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'Bagle' Worm Heading For A Windows PC Near You
mrSinclair writes "the 'Bagle' or 'Beagle' worm is expected to hit the U.S. by midweek, probably Tuesday as many employees return from a three-day weekend." He points to this Washington Post story (via Yahoo!), which describes the Windows mass-mailing worm as being transmitted via email as an .exe attachment and as installing "a program that lets attackers connect to infected machines, install malicious software or steal files." The article says Bagle has been detected in more than 100 countries. Other readers have sent in links to coverage at the BBC and at SearchSecurity.com.
So far, I've submitted copies of this to Symantec, and ClamAV, both of which did not detect it in the latest definitions. If anyone else has submitted this to an A/V manufacturer, or knows of an A/V that currently detects this, please post.
Contact Me (got tired of viruses emailing me).
The article says Bagle has been detected in more than 100 countries.
Are you saying that this new worm knows no geographical boundaries? Heavend forfend!
BTW: two fixes are already avilable for this virus:
Note to developers, developers, developers, developers:
everyone from the home user to big business wants OFF OF WINDOWS, and not just because of the viruses. Please,
stop catering to the (dying) satus quo, and port your apps to Unix so we can switch over completely.
We've already received two of these at work, one as early as 8am yesterday morning, local time. Fortunately our server-based anti-virus filter is on the ball: "Executable DOS/Windows programs are dangerous in email (kraencha.exe)"
Why don't ISPs and mail providers perform quick checks of attachments to see if they compare with known viruses (similar file sizes would be a quick initial check) and then filter out (or at least alert the recipient about) any attachments that they successfully determine are viral attacks, such as this one?
Do any such ISPs or mail providers offer such a service? If not, why not? Surely it's in their interest? After all, these viruses (especially the ones that send themselves on to everyone in the infected machines address book) just add unneccessary traffic to their systems, hurt their users and hurt the reputations of both parties too. Shouldn't ISPs and mail providers be looking to implement such safeguards?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
It looks like the writers of the virus DOS'ed themselves (from the aformentioned Yahoo! article):
:)
Bagle also tries to download an unknown program from one of more than 30 Web sites located mostly in Germany and Russia. None of those Web sites was reachable as of Monday afternoon.
Or is it more likely that these servers in Russia and Germany were also hacked and were just being used?
In any rate, this doesn't look so bad. The searchsecurity.com article says that "Removing the worm manually is just a matter of killing "bbeagle.exe" in the Task Manager. The registry keys created by the worm also need to be removed." Hopefully this one won't be as bad as Sobig.
My blog
Or alternatively, when will people learn?
DON'T RUN EXECUTABLES UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT THEY ARE
The problem is user education. Social engineering, such as that used by virus creators, will be a problem on any OS until users learn of the dangers.
Remember the Slashdot crowd are not typical computer users. We tend to be more computer savvy and literate, and as a consequence more wary of potential problems. It is our job to help educate people about the dangers of the worm and the virus, and how best to minimise the threat.
Seems that this thing fakes e-mail addresses as well. Got several complaints that I was sending viruses, but of course that's absurd, as I am running GNU/Linux. I can only guess that picks an e-mail address at random from some list (address book, mayhaps?) and says it comes from there.
#define DRM chmod 000
I also like how the backdoor part of the virus apparently doesn't even work due to a "bug in the code", and it's set to stop functioning in just over a week. Why on earth did this make slashdot?
You can download the free PQREMOVE application from Panda Software's web site: http://www.pandasoftware.com/download/utilities/.
Virus infects both Windows and Linux!
1. Don't open any attachments that are potential virus, (.exe, .vbs, .com, etc.)
2. Disable your email client's automatically message preview pane. This makes exploit viruses a little easier on you, as you can select the message and delete it without having to preview it instantaneously.
3. Download a mail proxy program (I use MailWasher), it'll filter out spam, and allow you to see a text version of the message, without downloading the attachment.
4. Have your AV update its definition religiously. Of course, this only helps if your AV company updates its definition religiously as well.
Of course, the first 3 don't require a virus scanner at all, just common sense. As a gamer, I hated having NAV or McAfee VirusScan hog up 30MB of my memory, so I removed it. I make smart and conscious decisions, and have never had a virus on my computer for several years.
