The New Face of Script Kiddiez

An anonymous reader writes "Washingtonpost.com's Security Fix blog has an interesting post profiling the activities of a kid named Witlog who controls a botnet of roughly 30,000 hacked Windows PCs. Even after the authorities manage to shut down the network Witlog uses to control his bots, he pops up somewhere else. From the article: 'Witlog may in fact be the product of a new generation of script kiddiez; the chief distinguishing feature of this generation being that instead of using Web site flaws to deface as many Web sites as possible, these guys are breaking into thousands of home and work PCs and taking them for a virtual joyride, often times all the way to the bank.'"

Comments

New Face

[RedHatLinux]

Would seem to imply a new genre of script kiddie, such as old people doing it, rather than a mere change in behavior. And if they can track and shutdown is bot network, why hasn't someone arrested this idiot?

Re:New Face

[kefkahax]

Being that he goes by 'Witlog' either he's too young to disclose or they still don't know who he is. Either way, I'd like to point out that, though he may or may not cover his tracks well, "they break into thousands of PCs" is kind of inaccurate being that most of these DDoS bots automate the process of taking control of a machine. Most people that run these botnets don't know anything beyond compiling the bot and filling out a configuration file.

And they certainly don't deserve recognition...neither would a defacer[political or not]. I swear, "hackers" or "crackers" whatever you may prefer to call them, used to have more taste, pre-2000. Even the defacements used to carry more meaning...now it just seems like IRC channel wars, just at a new level...IRC server wars. Pretty dumb when it gets down to it.

Re:New Face

[plover]

why hasn't someone arrested this idiot?

Probably because the idiot is in Estonia, or some other place where the laws of the U.S. are not particularly respected. If all he's doing is installing adware on American PCs, you don't honestly think the local police are going to give a sh!t, do you?

Actually, they probably would. They'd probably want a 25% cut.

Re:New Face

[gEvil (beta)]

...or some other place where the laws of the U.S. are not particularly respected.

I don't even know where to begin with a comment like that... : /

Re:New Face

[blast3r]

When you chase these botnet conrollers down you may find the operator in a channel on the server but normally they hide their real IP address. There is only so much you can do if you don't have access to the actual system the IRC server is located on. And even then it could be difficult to actually find them because they could be proxying through another hacked machine.

Re:New Face

[msobkow]

Exactly. While the rootkits, virus kits, worm kits, and other attack examples have been out there since the early DARPA days, most people using them were exploring for security holes to exploit. Now we've got people who just use that work to take over unpatched or obsolete machines.

They aren't hackers. They can't even claim to be crackers. They run a kit with as little thought to how it works as an Excel user thinks about the math and programming behind the interface. It's just a tool to them.

What's really annoying is their persistent attempts to break a patched/maintained environment wastes bandwidth that has better uses.

What's criminal is that their traffic interference can prevent you from using your connection to work or relax as you see fit. Legally, it should be comparable to theft of resources or vandalism preventing the use of resources. Following from that could be additional charges depending on the intended use of the victim's machines.

Re:New Face

[Agelmar]

Given the text of the interview in the article, I'm guessing that he is not in this country, or at the very least that he's a non-native speaker.

My logic: There is a line where the reporter is interviewing the 'kid'. He says the following:

why i did it? i've read an article on yahoo or smth like this

Aside from the obvious grammatical issues, the last word of the sentence is indicative of the fact that he may be a non-native speaker of English. A native speaker would likely use the word "that" instead of "this" when using the phrase "something like" in conjunction with an action taken in the past.

There's also the fact that he said "I've read" rather than "I read". While the former is not incorrect (using the past participle, 'have'), a native speaker is more likely to use the simple past ("I read" rather than "I have read"). This is especially true of a younger native speaker.

While it's obviously difficult to analyze the grammar of a script kiddy, if I had to bet I would say that he is a non-native speaker. Could easily be German, or east european given the language patterns.

Re:New Face

[winse]

They aren't hackers. They can't even claim to be crackers. They run a kit with as little thought to how it works as an Excel user thinks about the math and programming behind the interface. It's just a tool to them.

I totally agree. Why back in our day we had WRITE our own exploits, some people just older than me had to WRITE their own compiler to compile their own hand written 'sploits, and that's only if they finished their other chores first. It was uphill both ways.

