Students Learn To Write Viruses

snocrossgjd writes "In a windowless underground computer lab in California, young men are busy cooking up viruses, spam and other plagues of the computer age. Grant Joy runs a program that surreptitiously records every keystroke on his machine, including user names, passwords, and credit-card numbers. Thomas Fynan floods a bulletin board with huge messages from fake users. Yet Joy and Fynan aren't hackers — they're students in a computer-security class at Sonoma State University. Their professor, George Ledin, has showed them how to penetrate even the best antivirus software."

Comments

Not Hackers?

[mordors9]

Not sure why the author phrased it that way. It should have read they are not criminals. They very well may be hackers. There is a difference.

Re:Not Hackers?

[maackey]

Butterflies are the only way to go

Re:Not Hackers?

[bigstrat2003]

Er... how far up the dependency chain, exactly, do you want to go? Cause if we follow your idea to its conclusion, no one has ever been a hacker, unless they learned the language themselves through trial and error. Someone has to educate you on the material at some point... it's whether or not you have your hand held for you all the time that defines your hacker status, I'd argue.

Good

[Safiire Arrowny]

Sounds like these students might actually learn something about computer security from this class.

Re:Good

[Jaime2]

So, police training should involve mugging practice and fire-fighter training should involve learning how to set fires. Now, I'm aware of the fact that in order to practice fighting fires, there has to be an actual fire to fight and someone has to set it. But, somehow I just don't see a five week training session at the fire department on the various ways to set different fires and how not to get caught.

Learning how to write viruses is largely a waste of time in an information security course. Yesterday's techniques will be antiquated tomorrow, why learn them next week? I know of information security programs in the wild right now that have the students run the old "ping of death" attack that only works on unpatched 1998 vintage systems. I've always felt that in a security course, the students should study past successful attacks and try to learn what techniques could have foiled the attack that wouldn't have required any knowledge unavailable to the attackee before the attack. Concentrating on the specifics of the attack instead of the specifics of the defense is not productive.

Sounds pretty cool

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish my computer security class in college had been like this. Most of the stuff we did had no creativity involved, nor complexity. We did some password cracking (using john the ripper), sniffing on a network, and a SQL injection. Kind of lame compared to the stuff in TFA.

So what?

[x_MeRLiN_x]

I was under the impression that all security courses worth their salt taught skills that could potentially be used maliciously. How does one learn how to be a penetration tester? What makes this case different?

Polymorphism is at least an option in most Computer Science courses. Does one really need to sit down and be taught "how to write viruses" specifically? Or can a huge amount of people who write code use their initiative and learn how to write any kind of application?

Managers at some computer-security companies have even vowed not to hire Ledin's students.

What companies? Would they want to work there anyway?

Re:So what?

[x_MeRLiN_x]

So..? The ability to "hack software" is the ability to find exploits. An exploit that only you know is far more dangerous than one that circulates widely enough to reach the attention of a college lecturer.

There are public lists of unpacthced exploits. It's easy to become part of an underground community that pools their exploits.

My point being, this knowledge is incredibly easy to obtain by anyone. I'm inclined to believe that college students receiving tuition from an ethical hacker who presumably intend to gain legal employment are less of a risk to society than people who decide to Google for the latest exploits so they can exact revenge on an employer (for example) or those with truly nefarious intentions and are talented enough not to need outside tuition.

Re:So what?

[quadelirus]

I don't think one needs to be taught how to write viruses.

Case in point for the sake of argument:

A buffer overrun is a common vector for malicious code. Knowing what types of code causes a buffer overrun is required to protect against them. Practicing writing assembly code to insert into the buffer to actually exploit something is not. Teaching exploitation is not necessarily the same as teaching protection.

Re:So what?

[Opportunist]

Uh... ethics?

I know a few people, amongst them me, who could come up with malware that no AV kit can easily defeat, mostly because we know how AV kits work. We write them.

But there is a reason why you don't hear about AV writers making malware (despite the rumors. Let me put something straight: WE DO NOT NEED TO WRITE IT! Why bother doing something for your job security if it's done for you?). The AV biz is a very geeky one. I don't know a single person who's in it because of the money (well, we of course don't hate the money, but you could make a shitload more by switching sides...). We're here because we like what we do. We like the 'net. And despite not really liking the idiots who click on every crap they get sent, we want to protect. No, not them. The net FROM them.

More and more malware is actually an attack on the 'net in general rather than a specific person. And as stated above, we like our net clean. If you, as a researcher, become known as someone who actually writes the crap, you're done for. Nobody will talk with you anymore. Worse, the whole industry will want your head. You piss in our pool, you better get out before we give you the wedgy of doom.

