When Malware Authors Combine Efforts

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When Malware Authors Combine Efforts

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday December 9, 2004 @06:40AM from the you-don't-like-your-data-anyway dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Spammers, Hackers and virus writers are all teaming up according to some russian security researchers. This means that they reckon that weaknesses will be exploited in a matter of hours of being announced, rather thant the weeks and months that we're seeing now. Scary stuff."

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Uhm.. You know those russian security experts by Phixxr · 2004-12-09 06:43 · Score: 5, Insightful

Is it just me, or does it seem that every story that lists the source as a "Russian Security Expert" is generally a load of crap?

-Phixxr

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ungggghhhh
This war can't be won ... by smoyer · 2004-12-09 06:50 · Score: 3, Insightful

The problem with detecting and deleting viruses, trojans, etc. is that you will never get ahead. At such time as a zero-day exploit is known to a hacker, they can create their malware of choice to exploit it. A skilled hacker may have an exploit ready in 6-12 hours.
Once done, they have a certain population size (vulnerable hosts) that can be almost instantly assaulted.
On the white-hat side, once the malware is noticed, it may take months to patch the initial security hole and even longer to patch the entire population of vulnerable hosts.
This is why vulnerability announcements are so important, the software that survives in the future will be the one with the shortest vulnerability to patch cycle. The others will die off ... only the strong survive!
focus change by derxob · 2004-12-09 06:50 · Score: 4, Insightful

Back in the day virus writers main intent or goal was to piss off users and to create the next 'big' virus. Now a days, it's all about the money. Those same virus writers are now focusing their attention on the same aspects of before, infecting and disrupting a users system, but when money is involved, the stakes get higher, and things become a lot more dangerous.
However, this article is pleading that we should *not* be publishing vulnerabilities, "because it gives hackers a tool", and I disagree with this. Publishing vulnerabilities is a way to alert the public of exploits that are present. What we need to do is make the publishing of vulnerabilities more popular than it is so that the general public is aware of problems and alerted on how to fix them.

--
Beat the computer, program your life.
Re:Public disclosure... by techsoldaten · 2004-12-09 06:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

You know what? Business needs remain the same regardless of how fast hackers are writing exploits. Few companies, Microsoft included, could afford to have a 24x7 staff of patch writers for all of the applications they have deployed.

This is the greatest argument for open source software I have ever seen. A proprietary model of development is going to get creamed as people take advantage of their limited resources and exploit the woo wang out of their apps. FOSS apps, on the other hand, potentially have hundreds of thousands of people ready to go worldwide at any given moment to correct problems as they happen.

M
Re:Public disclosure... by _Sprocket_ · 2004-12-09 06:53 · Score: 3, Insightful

In light of this even I would favor not publicly disclosing weaknesses immediately!

How does this change anything? This situation already exists and has existed for years. There has always been an element of pay-to-attack behavior as well as gathering resources via mass shotgunned attacks. And, in fact, spammers have been taping in to this environment for a while.
Et tu, Slashdot? by menkhaura · 2004-12-09 06:55 · Score: 5, Insightful

Mistaking hacker for cracker is acceptable on the general media, where people aren't very aware of such subtleties. But on Slashdot? C'mon, I know Slashdot is crawling with Windows users, wannabes and such, but this is getting offhand!

--
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
Re:Public disclosure... by LnxAddct · 2004-12-09 07:00 · Score: 3, Insightful

I think you underestimate how many companies are told they have vulnerable software rather than find it themselves. Http-equiv from malware.com finds tons of stuff and the Samba team used to submit a number of vulnerabilites they found in Microsoft's implementation. And all the time vulnerabilities are disclosed, sometimes the company is told before hand and if they don't act quickly enough then they are disclosed publicly, otherwise the company may find out at the same time you do. Regardless, if some thrid party does find a vulnerability and 2 or more people know about it, the world will know about it within a week. "Three can keep a secret if two are dead". So in short, yes companies need to be prepared 24/7 to fix their faulty software as fast as possible.
Regards,
Steve
Jabberwocky! by jaypifer · 2004-12-09 07:25 · Score: 5, Insightful

"This is why vulnerabilities are so important," said Kaspersky. "We are against anyone who publishes vulnerabilities because it gives hackers a tool."
And this is why most people are against security by obscurity. Kaspersky is confused. The tired phrase of "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." applies even more pertinently to software vulnerabilities.

By the time someone with enough motivation (read funding) to write an article on a vulnerability does so, the bad guys have already written exploits. Why? For the same reason...they get paid!

The published articles allow the moderately tech savvy user to protect themself. Additionally, it forces the software makers' hand to close the vulnerability faster than if they had no pressure at all. Ultimately, this is our only way of shaming large companies into creating proper software and delaying the releases until they've created a more hardened product.

Yes, hanging out the dirty laundry of vulnerabilities makes it easy for the junior hackers to create something out of nothing, but I'd rather we all know about the problems at the same time than a few sophisticated spam hackers knowing about the problems for an indefinite amount of time.

--
Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three.
Re:Public disclosure... by dankney · 2004-12-09 07:36 · Score: 3, Insightful

I would disagree completely -- this is an argument against open source. The exploits are expected to come out within hours of disclosure, not hours of discovery.

Closed-source software has the ability to write the patch before disclosing the vulnerability.

I believe in open source 100%, I just think that this argument falls against, not for OSS.
Re:Public disclosure... by caino59 · 2004-12-09 08:02 · Score: 3, Insightful

as long as it is the software company itself who finds the virus...