The only real crime here is that criminal some dumb people leverage the work of the truly brilliant.

toungue in cheek

Re:New Face

[madhitz]

Yeah, right. Tracking these clowns down is easy....I believe you're giving them much more credit then they are due. Sure, proxy this, proxy that, IRC chats, etc, etc...however, somewhere along the line, they are screwing up, leaving a trail, or some link back to themselves..and you can get them there. Hell, worst case scenario, find them at the money source...that's what makes this go round.

Unfortunately, no one wants to invest the token amount of time it takes to investigate this, so it doesn't happen. You can't possibly believe that a 15-year-old botnet-asswipe, sitting at home on mom and dad's computer, could possibly outwit a highly paid and experienced network or systems analyst. They, as was mentioned in an earlier post, simply use the tool without any comprehension of how it operates....keep digging, and you'll find them...shit always ends up at the bottom.

Re:New Face

[slashdotwannabe]

...or some other place where the laws of the U.S. are not particularly respected....

This implies that there is someplace where the laws of the U.S. are particularly respected... including the U.S.

If George W doesn't have to follow the law, why should I???

Re:New Face

[NormalVisual]

Damn kids and your "servers". When *I* was young, it was a bit tougher - ever tried to root an abacus?

Could be helpful

[gEvil (beta)]

...these guys are breaking into thousands of home and work PCs and taking them for a virtual joyride, often times all the way to the bank.

Great! Maybe he can reconcile my account balance while he's there.

Re:Could be helpful

[KylePflug]

Awesome! Zero is a step in the right direction!

lame

[panic911]

i find it rather funny that all these bot-net owners are getting so much publicity right now. The washington post recently had another article about another botnet owner. this is nothing new. people have been exploiting various networks and running botnets for at least a decade (that I'm aware of). these new botnets aren't any larger than the ones back in the day, either. in fact exploiting systems back then was way easier since security wasn't nearly as important to many people and firewalls were pretty rare. either way, ITS LAME

Better Toys

[Doc Ruby]

These kids should be the new face of P2P research and production. Kids care more about group recognition, new toys and testing/breaking limits than they do about money. If more effort were put into giving them constructive P2P toys to play with, they would spend much less of their own effort breaking stuff.

Just stopping kids is a losing battle. The only way to win is to substitute something else into their idle hands. This has been proven over and again, most obviously with "Little League" which replaced gangs of window breakers with happy campers.

Re:Better Toys

[Doc Ruby]

I've met plenty of these kinds of kids, since I used to be among them myself when I got started. One difference between them and me was that I was given constructive toys, actual (simple) programming projects, while they just passed around hacks/cheats given them by someone else.

They don't have to be hackers to cause harm. All they're doing is playing with toys. That's why less harmful toys in wider distribution will dilute the harm.

Re:Better Toys

[NitsujTPU]

I've met a number of these kids, and chatted with plenty in my day. I have always been under the impression that those who wanted to learn something did. I remember listening to Brock Meeks speak ad DefCon, only to have questioners lay into him saying, "You don't have to be interested in programming to be a good hacker." Those kids don't want to learn anything, and they won't.

I can name at least 3 of my friends from when I was 14 chatting on IRC who are off getting their PhDs now (and you can add me to that number in the Fall).

The kids who wanted to download "bitchslap" and knock a computer or two offline did that and didn't do anything more interesting than that. They ran into #2600 and barked at all of the people in there "Am I 1337 now!?!" and told all of their friends how hardcore they were.

All of that aside, most of the serious P2P research is simply outside of the reach of your standard issue coder, let alone some script kiddie who doesn't know what he's doing. Perhaps there's some simple, elegant technique out there that people haven't exploited yet. Heck, I have my own simple elegant technique that I think that everyone missed. The difference is that I'm writing a paper about it, not sitting in some IRC channel telling people how 1337 my misguided flood protocol is.

And, also, exactly, they don't have to be hackers to cause harm. They can be script kiddies and be plenty destructive. A script kiddie is called a script kiddie because he doesn't have any 1337 sk1llz though, not because he's trying to change the world. I wanted to learn about computers once too. You know what I did? I programmed.