I'm the resident geek in my dorm, and have spent the last 24 hours getting rid of it on computers of anyone and everyone. The particular strain we saw came in an email with the subject of simply "Hi" and contained (basically) the following test.
.wab, .htm, .html, and .txt"
Hi!
This is a test.
(random string of letters)
Testy test.
The attached file was a modified version of the Windows calculator which (according to the Symantec site) "Emails all the contacts it can find inside files with the extensions
It's interesting because apparently that's ALL it does. It doesn't screw with files or settings, or run malicous code (outside the actual act of reproducing itself). It's annoying, however, because it sends emails to people who are NOT in your address book, but merely mentioned in text files somewhere on your computer. In the last 24 hours I've gotten emails with the virus from friends, random people in my university, at least one university email address that should have been run by someone who knew better, and a couple random friends-of-friends.
Also, according to Symantec, it dies on the 28th.
It was really interested to see the spread at my college. For us, it began around 1 AM Monday morning, peaked around 2, and was already slacking off by 3 AM. I know this from my own inbox, people in my dorm, and talking to people elsewhere.
I do find it currious the virus didn't DO anything. Is it just someone screwing around, a test for a future release or (as some of the more paranoid people in my dorm are suggesting) a released virus by the anti-virus companies to keep people in enough fear to demand their products.
As a side note, I also spent hours cleaning the assorted spyware and adware that builds up when people don't know how to properly use their computers....more than one person could literaly not do work becasue of the porn popups that plagued their computer.
-Trillian
... according to Symantec's Security Response (since 1/18/2004).
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I can see it now... millions of linux pre-installed PC's all configured to run as root by default with just about every unnecessary service turned on and without any warning to the user that they must actually maintain their system. Replace "linux" with "windows" in the above... the world wouldn't be so different... It would have more money in its pockets, yeah, but it would still get screwed by stupid users.
I know this has been mentioned about a thousand times but if you're a sysadmin, do yourself a favor and block executables, scripts, or any other file type that can execute. If someone needs an executable to be sent in-bound, set up either an FTP server or a dummy account outside your company's mail system. I have a domain set up just for this purpose where only the admins have rights to the mail accounts. If someone needs a file, the employees just send a request to have an admin check the mailbox for a specific filename from a specific user. We'll even ask for file sizes just to make sure. While checking the mailbox might take about 3-5 minutes out of my day, this method saves me the many headaches of removing viruses all week.
Already old news here. Been dealing with it for a couple of days...
The Subject: is actually more applicable to the spammers, who really are waging all out war on the utility of email. This one is more like a hit-and-run attack.
Still, the similarity is that they are hoping to find a few "good" suckers to click on their links. This one is actually an interesting combination. Partly it seems to be testing the efficiency of a propagation mechanism, which seems to result in greater "apparent locality" of the email, with higher odds that it seems to have come from someone you know. However, it also seems to be ready to launch some more insidious payload that was to be downloaded from some Web sites.
Right now all of those Web sites seem to have been taken off the net--or maybe they're waiting to pop them onto the net once the thing has propagated sufficiently. That part of the Trojan apparently tries to check in every 10 minutes to announce itself.
The thing that bothers me about this combination malware is that the anti-virus people could easily miss something. For example, in this case, what if the thing included a new variation on the email backchannel for the harvested email addresses. Or maybe a well-concealed bit of code to suddenly mung the URLs to point to live sites somewhere else? However, whatever it is hasn't triggered yet, and the anti-virus people perhaps have only detected the distractor HTTP-channel. If that were the case, they could still get a massive harvest of email addresses. (Yes, I still think the spammers are probably really the people behind this one--spamming just naturally attracts the lowest life forms. It's a question of the crudest motivations for the crudest acts.)
By the way, has anyone seen the reason for the bagle/beagle confusion here? Trying to incriminate the Israelis? Or the dogs? Or both?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
...since yesterday, apparently. Good to see Grisoft keeping AVG up to date.
Oh, and they've got a little blurb on the virus too.