This is mostly why nobody with the skills writes malware. That it's illegal to distribute a malicious program in most countries is just a minor annoyance compared with that.

"We've Changed this Game"

[KnowledgeEngine]

In response to AV vendors reply "We've changed the game, and viruses have changed in recent years because of the protection we're putting into place,"
Normally if something is going to succeed, it evolves to overcome natural or manmade barriers to its existence.
In a way, the fact that the malware and viruses evolve within days of AV updates says that the AV companies are nothing but an annoyance to the writers of the malware.

Re:"We've Changed this Game"

[Opportunist]

You become better, we become better. It's a race, nothing more, nothing less. And I think both sides know that neither side will eventually win.

The question today isn't whether AV kits can catch every virus out there. The question today is, can we make development of malware so expensive that it doesn't pay anymore? Malware development isn't the pastime of some pimple-faced teen with too much time and no girlfriend on his hands. Malware is, simply and plainly, a business. And like every business, it aims at profit.

The goal of AV kits today is just to minimize that profit the malware distributors can gain. We know that we can't find every virus some teen hacks out to prove that we can't find his trojan. Ok, we can't. Mission accomplished. But your trojan doesn't bother us or anyone, unless it becomes the next Sasser. You are no threat. What does your trojan do? Hijack your friend's WoW password? Get offa my lawn and come back when you've become more than an annoyance.

Today, malware has to be "important" to be hunted by AV companies. I.e. it has to cost more than a handful of people money. It has to spread wide, has to hijack EBay and PayPal accounts (and bank accounts if possible), be a spambot or something else that actually has some impact. And those packages are invariably developed and employed by organisations who aim at making money.

So the goal today has changed, from protecting you to stifling their income (which also serves to protect you, in a way). Yes, we're trying to keep back the ocean that comes with a tsunami with a broom. Our back is against the wall. The best we can do today is to limit their income in an attempt to show them it's more profitable to go back to good ol' burglary.

When you, as a private person, write some malware and release it into the world, you'll eventually be detected, too. But you're not important. The damage you do, the footprint you leave on the international detection grid, is so insignificant that, sorry if I'm so blunt, you don't count.

How long before Ledin is visited by DHS?

[spiritgreywolf]

Seriously - no troll. How soon before even teaching this kind of skill, even in the name of security, will require special licensing, background checks, and any other array of "Security Theater" tactics brought forth by the Department of Homeland Security?

Hell, we can't _legally_ export anything with strong encryption but we allow multi-cultural students to learn cyber-terrorism tactics?

$20 says the instructor Mr. Ledin is either carted away to Guantanamo Bay, contract killed by McAfee or Symantec or hired by some euro country with too many consonants in their name...

Re:How long before Ledin is visited by DHS?

[shadwstalkr]

$20 says the instructor Mr. Ledin is either carted away to Guantanamo Bay, contract killed by McAfee or Symantec or hired by some euro country with too many consonants in their name...

Seriously? Virus writing is extremely well documented all over the internet, and has been for a long time. Anybody with some initiative can learn this stuff, and really it's probably the best way to learn assembly, executable formats, and a whole slew of cool little tricks you can do with a computer. Virii do a lot more than delete files. There is a lot to learn by building rockets, and we shouldn't stop just because some people like to put explosives on theirs.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Ledin is reprimanded by the university administration for getting bad press.

Re:How long before Ledin is visited by DHS?

[failedlogic]

Maybe he is working for the DHS, you insensitive clod!

Interesting point nonetheless. There is a difference between classroom and reality. In a psychology, medicine, chemistry, biology, criminology ... whatever class at any level you are taught some pretty dangerous stuff. 99.99999% of students are sane, normal human beings that wont use the info. Its that small %age of students who will do something that are the concern. I don't think taking the class in-and-of itself is the catalyst to being a cyberterrorist. I would at least question the intentions of students that *already* know a few too many things in the class or get an A+ effortlessly for the course.

Re:Penetrate even the best antivirus software?

[SoapBox17]

In case that wasn't a rhetorical question, the answer is:
Because it is a computer class (probably part of a CompSci degree), not sociology/psychology. While targeting the user is a perfectly good way to go about breaking in to something, that topic area isn't very practical for computer science. I think the point of TFA is that the class teaches a lot more than "this is how to kill McAfee, now go run amok!" It is a good opportunity to think outside the box, and targeting the user is very much inside the box, and very low tech.