Lucky Bastards

[Eightyford]

The worst part of this is that when these people are caught they are often given lucrative jobs at security and antivirus companies. Making the front page of slashdot will probably even look good on the lucky bastard's resume.

And what kind of name is witlog? It's like cunningpoop, or something.

Re:Lucky Bastards

[Ben Newman]

Not really. That might have been the case when you actually needed to know something to be a "hacker", but this kid is just downloading tools from other places. I doubt he knows what TCP/IP is.

Re:Lucky Bastards

[ebyrob]

And what kind of name is witlog? It's like cunningpoop, or something.

I guess he doesn't want people to think he's a dumbshit.

(Sorry, but you all know it had to be said!)

the only feature

[Anonymous Coward]

that should be distinctive on this "new face" is that it's either:

* Bruised and bloodied from the clue by four that's been applied; or

* mouth wide open screaming as his cell mate takes a new "wife."

Re:the only feature

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

What would you propose we do with him then? Allowing him to continue is a very bad option, possibly the worst of all available, and currently the accepted practice in the U.S. is incarceration.

While jail time is a valid option it should be jail time minus sexual assault. This may not be the reality in all cases, but rape and physical abuse should not be an accepted part of prison and anyone who accepts it as normal, or lauds it sickens me and just makes the problem worse. For a wholly non-violent offense like this, perhaps a long probation, confiscation of funds, and a few years of regular community service would be more appropriate.

I get the feeling from reading the posts here that almost everyone is interested in revenge against people who spam or run botnets or perform DoS attacks, and no one is interested in either rehabilitation or justice. Those advocating corporeal punishment, rape, death, and eternal damnation have no sense of a punishment fitting the scale of a crime and likely have no idea what it is like to truly suffer physical and mental pain. Gee a bunch of relatively wealthy computer geeks from the first world, what a surprise.

Re:the only feature

[Pantero Blanco]

I'm not the GP, but:

"Do you think corporal punishment and rape is an appropriate punishment for a non-violent crime or not?"

I don't see anything wrong with corporal punishment that doesn't have a long-term effect. For a teenager, a mild beating that leaves him bruised is almost certainly LESS damaging than jail-time. Note that this stops a good bit short of maiming, flogging, et cetera. It used to be that parents would do this, but it's becoming rare now, especially in Europe and more Leftist US states.

I don't like the fact that rape is used as a deterrent. That's basically the prison system finding a way around the "cruel and unusual punishment" provision by turning a blind eye. It's also a good way to drive someone absolutely insane so that they turn to more brutal crimes themselves.

Now here's an interesting idea.

[Spy der Mann]

Spread a worm that:

* Spreads itself to at least 2 other computers (for survival)
* Downloads and installs ad-aware
* Activates your windows firewall
* Downloads appropriate patches from Microsoft
* Prepares ad-aware to run on the next boot
* Deletes itself from the system

That'd be so beautiful *sniff* :')

Re:Now here's an interesting idea.

[MyNymWasTaken]

Whitehat viruses do exist in the wild. However, they too can bring down networks in a DDoS style; even while cleansing the system.

Computer virus infects Air Canada check-in system
W32/Nachi.worm

Re:Now here's an interesting idea.

[MrNougat]

Yup. Blaster was the first, and Welchia was supposed to fix it. Problem was, Welchia located other nodes by pinging. It didn't take too long for a network full of Welchia to grind to a halt with all that traffic. I saw it happen; an office of about 200 people had to be disconnected from the WAN in order to keep it contained. (No, I was not in charge of that office or that network.)

Embarrassment for Microsoft

[digitaldc]

SecurityFix: so did you just download the source from some site and set it loose?
Witlog: yes
Witlog: changed settings, and started it
Witlog: thats all
Witlog: anyone could do that
Witlog: you don't have to know many things to do a botnet like this

Why can't Microsoft push out its security fixes like this???

Cut off the head

[Billosaur]

Witlog: why i did it? i've read an article on yahoo or smth like this
Witlog: so when i've read that article, i thought "why not to make my own"?
SecurityFix: so did you just download the source from some site and set it loose?
Witlog: yes
Witlog: changed settings, and started it
Witlog: thats all
Witlog: anyone could do that
Witlog: you don't have to know many things to do a botnet like this

This kid is not a "hacker" or "cracker" anymore than I'm a professional wrestler. He finds a script or two somewhere, configures it, and lets it go. He has no moral compass, he doesn't care about other people's property, and he seems to think this is a hoot. He sounds too much like those college boys who are accused of setting those Alabama church fires.

