Slashdot Mirror
Schneier on Attack Trends: More Complex Worms
Gary W. Longsine writes "Bruce Schneier has posted an interesting entry on
expected attack trends to his blog. Of particular interest is the increasing sophistication of automated worm-based attacks. He cites the developing
W32.spybot.KEG
worm -- once inside a network it scans for several vulnerabilities and reports its findings via IRC.
Trend Micro also has information on a scanning-capable version of this worm, which they call: WORM_SPYBOT.ID"
We expect to see more blended threats: exploit code that combines malicious code with vulnerabilities in order to launch an attack.
This mixed with irc connectiviy, LAN port scanning, update downloads...
Sounds like a full time job to create one. What are these people gaining anyway?
The whole problem is twofold. The first is stupid users. How can you possibly secure a network against attacks if your users are constantly undermining your lockdown efforts? The second is privilege escalation at the binary level. System-level software with any sort of hole will allow an attacking program the ability to do whatever it wants, even if the user isn't running as root (the daemon is running at that level).
We had a guy who was constantly downloading and running every attachment he ever received. We finally set him up with an ePod terminal and some crayons and haven't had a significant virus problem since. As a bonus, we get some interesting artwork to hang in the lobby.
This goes to show the benefits of Open Source software. Being able to see the code gives attackers a practically clear window into the guts of any network relying on that software. More eyes means more vulnerabilities found, so the network is actually safer because all these holes are known, if not by the security companies themselves, by the attackers who attempt to exploit the bugs.
We can't take the drastic step of eliminating Windows on our networks because it is so entrenched, but the slow migration away from it one desktop at a time is giving us a whole new outlook on viruses.
Nice to see the industries stock thumper is still #1 for attracting worms and looks to be still #1 in the future. Upon sighting wormsign one only need look closeby for a compromised IIS box.
Hedley
This is all I could think of when reading this.
"...we've got a KEG... of worms... and phytoplankton"
Question everything that you've accepted without thinking.
If you haven't already read his book Beyond Fear I would highly recommend it. For those of us who don't read books, he covers a good chunk of the material in 34 minutes in this interview. Also very fascinating, I even played it for my grandparents and they both enjoyed it, and have since told me that they have seen him talking on CSPAN or something like that.
For those wondering about other advances/predictions in worms check out this paper I wrote a few years ago.
http://www.cgisecurity.com/articles/worms.shtml
Believe me, if I started murdering people, there would be none of you left.
Aren't we so glad Microsoft is getting into the Anti-Virus Business.....oh wait...don't they make the OS?
What happened to fixing the OS, so an AV isn't needed?
Why do I even bother?
$sig$
... that to all itents and purposes it looks like an Operating System. It will give the use a limited amount of funciontality in order to maintain it's cover. Secretly it will report back to its maker about what you do on your computer and... Oh, wait a minute...
Some comments: I haven't read Beyond Fear yet, but I have read Applied Cryptography. The San Francisco Public Library kept it in a back room and asked me to surrender my ID to look at it. I have no idea why. Maybe it's a terrorism manual.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
from the article:"We have started seeing criminal extortion over the Internet: hackers with networks of hacked machines threatening to launch DoS attacks against companies. Most of these attacks are against fringe industries -- online gambling, online computer gaming, online pornography -- and against offshore networks."
While mainstream web services are cringing in anticipation of becoming targets, it is quit amusing to watch what seems to be one kind of filth devouring another.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
Without going into a long explanation, destination ports for outgoing connection attempts, such as port 6667, can be blocked from leaving the originating network. Even this method can be fine-tuned as to protocol/s, and so forth.
The worm probably use a random outgoing port to connect to the IRC server, so I don't see how this would work without blocking other valid services.
That random port is the port of the machine attempting the outgoing connection to a port such as 6667, to put it simply. The random outgoing port is irrelevant to blocking destination ports.
A quick Google search returned these code examples from a Redhat firewall how-to page using iptables:
and
I hope this helps. Here is a Google search to get you started.
Besides they make viruses?
What do they care about infringing on a trademark?!
Z3r0C001: Hey what do you think about the name "I Be Malicious" for the name of our new virus?
|<rash0v3rr|d3: Hmm, the initials of that spell I.B.M., we could be in for a lengthy legal battle.
Z3r0C001: You're right, legalities aside, it would at least be unethical to use a name that shortens to another companies name, especially seeing as both of our products are in the computing realm.
|<rash0v3rr|d3: Indeed, lets forget the virus and forget our troubles with a big bowl of strawberry icecream.
Z3r0C001: w00t
not quite, while platform diversity is in many levels a good thing, it's a lot more then just a defense against transient viral/worm attacks. Microsoft rules the not-too-complex-but-works world because it's just that. You don't need to be an Otaku to get a DVD to play. Some people would be victims no matter what OS they run. I run both UNIX and Windows, I have taken precautions on both sides and have not seen any serious breaches in several years. System security is part of my routine, because I am a serious user. AOL users have been the traditional food for hackers and virii in the past but AOL has seen the logic in taking that out of the hands of a incompetent userbase.