I'd be kind of pissed if I took a computer security class and it was all about social engineering.

Social Engineering VS Computer Sci

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

I agree with soapbox, with

I'd be kind of pissed if I took a computer security class and it was all about social engineering.

but if it was a course on penetration and end user abuse, then it would be completely relevant.

I think teaching the tools of the black arts are useful - you never know when you need to hack into a satellite system and broadcast the evil that it does around the world.

They need BOTH!

[khasim]

If you are learning SECURITY then the first lesson is that the PEOPLE are the weakest link.

You need to design systems that minimize the human error portion. That means designing systems where it is possible to tell the "good" code from the "bad" code. Where the average user can run an app to identify the "good" code from the "bad" code.

Where the warnings are sufficiently rare that the average user is NOT trained to just click "accept" when one pops up.

Re:Weak sauce.

[bluefoxlucid]

Because breaking into things and creating stealthy shit is the greatest problem solving skill you will ever find.

By nature, to break into a computer, you have to force it to do something it (software, sometimes hardware i.e. Intel errata) was specifically not designed to do. Usually this amounts to something not obvious to 100% of the rest of the world for some strange reason being obvious to you. The more experience you have warping completely tame and working interfaces in perverse ways due to minor quirks, the easier this becomes.

Load modules and shared objects aren't designed to be altered like that; and in this case you have a system designed specifically to catch and prevent you from doing what you're doing. This is, again, forcing something into a position it's not designed to operate in to achieve a predictable result.

Carmack's Reverse, Duff's Device, and even Edison's light bulb worked from these same principles; remember, by its very nature you cannot have light without fire.

Re:Penetrate even the best antivirus software?

[v(*_*)vvvv]

targeting the user is very much inside the box, and very low tech.

Well, yes and no. This is a computer class, so sure, let's just study what you can do at the keyboard, but if you are talking security, then the user is the weakest link. The hackers that have done the most damage and made the most money have all used social engineering at one point or another. And why does it work? It works precisely because it is outside the box - the computer box. Programmers and security experts can do all they can inside the box, but their systems are not secure if an idiot holds the key or gives out passwords over the phone.

So the most secure systems are not user dependent, but to understand how to avoid depending on the user and how to avoid creating secrets to guard, you will need insight into the social engineer-ability of a system.

Re:Is there, or should there be a line to educatio

[Mr Pleco]

I agree that learning these skills is important if computer security if what you plan to do legitimately for a living. As much as I would have loved to take a class like that in college, I don't believe ethically I could have participated. By having students practice these skills in the real world they are just adding to the already enormous problem. I believe a well built simulation environment could serve the purpose just as well without causing problems for other users. So is there a line these students have crossed by practising their skills in the wild? Should a policeman learn to solve crime by committing it for example?

Think of it as a locksmith learning how to open locked cars or houses, not so much policemen causing crimes to learn to solve them, as by definition as long as you aren't breaking the law, you're not a criminal.

Re:speaking of penetration...

[Anonymous Coward]

Offtopic but interesting. Kind of an Ernest Hemingway meets Hunter S. Thompson thing going on.

Re:Penetrate even the best antivirus software?

[mixmatch]

I'd be kind of pissed if I took a computer security class and it was all about social engineering.

Unfortunately for all of us, a technical attack is usually fixable by the next version of security software or the OS, while a psychological attack will continue working effectively as long as computers are operated by people. If the objective is to benefit from an exploit, as opposed to obliterating a system, it is nearly always more profitable to deceive the victim into believing that they are still in control of their system as well. I believe that a good attack would incorporate a high level of technical expertise, coupled with a social engineering deception. There is after all a saying,

There is no patch for human stupidity.

I think anyone taking a computer science class that wants to disregard the human element of computing is not likely to be the most successful in the IT field.

Re:Penetrate even the best antivirus software?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

In the old days, the author of a high-speed worm would have wanted to avoid user interaction, because human beings slow things down. Slammer doubled the number of infections every 8.5 seconds when it took off: hard to do that when you have to wait for a user to figure out how to turn off their antivirus software.

Someone who is targeting corporate systems today, for espionage or to recruit well-connected botnet hosts, is attacking an environment where the users may not be able to turn off their antivirus software.

A pure social engineering attack, with no code obfuscation, would have to work in two stages. The actual payload would have to be delivered after the antivirus got turned off, not before, so there would have to be a first stage containing the UI to persuade the user to disable anti-virus. Hardly impossible, but a nuisance.

