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WormRadar Node Volunteers Help Graph Attacks

zoombat writes "NTBugtraq has a post looking for volunteers to run WormRadar nodes. The nodes are essentially honeypots that watch for suspicious activity. Its purpose is to both measure the frequency of known, current worms and to alert us all when something new becomes active. A graph (updated every 30 minutes) shows what was detected. Currently it looks like only a Windows client is available, though."

13 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Seems like a good idea implemented poorly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The website is scarce on details, but from the looks of it, it would appear to not be very sophisticated. It detects very few actual worms and exploits, and would seem to be just like http://isc.incidents.org/ (Internet Storm Centre), except without nearly so much data.

    Leusent _AT_ Link-net.org

  2. A little creepy ... calling home? by digitalgimpus · · Score: 5, Informative

    Each time I launched the app, norton fires up because an email is being sent.

    no mention of what anywhere.

    Sorry, perhaps I'm paranoid... but that's not very cool with me.

    1. Re:A little creepy ... calling home? by Ancient+Devices+King · · Score: 4, Informative

      They say explicitly that it communicates with them via email and UDP.

      "Events are reported by both email and udp... email because it makes it convenient to attach a capture if it is something new, and udp because while unreliable, it is fast."

      Exactly how do you expect it to function if it doesn't talk to the people who are using it to track things?

      --
      -"It seems like you're trying to exploit a security hole. Would you like help?"
  3. You can always use VMware or Virtual Machine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Works great, and the author promised to try and port the software to Linux, although he said it may take some time as he is very busy with his real job, as well as working on developing WR and solving all the small bugs.

    The program is under constant development, surprising us with new features. The author is also very quick on responding to bug reports.

    WR allows for emulation of IIS, sub7 and other useful applications/Trojan horses, as well as specifying your own ports to listen on.

    It's a great program and a project worth supporting.

    Important note: the .CAP (capture) files are encrypted using a simple XOR, the .UNX files are the actual captures.

    There is some way yet to go until this program hits 'legacy', but as I said it is under constant development, really useful .. and it *is* free.

  4. Re:"Download WormRadar.exe now" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    It's Aspacked. Looks like they have something to hide.

  5. Re:Open Source or Trojan Horse? by jacquesm · · Score: 4, Informative

    Looks genuine enough though, unless this is false information:

    Roger Thompson
    Roger Thompson
    1650 Emerald Ridge
    Marietta, GA 30062
    US
    Phone: 6785608027
    Fax..: 6785609109
    Email: rogert@mindspring.com

    If not that would be the first time that a trojan writer puts his real world address out for all to see.

    In the windows world people don't even expect to be able to see the source code.

  6. For Those of you worried WR might be a Trojan by Gadi+Evron · · Score: 5, Informative

    The author of WR is Roger Thompson, a well respected AV professional since the very first days in the late 80's/early 90's.

    He is also a CARO member, which is a very respectable organization for old-timer AV researchers.

    I know him personally and vouch for him, much like pretty much any other AV researcher in the world. Everybody knows Roger.

  7. everything is explained in the NTBUGTRAQ post, by Gadi+Evron · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hi Russ,

    I am looking for some more folks who would be interested in running
    WormRadar. ( http://wormradar.com). The web site is still rudimentary, but
    the graph is generated every 30 minutes, and is interesting to watch, and
    WormRadar.exe is available for download from there.

    It is essentially a distributed Windows honeypot that listens on known
    wormy ports (or ports that are likely to become wormy), and crcs, or scans,
    anything that comes along. Its purpose is to both measure the frequency of
    known, current worms and to alert us all when something new becomes active.
    It is free provided you allow it to report to the central site.

    If you allow it, WormRadar will synchronize your pc to network time, and
    all events are recorded to the millisecond utc. Events are reported by both
    email and udp... email because it makes it convenient to attach a capture
    if it is something new, and udp because while unreliable, it is fast.