Say what you want about Microsoft, and while much of it's true, the users are to a degree at fault as well. If I leave my keys in my car and the doors unlocked, I can't very well blame the manufacturer for it being stolen.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
there any excuse anymore other than incompetence and companies that are operating on a small budget?
But small businesses are the fastest growing section of the economy, and the only way they can remain productive and competitive is to leverage cheap IT. Translate that to: not paying consultants. That means that the person who is supposed to be worrying about what the small company actually produces is instead worrying about being a home-grown IT person. I can't tell you the number of small businesses I've seen in this mode, and the lack of just-add-water total security systems leaves them pretty vulnerable. But even if there were such magic bullet products out there, any small network open enough to be actually useful to a small business is going to be vulnerable to attacks that have been crafted by a large team of highly skilled, motivated Russian techno-mobsters. That's a tough enemy to fight when you're just, say, a 5-man gardenening retailer, or a mom and pop sign making company.
I think the real solution is thin clients and hosted apps. That way the ASP can use some economy of scale to deal with the threats. I know, thin clients don't work for everyone, but even if you use a fat machine as a thin client, at least your core business apps and data would be safe at Acme Hosting, and the worst thing you'd have to do is burn down your local network and start over.
BTW:
And to the FBI agent who may come across this message: Go find some real criminals. The last I heard, there are still plenty of real crimes still being committed on a daily basis. Murder, rape, child exploitation, etc. Why not devote some time on the big stuff?
Come on, don't fall for the "we can't do two things at once" concept. That's BS. I would imagine that a small company being extorted by Russian DDoS attackers would be "big stuff" to everyone who depends on that small business for their families' income. Dealing with that stuff, and dealing with murderers and rapists (usually local law enforcement, anyway) aren't mutually exclusive. I think what you're really lobbying for is a larger budget for the FBI so that they can deal with sophisticated info-criminals and deal with the more traditional crimes in a large and growing population. Stealing a company's trade secrets, or knocking their business offline, or running off with banking info and using it - the guys who do that for a living sure as hell are "real criminals." Just because they happen to be geeks doesn't make them any less criminal. Don't give them any sympathy just because they have an interest in code or know what NAT stands for.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Go into IE and turn off ActiveX, and scripting or (religiously) use the Off By One browser or Lynx which both doesn't understand ActiveX and scripting.
Treat your email and email attachments like 'text files' like I do. I only use Outlook to send email--not receive it.
Use a software firewall and antivirus. I use Agnitum's Outpost and Grisoft's AVG. I also recommended Trend Micro's Sysclean.
A great help would be to surf the internet from behind a hardware router that drops ALL incoming unsolicited connections.
Do you see how cumbersome is to keep the Windows machine free of *ware and viruseseses?
Why bother doing all that when you could just spend 40 minutes installing one of the already user friendly enough Linux distros on the market (Linspire, Xandros, Mandrake, Suse...)???
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I spend my spare time making a virus/worm removal tool for viruses and worms that affect AOL Instant Messenger, and I definitely agree, they've gotten a LOT more sophisticated. I'm no antivirus expert, I've just been working with this particular area of viruses since 2003, so I've seen them progress over time. It used to be a simple executable in the root of the drive, or in the system directory, and a "Run" entry in the registry.
Now these things screw with the shell setting for Windows, add themselves to the win.ini and system.ini registry entries and run themselves as services, drivers, etc. Even more annoying, they're copying the names of real windows files now, but dropping into different directories - like find.exe but in the Windows directory instead of System32. They create multiple copies of executables that run from every autorun entry they can find, and recreate each other. They communicate with IRC, they steal passwords and usernames to AIM accounts, and in at least a few cases I've found WinPCap and other sniffing or trojan tools installed as well.
For many months, updating the AIM virus removal tool I maintain was a matter of a few seconds of updates. Then one weekend it turned into several hours of creating new functions and sections of code to handle all these new variants.
The best I can figure, it's script kiddies or zombie botnet operators just running canned and packaged code, because after the first variant appears, a hundred more follow within a few weeks, using the same techniques or filenames. Generally, the purpose of these worms tends to be to download and install spyware - bringing in income through referral programs - and then leave the system open as part of a botnet.
Lately, these techniques are being combined with common exploits on vulnerable websites, especially ones with some of the recent PHP vulnerabilities. Again, it's like botnet-in-a-can, grab some scripts and some code, change a few filenames or urls, and let 'er rip. It's certainly not getting any easier to put in the time to update the removal tool, that's for sure.
-Jay
http://jayloden.com/aimfix.htm