure bunch of people here can come with others. But having a delete command is certainly a loosy way to do that. Heck on the net it OBVIOUSLY means that you open the door to an attacked reverse engineering your app for bad purpose and allow it a nice way to wreak havoc on a system. Either their application E.S.5 is not that great as they are hypping it (haha), or they really are searching excuse for obvious malware. If this is the second option which is true, the next malware code will be hidden behind encryption and packet won't be easily decoded.

people go away from ES5. You will from now on have now way to determine if you are not installing a trojan on your computer UNLESS they give you the source code and a compiler to compare the final binaries md5 with what you can generate...