There will always be a certain percentage of the population that
#1. Really just accidentally clicked on the executable
#2. Clicked on it on purpose because it was from someone they knew or had a nice subject or whatever.
The only real option ('cause dumb people will be with us forever) is to configure the technology to make it harder to run apps from email. Either run them in a sandbox or require the user supply the root password to install the new application (this is why I believe Linux would be safer).
99% of the people could follow the correct precautions and we would still see massive virus transmissions. It's one of the problems with a software mono-culture. And I don't see Windows users even getting to that 99% mark.
Information on the worm can be found here and here, and removal tools can be found here and here
I would guess that a very large percentage of users these days use web mail. IE definitely doesn't prevent opening .exe files. Neither does Firebird, but it does give you a little "this is your own fault" speech first :-/
Also, there are a number of third-party applications that "integrate" with Outlook (for no particularly good reason usually) and that typically requires many of Outlook's new security features to be disabled.
(This is of course not taking into account that not everyone upgrades their systems at the same frequency as yourself)
-Mark
Remember that most non-powerusers suffer from the default Windows settings, which hide the extension of registered file types. For them, there is no such thing as an EXE, DOC, BMP,... file. Only pretty colored icons to be clicked on :-(
The worm apparently opens a listening socket but it appears this worm is very buggy and this 'feature' of it does not work properly. This worm also tries to drop a .bat file somewhere but apparently it fails at this as well. Is microsoft writing their own worms now ?
Yes, but by default OS X users are given a user account, separate from root. And, even if they have an admin account (not to be confused with root), they have to type in an administrator password to confirm installations that affect areas outside of the user's home directory.
:/
You can send an OS X user a malicious Apple Script file with an MPEG icon on it, and they'll probably double click it thinking they are going to view free prOn. But as soon as the "administrator password" box comes up, odds are they are going to hit "cancel" and not grant access to their root directory
Moreover user accounts in OS X are quite flexible. Unlike Windows users, OS X users rarely require the need to login to, and remain working within, the root level.
Every Windows office I've ever administered has had numerous problems with user accounts, users working in root 24/7, etc
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
The F-prot antivirus definitions have it, as of the 19th. They have a nice *nix scanner that can be plugged into software like qmailscanner, which can scan all incoming and outgoing messages. They also have sane per-server pricing for ISPs.
I'm looking forward to seeing how much of an impact this will make on our mail server. Currently viruses make up less than 5% of our filtered mail. The rest is spam.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
score MICROSOFT_EXECUTABLE 5
to /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf
And how does that help you? Let's assume that you've got ~1,000,000 lines of code. Have you reviewed each one of them? The recent attempt to install a Linux backdoor was only spotted by 3 guys examining the code - and they were just concentrating on a few lines.
Having the source code yourself isn't really going to help. You have to put your trust in the developers or not run it at all.
Trojans require user interaction to propagate, worms propagate without. Both could be called virii in the sloppy PC terminology, although I believe all traditional PC viruses are actually trojans. The user has to run something. Blaster is one of the few PC worms.
The virus doesn't exploit any massive windows bug. If everyone used Linux instead of Windows, then the virus writers would write viruses for linux instead!
This demonstrates the very real threat of Unix viruses.
Or should I say TALK of Unix viruses.
Antivirus experts talk long and hard about the dangers of ignoring the possability of Unix viruses and they give wonderful examples of how Unix viruses are possable.
The examples are at best laughable and at worst industreal neglect.
The examples that actually work and can reproduce results aren't viruses at all but worms or trojens and nobody is saying those won't effect Unix.
However antivirus peps would have you believe there is no diffrence between the diffrent types of malware. That's not even remotely the case. The insistence on calling e-mail worms "Viruses" is far and away an exelent example.
Viruses attach themselfs to software. To catch a virus you download an otherwise lagit program carrying the infection.
1970's to 1980's a program would pass through many users hands before arriving at any given BBS if one of those users had a virus the program could be infected.
Today you download the software directly from the author. The chances of actually catching a virus anymore is near zero even from Windows.
Trojens are a diffrent beast. The code is easier to write. With a trojen the infected program was writen to carry the trojen. Downloading source code directly from the author WILL NOT prevent the infection. The author of the code is also the author of the trojen.