But as he says, anyone can do this. While it's nice that goups like Shadowserver.org are tracking down and shutting down these botnets, why isn't someone doing something about the supply source for these scripts? It's like leaving a loaded gun lying around -- some idiot may decide to use it, even though they don't know how. I say find the morons behind the botnet scripts and take them out. Stop wasting time on the small fry.

Re:Cut off the head

[Denyer]

It's like leaving a loaded gun lying around -- some idiot may decide to use it

It's really easy to make explosives. We can't ban the sale of ingredients. That's a slightly facile example -- there are legitimate uses for many things that could be used for malice, whilst fewer for exploit source code. However, prohibiting the availability of information about holes wouldn't improve the situation -- it'd mean more blackhats would have the information rather than people using that information to arrange protective measures.

How low can we set the bar?

[khasim]

All this guy did was use some source code and change some settings. Nothing major. He's not the kind of guy who's going to make another Napster. He probably doesn't even know how he's doing what he's doing.

I have to agree.

The only reason this guy is having any success at this is because of the default security settings on Windows.

No, this isn't an anti-Microsoft rant. But the fact is that without those open ports, his worm wouldn't be spreading. You cannot depend upon the end-users to correctly patch or firewall their systems.

All it would take to stop this guy is for the next version of Windows to ship without any open ports by default. Ubuntu already does this, Apple already does this.

Having a software firewall on the machine is a distant 2nd place option. If there is a flaw in the firewall software, he'll have the same opportunity he has now.

If only crapware were easy to remove

[LunaticTippy]

That would be pure poetry.

If only I could come up with a script to clean a machine reliably I'd save plenty of time. Just today I tried and failed to de-crapify a horribly compromised Win ME/kazaa-induced nightmare.

I spent nearly an hour with ad-aware, hijackthis, and spybot s&d before realizing best case I'd end up with a limping Win ME system.

Now it's happily running 2k, fully patched, and the ignorant user warned.

Re:If only crapware were easy to remove

[plover]

and the ignorant user warned.

You really are an incurable optimist, aren't you?

Disclaimer:

[WhiteWolf666]

What he does is wrong. Don't get me wrong.

At the same time, I couldn't give a rat's ass. Leave your car unlocked, get your radio stolen, see me cry 0 tears.

Leave your house unlocked, and the fine china will walk out the front door.

Leave your computer unprotected, and your data/bandwidth will be taken.

We run OS X/Linux. Automatic security updates, 0 ports exposed, everything behind a NAT, no automatic execution of downloaded files, and nobody types in administrator password without calling me first, either because they don't know them, or they know to verify EVERYTHING with me. Did I mention that user desktops run few (no) services? CUPS, SMB, SSH. No remote or local root logins.

Everyone here understands that ANY thing they download could potentially result in all their data being messed up. Period.

The last piece of the puzzle for me would be to prevent people from "spoofing" OS X users using incorrect icons for executable mime-types. Then I'll be happy.

Why should I care?

Re:Disclaimer:

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS]

see me cry 0 tears.
Leave your house unlocked, and the fine china will walk out the front door.

Speaking of which, that lock you have on your front door can be picked in a few seconds. Don't believe me? Tell me your address, and I'll report here what your Royal Doulton brought on eBay.

Stealing is ALWAYS WRONG, even if the valuables are unsecured.

Last line of the article

[Spy der Mann]

"At least one machine that he showed me from his botnet was located inside of a major U.S. defense contractor."

Ah, the irony...

