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WMF Exploit Sold Underground for $4,000
tero1176 writes "Eweek has a story with information from Kaspersky showing that exploit code used in the WMF malware attack was being peddled on underground sites by rival Russian hacker groups for $4,000 in early December. The first sign of an exploit was traced back to the December 1, 2005, a full month before anti-virus vendors started noticing mysterious WMF files rigged with malicious executable code. It serves as more proof that the market for malware is well and truly alive."
The exploit is a flop. The guy should get his money back.
Do you suppose Microsoft will try to enter this market, too?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
...open source exploits for a commercial OS?
Joke, don't waste your mod points here.
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
Will my AT&T "platinum," "gold" and "silver" levels of Internet access provide access to this underground market ?
In Soviet Russia, code exploits you!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So you think Mac and Linux are as unlikely to be unaffected by such?
While it might be hard to purposely code exploits into Windows and Mac, if you were an insider plotting to take advantage of it some day and don't mind losing your job over it. Isn't it more possible to pull a fast one on Open Source, assuming you covered your tracks well enough the few would find it on first glance.
I remember a mud client, early version of Tintin, IIRC, which would make all players shout "Snowy rules, OK" if a client saw some particular text. Not necessarily as bad as it could have been, someone could code the client to [remove all, drop all, flee] on a command if they had wanted. People only became aware of the stunt after the coder logged onto a mud and said "yo"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
There have been shadowy glimpses of this "other economy" for a while, in the bot army cottage industry and the various rackets where popular sites are threatened with black-out if they don't pay for "protection". But all that is just the warmup to the big show.
Organized crime has found the internet, and they seem to like what they see. It's just like one huge, dark alley lined with endless smoke-filled lounges. Lots of seamy places to meet up. Anonimity if you want it. Under-the-table dealings. Faceless bosses and eager young turks with itchy trigger fingers.
The perfect growth media for scum and parasites.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
It just goes to show how much the underground actually retains as far as exploit code is concered. Makes you think what else is circulating which the general public doesnt know about.
This is a huge issue that the general public is completely unaware of. Most people still believe that viruses are created as an annoying prank by kids with something to prove. This may be true in some cases, but most of the malware out there now is created for a very specific purpose: building a botnet that can be sold for cold hard cash to the highest bidder. Who's buying them? Spammers.
It used to be that spammers would look for open relay servers in third-world countries, and let those servers do all the work of actually sending the messages. The server administrators either didn't care, or didn't know how to fix the problem, and the language barrier made things difficult. So, people started making blacklists of known open relays, and just refusing any mail that came from those IPs. Spammers would keep finding more open relays, and the blacklists grew.
Eventually, mail servers started coming pre-configured not to allow relaying, and as servers were upgraded, spammers had to move on. Spammers started commissioning worms, paying people to write software that would infect Windows machines remotely over the Internet, and open up a backdoor for the spammers to access. Suddenly you've got hundreds of thousands of IP addresses responsible for sending spam, with many of them on dynamic IPs. There's no good way to blacklist them all, since they keep changing!
Enter Windows XP Service Pack 2, with a software firewall enabled by default. As people upgrade, worms like Code Red and Nimda are no longer effective. So what's next? Spreading viruses through e-mail, IM, and the Web.
So, look for improvements in antivirus software in the next couple of years, as the war against spam continues. Then look for the spammers to find a new way to get their crap into your inbox.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Ironically, copies of the exploit were pirated by a group of Chinese hackers and sold on Ebay for pennies on the dollar...
This is one of those "Do we, the media, report it?" stories.
This article is pretty meaningless as far as the bigger picture goes, and it probably could have gone unpublished in my mind and no one would have really cared. But it may do more damage than good by being published.
This article shows, and maybe it's because I work with criminals all day (Public Defenders office), that writing malware pays. Before it was for notoriety or to prove you could or to piss people off, but now it can provide an income source and I think we will be seeing more of it from now on just because people are going to be trying to make a buck off of it.
We live in a socitey where a Million-Dolllar-Homepage gets filled (it recently did), where the Gotti family has its own TV show and where Carrot top is a rich man. Our lust for money leads us down the less then friendly paths, and this article reports, once again... that crime does infact pay.
So is windows exploits are worth $4,000 a pop, and Bill Gates is worth something like $50 billion, that adds up to... 12.5 million windows exploits. That number seems a little low, must be not all of them are worth 4 grand.
It will cost an extra $500 to get set up to sign your malware in order for it to install. Good thinking Microsoft. That extra 12.5% tax will make it totally uneconomical.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
From summary: "The first sign of an exploit was traced back to the December 1, 2005, a full month before anti-virus vendors started noticing mysterious WMF files rigged with malicious executable code."
From article: "The first sign of an exploit was traced back to the middle of December 2005, a full two weeks before anti-virus vendors started noticing mysterious WMF files rigged with malicious executable code..."
Oh... actually, to be fair, the article does carry on to say: "...it was most likely that the vulnerability was detected by an unnamed person around Dec. 1, 2005. However, it took a few days for the exploit enabling random code to be executed on the victim machine to be developed and put on the market."
meh. nm.Pardon me if I am remembering things wrong, but wasn't there a hidden "_NSAKEY" variable or something like that hidden in some WinNTs, that Microsoft never could explain?
How appropriate that a Microsoft "Get the Facts" ad should show up at the top of this particular page -- gotta love that Murphy guy when he works in your favor.
To the Microsoft Marketing folks: I'd trade you a fact for a clue but since you have neither facts nor clues I guess we won't be doing business any time soon.
Cheers.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
According to Gostev, the rival hacker gangs did not seem to fully understand the exact nature of the vulnerability.
Otherwise it should have gone for much more than $4,000, even in a black market. Imagine an exploit where you can gain access to any Windows computer on Earth for the last several builds of Windows?
This is why we should set up companies to act as middleman and legitimately buy exploits. They would pay more and we would be able to get things patched quicker.
"[...] the vulnerability was detected by an unnamed person around Dec. 1, 2005."
Ok, what are the chances that this person really has no name?!
I'm going to have to call shenanigans on this whole article.
Exploit works as advertised!!! Speedy email!! Would Buy From AGAIN!! A+++++++++++! :)
I've seen powerouts but geez. Stone age? People in the Bronze age didnt require MS Windows did they?
At best millions of people will be bugged and Linux and Apple vendors will have a hell of a time selling their OSes.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
In the first case, full disclosure means that everyone will know it, which will allow all the black hats to exploit the public with it before the company has a chance to fix it and deploy (or at least try) the fix.
BZZZZT! WRONG!
The only people going to be exploited in this case are the people who CONTINUE TO USE THE SERVICE DESPITE PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE THAT IT IS INSECURE.
Imagine there's a server out there with all your financial infomation on it. If someone gets access to it you'll be ruined. Do you really want to just *hope* that no one takes advantage of the vunerability, OR would you rather they just unplug that box until the fix is ready in 24 hours.
Full disclosure puts the pressure where it belongs (better fix it before I switch to a different platform) and allows users to make an informed decision about what software to use.
Life is too short to proofread.
...from the Metasploit framework. That exploint was a champ. 99.9% guaranteed remote trojan installation. In fact, it was enough just to HOVER OVER the file in a directory so that Explorer would try to get its properties - and ooops.