You know who made the trojen if you know who made the code. Report him.
Worms are yet annother beast. Worms use software defects and break into your system to infect you directly.
Once more becouse a Worm uses a defect in the operating system to gain access an anti-virus pacage can't stop the system from being infected and once infected a clever worm will quickly sabotog any given antivirus pacage to thwart detection. Viruses have done it in the past that is why antivirus pacages scan themselfs to see if they have been infected. But worms don't infect software so that test will fail to recognise a worms tampering.
Once more a worm dosen't have any limitations as to where it can be stored. It dosen't actually need to be stored at all. However to surive a reboot it needs to be stored (so it is favorable to store it somewhere).
Email worms don't infect software and use a defect found NOT in Microsoft Windows but Microsoft Outlook express.
If you were to port outlook to Linux you could have e-mail worms. It could store the worm in the user directory and ammend the shell start up script to start the worm.
Here again a virus scanner won't be of much help. Run as nobody as most Unix automation is done for security reasons the anti-virus won't be able to detect the worm files in the user directorys as nobody dosen't have permission to access those files.
Or you could change your e-mail client. Windows isn't the culprit when it comes to e-mail worms and a company relying on Windows need not replace Windows to shut them out for good.
Antivirus peps would have you believe installing an antivirus pacage will do the trick.
In reality you should instead install intrusion detection software, update your software regularly, be careful what you download and of whom you download it from and replace your e-mail client.
All this reguardless of what operating system you use.
There simply isn't much chance of a virus outbreak on any platform now a days IF you take reasonable precations.
Worms are the new consern and they need a compleatly diffrent tactic.
If we keep relying on antivirus software to repell them there will be a worm outbreak that makes the moore worm seam like a minnor nusense and it won't be restricted to one operating system eather.
To spite populare myth viruses have been made for operating systems far less populare than Linux.
I don't actually exist.
That's not just lazy, that's stupid. Coding errors aren't that uncommon. Of course it does depend on what you're doing. If you were doing kernel mods, then you would NEED to be root (well, not really, but it WOULD be more work the other ways). So what you do if you're lazy is set up your computer to dual boot linux.
/home and / and /usr need to be separate partitions for each distribution. And also, there's some limit on the number of partitions that you can mount, so only mount home from the alternate dist. /ahome, /bhome, /chome and in the active distribution, I leave off the leading letter in the corresponding /etc/ftab.
Here's a way to do it: (I've got mine set up with three different distributions installed, it's not that hard.)
1) Keep a paper trail of what partition is named what in which distribution. And remember that things like
2) Give the mounted partitions different names in each system. I have defined, e.g.,
3) The loader can be a bit tricky. Only one loader can be installed in the MBR. I use Grub. Lilo might work, but I've never tried it, and Grub works. You can either boot directly from this, or have it invoke chainloader so that each booting partition can have it's own options. (I use both ways. Usually it's simpler to just boot directly fromt he MBR.)
Some details are missing, but it's not hard. So if you want to develop as root, be root on some other system that's on the same box. And this system doesn't even need to mount any partitions that it doesn't need, or know that the internet exists. (Depending, again, on just what you're doing.)
Now I'm not saying that this is a good way to do it. I'm not sure. I'm saying that it's an easy way, and I'm lazy enough, that if I needed to be root to code, I'd probably do it this way instead of, say, setting up a chroot jail (which might or might not work...I've never investigated chroot).
But because I'm lazy, I *DON'T* want to wreck my main system. It would be a huge job putting that back together again. (I've wrecked it before, and know from experience.)
OTOH, again, you say these are coders. Possibly they work in an office? Does the office do backups frequently? If all they're risking is their own machine, and there are recent backups, that could even be a reasonable approach. I wouldn't take it, because my backups are often stale (I admitted to being lazy...and my off HD backups have to be done to CD). So it sounds like priviledge separation might solve the problem...but I'm not sure. Writing to bash.rc can let you do so much, that it probably wouldn't. You'd need to have something in the boot script that re-created bash.rc on every boot. (I wonder if bash.rc could be owned by root?)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Check out YAVR