Spammers discussing arrests on specialham today

[Animats]

Specialham, the spammer hangout, usually has ads for botnets. Today, though, the spammers are discussing someone who got caught:

Adam Vitale aka Batch1 arrested by Secret Service

• From what I heard it was a guy named Sean Dunaway (spelled wrong I think). He used to work for AOL, sold out their huge 90+ million members dbase, got jail time, and apperently is working for the man now. This is a big case, pump and dump stock scams can hurt people to the tune of millions of dollars.
  M.
• Yeah pump & dump would seem more like the Secret Service's department... the article just spoke of "promoting computer security software"... perhaps additional charges will be filed later... maybe this was just the SS's way to get him jailed and put pressure on him...
  Saw your other post too.. U r right, whoever isn't mailing compliant these days and is promoting illegal shit like pharm or stocks on top of it, is just asking for the feds to bust through their door...
  Hamster
• From what i hear it wasnt about stocks or spamming, the security spam stuff was just a coverup. What the feds were really after was a botnet the guys were mailing from. Dont know the truth to this but i would not doubt it one bit, it would make sense why the SS was involved.
• Just goes to show swank has ties with the antis look at this http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/evidence.lasso?rokso _id=ROK4262
  I am not saying this guy didnt scam tons of people which is not right however if swank does not like you for whatever reason he will post you info on his anti friends websites so be very very carefull when dealing with swank and make sure your personal info is kept to you.. Personal revenge is the key to try and recover money that was scammed not whoring shit out to the anti's....
  P.S. swank you know I dont like fake people.. You guys get a kick of this one http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/evidence.lasso?rokso _id=ROK4021
  Look half way down the message and you will see this
  "Swank"(Chris Brown) and "Batch1"(Adam Vitale) are in a tiff over a spam deal gone bad, and are in a flame-war on spamforum.biz.
  Swank has repeatedly posted "Batch1's contact info that was used in their spam dealings with each other.
  I think this is what I have been explaining all along about how swank has ties to the antis and posts peoples info if he doesnt like them and if you notice reading these articals the anti's really never say anything bad about swank HMMMM I wonder if he is friends with them.. Enjoy guys.....
• Sean Dunaway is spelt correctly and he did not work for AOL and did not receive jail time. Soo sad that people are this missinformed.
• Also the math makes no sense: Spammed 1.2 million AOL users with onbly 47,000 messages? Huh?
  ...
  1200000 / recipients_per_Email = 47,000 emails sent.
  hard to understand isnt it hamster ;)
  also if you've paid any attention to the forum, the informant (sean dunaway) is already notified and you've started a double thread because of your ignorance :P

This is starting to sound like those Mafia wiretap transcripts that came out as the New York Mafia was coming unglued. Law enforcement was doing well enough that the crooks were more afraid than the good guys, and were desperately trying to figure out who was selling out.

Spamming is starting to yield to straightforward police work.

ISP Blocking

[PhYrE2k2]

I should point out that ISP blocking makes these folks essentially useless, not to mention limiting upstream.

However, I hate that my ISP is packet filtering for things like torrents (Rogers), one has to wonder why they fail to filter for the things that uselessly waste their network rather than the people who actually use it.

-M

Arest Some SysAdmins Too?

[BoRegardless]

Like which System Admin of a large government contractor is not aware of network security in this day and age, which would allow compromised computers and connections to the outside world?

New genre of script kiddie

[this great guy]

Would seem to imply a new genre of script kiddie, such as old people doing it,

Like Script Daddiez.

Re:Just link the punk to terrorist

[Urusai]

Yeah, we'll catch him like Osama!

And you've hit the core of the "problem".

[khasim]

Speaking of which, that lock you have on your front door can be picked in a few seconds. Don't believe me? Tell me your address, and I'll report here what your Royal Doulton brought on eBay.

Some people trust the locks on their houses because they do not know any better. That doesn't make them bad or wrong. Just "ignorant".

Some people trust the system on their computers because they don't know any better. That doesn't make the bad or wrong. Just "ignorant".

The only difference is that you have a physical limit to the houses you can break into. There is no such limit on computers.

People have a much easier time understanding physical security because they can see it. They know when they've been robbed. They know when the neighbors are robbed.

With a computer, they probably won't know, or even really care. Unless they lose money from their accounts.

And fighting against ignorance is a long and difficult task. There are millions of individuals out there and each one has to be correctly educated.

Personally, I'd recommend focusing on an easier target ("easier" being relative here). Get Microsoft to ship the next version of Windows without any open ports by default. Yeah, I know what you're going to say. But it's more likely to happen than educating the millions of individual users out there.

Honey, they'll make fun of him if we name him Dick

[Anonymous Coward]

the activities of a kid named Witlog

Man, what were his parents thinking?!