Those are a few of the reasons, though your point stands unchallenged: humans are the weakest link, and security people who develop tunnel vision about technical protections and countermeasures are crippling themselves.

Re:What about martial arts..

[Jaime2]

You're defending the wrong point. I never said that students shouldn't learn to write viruses because it's evil or dangerous. I said students shouldn't learn to write viruses because it is a poor way to learn information security. I really don't care if they are now "a threat" because of taking this class. The last person I'd be scared of is a student who decided to take a class on virus writing. The success stories in that industry are all self-starters. However, the 14 class hours and countless hours spent on homework and projects have been 100% wasted. The students now have an appreciation for how easy it is to be the attacker... big deal. If they didn't already read that and believe it, they are going to fail at information security. If every little point has to be driven home with 50 hours of practice, then they have heads made out of rocks.

What is the expected takeaway from this class? Are the students supposed to hand threat model all systems and test their defenses with home-made viruses? Any half-baked defense scheme will stand up to an attack crafted by the defender. Just look at Kryptonite bicycle locks -- years of research and development defeated by a BIC pen. The lesson is that nothing is even reasonably secure until it has been exposed to many thousands of attack attempts by many thousands of deviant minds. This class will only serve to delude some of the students into thinking they are penetration testing when they are actually just randomly poking at their defenses.

Make it interesting

[Mindbridge]

This is misguided. Students should be taught how to write viruses that infect other viruses.

Re:Oh Joy more spam

[Rockabilly_Redbeard]

I don't believe the stuff they're cooking up could be any worse than the other "5000" viruses that come out each week now. All I know is this class beats the heck out of the cybersecurity class I took in college. It seemed like all we did was read excerpts from Kevin Mitnick.

Re:And that seems extremely stupid

[Phrogman]

If I am an anti-virus company looking for developers, why would I possibly turn away programmers who took a course on virus development? It was a sanctioned computer course at a college or university, it would seem to me that these would be *exactly* the people you want. They should have a better understanding of how a virus developer thinks and thus have a head start on combating future viruses. Yes, it may be that some took that course because they were interested in writing malware, but many will have taken it because they want to know how to fight it. I think only a moronic close-minded company would turn these people away just because they took a course.

Its like the Dept of Justice not hiring people who took a course on criminology because they might cause a crime.

Your post sums up...

[gillbates]

In a very elegant manner, precisely why I've switched all of my home boxen to Linux. The end user's experience does not matter to the AV companies; it matters only tangentially to Microsoft. What matters most, is money. That is, their profitability, not mine.

If I paid for antivirus software, I would expect it to protect me from all viruses, not merely the ones trying to rip off major corporations. You need to understand the perspective of the typical Windows user:

• In the first place, the box is already slow because its running Windows. The typical user is either lacks the sufficient skill/time/money to switch their OS, or their corporate policy prevents them from doing so.
• Now, we have to run AV software, which slows the machine down even more.
• And worse, it doesn't completely protect us, it just stops the major attacks. My company's tech support still have to do virus cleanup from time to time, though the incidents are fewer and farther between.
• And worst of all, the users machine is slowed down to the point where it actually affects their ability to get work done, and it is your fault. I'm running a 3.4 GHz, 1 GB RAM XP machine, and I can still watch it draw the windows and menus. My 1997 Pentium 120MHz system with 16 MB of RAM running Windows 95 could draw the windows faster than I could see them, but for some reason, in this brave new world of XP and AV, I'm getting a user experience that is strangely reminiscent of the 80's.

A few years ago, I worked as a Linux developer. Since then, I've switched jobs and am now using a Windows box. Two things occur to me:

1. When I used Linux, I never noticed how "fast" the system was because generally speaking, it just worked. Now, I can time things like restoring a program from the taskbar with a stopwatch. Using the minute hand. I've got apps that take 90 seconds to start working again. Firefox can load ./ in the time it takes Windows to draw a single menu.
2. I shipped around a hundred times more lines of code when I was using Linux. Yes, you read that right: I'm about a hundred times more productive on Linux compared to Windows. (Yes, the issue of productivity is complicated, but as much as my professional pride would like to think otherwise, I've had to come to terms with the fact that the sluggishness of my workstation does affect my productivity. Sometimes, a poor workman's tools really are to blame...)

So, when I have the choice, and my time is important - that is, when it means money - I use Linux. Apparently my time isn't considered important to the AV companies. They think I can just sit on my hands and do nothing while a file is scanned. What happens is that these little annoyances add up, and I end up working overtime because some AV company is all about profit, not productivity.