    A summarized graph of activity is refreshed every 30 minutes to the
    website, and is refreshed every 15 minutes on the WorldView tab within
    WorldRadar itself. The WorldView tab also has notification options which
    allow you to be alerted by a variety of means if something new appears,
    such as email to a pager or by playing a wav file. In the fullness of time,
    I'll add more views and graphs. The summary graph is interpreted like this...

    (1) Green bars are recognized things
    (2) Red bars are new (and should be watched)
    (3) If I didn't get any data, I generate a name based on whether it was tcp
    or udp, plus the port number, plus '0 bytes'.E.g. "t17300 0 bytes" means it
    was TCP port 17300 and was 0 bytes long.
    (4) If I got some data, but couldn't recognize it, I generate a similar
    filename, but the suffix is 'unk', for unknown.
    (5) I call it a 'summary', because if a single sourceip hits a single
    targetip 200 times on the same port (such as a sql dictionary attack on
    1433), it is really only one incident, and that is how I summarize it.

    It emulates some common servers, such as web and ftp, and some common
    backdoors, such as sub7 and kuang, and there are a bunch of tcp and udp
    ports that can be set to whatever you like.

    To install it, simply make a directory, copy it in, run it, configure it a
    bit if you want, and tell it to listen. You can set it to cc yourself, and
    you will receive a copy of the email sent to wormradar.com. The UDP
    messages are content-identical to the email, although without email-y
    things like headers, and I don't UDP the attachment if there is one.

    It runs on about any Windows platform but runs best on Win ME, W2k or
    WinXP. Win ME is a good platform, because there are fewer services to turn
    off to allow WormRadar to listen on those ports. It runs nicely behind
    firewalls like ZoneAlarm, and runs nicely in Virtual PC or VMWare. It
    doesn't need much hardware... 200 or 300 mhz is fine. In the unlikely event
    that you want to install it on more than one computer, please don't install
    them on side by side IP addresses... this just skews the data. What we
    really want is a nice, random, widespread distribution.

    Thanks

    Roger

  8. As much as this is a good cause and all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    ...I think I'll keep my tinfoil hat on. If we all would just start declining the honor of installing and running everything we can't be certain of being 100% safe, worms might just cease to be a problem.

  9. Dshield and myNetwatchman by JustinXB · · Score: 2, Informative

    DShield and myNatwatchMan do pretty much the same thing, only for all ports instead of just worms. Gives a much better lay-of-the-land for administrators.

  10. Re:Obvious joke by DoraLives · · Score: 2, Informative
    Why is smallpox darn near extinct, but the common cold thrives?

    'Cause we KILLED smallpox! (well...excepting what's so far noncontagiously tucked away in cryo storage here and there)

    It has nothing to do with the virulence of smallpox as opposed to the common cold. Hell, as far as that goes, the great sweaty mass of humanity is a fat ripe target just waiting for something that will sweep through and slay the many, but I drift OT.

    Worms that can do "real" damage may well yet spring up from out of the ground and simply wipe out half the computing power on this planet.

    There's nothing at all preventing this from happening. They whistled as the o-rings showed evidence of blow by and burn. They whistled as TPS material that was never designed for foam strikes took hit after hit. But all the whistling in the world didn't prevent what came next, BOTH TIMES. Ditto your (and mine, and everybody else's) computer.

    That which is not prohibited is MANDATORY.

    --
    Is it fascism yet?
  11. Re:PNG for gawds sake! by modecx · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually, the image looks okay.

    They used the size variables in HTML to resize it (which of course makes it look terrible). Image size is 446x668, They resize it to 560x839. Makes no sense.

    Still makes their operation look pretty bad.

    --
    Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
  12. dshield by sir_cello · · Score: 2, Informative

    Try dshield, I've had my OpenBSD pf firewall generate and submit logs on a daily basis for near a year now. There are a numerous dshield clients and adapter scripts. You will also get daily reports from dshield, there's a tonne of online statistics, and they use your data to submit reports to abuse owners at domain names.

    Here's the current statistics:
    Records Added:
    Last Month - 286,455,729
    Last Week - 112,352,882
    Today - 591,719