Slashdot Mirror
Fears of a Conficker Meltdown Greatly Exaggerated
BobB-nw writes "Many have been worrying that the Conficker worm will somehow rise up and devastate the Internet on April 1. These fears are misplaced, security experts say. April 1 is what Conficker researchers are calling a trigger date, when the worm will switch the way it looks for software updates. A 60 Minutes episode about the worm on Sunday will stoke concerns. But the worm has already had several such trigger dates, including Jan. 1, none of which had any direct impact on IT operations, according to Phil Porras, a program director with SRI International who has studied the worm. 'Technically, we will see a new capability, but it complements a capability that already exists,' Porras said."
... either way. The only certainty is security experts have differing opinion on this.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
You just don't know what payload will be downloaded on April 1st.
It could be your standard 'DDoS and Spam Run' package, but imagine what would happen if all these drones were used to start exploiting an unknown vulnerability, think SQL Slammer...
April 1st is when the worm will *start* looking for updates. It will continue looking from that date on, with a different set of domains each day. So there is no reason why the authors would register one of the domains and put out an update on the first day. If anything, they would wait a while to increase the number of domains security researchers have to watch out for. Also, the authors may not have any reason to update it just yet - it seems to be quite successful in its current iteration. They may be waiting for a buyer to purchase a block of the botnet for example.
I.O.U One Sig.
I would like this thing to actually shut down all those computers that are infected. It would save quite a bit on energy and actually be quite useful. If there would be a way to permanently disable a computer (flash it's BIOS with a bad image) then maybe it could stimulate the economy. Another thing would be to simulate a 56k connection on all those machines. Finally the intertubes would be cleared of a lot of clutter by people trying to get to awful flash 'movies' of random people on Facebook or MySpace. Another thing would be to register every IP that the computers are connected to as potential spam hosts to well-known spam registries.
Of course if some host is infected and some life or death situation is dependent on it, the blame should be placed on the IT administrator or the vendor, not the creator.
It will be interesting to see what will happen.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I've been following storm, and that has dropped off the face of slashdot, and other worms, this latest conflicker is getting an article once or twice a week, but unless i missed something, how does one prevent/detect/remove these worms? All the news articles seem to think that its a foregone conclusion that your (or someone you care about) system WILL BE ASSIMILATED. I run windows, but I practice safe browsing ( I wrap that rascal by not downloading willy nilly, using outlook for e-mail, and use no-script and abp in firefox, all of which is running on an up to date windows XP build running behind a NAT router), am I infected? Will AVG tell me if I am? Would NAV or {other antivirus} tell me?
Wikipedia has info on how to detect and remove using most major antivirus running the latest update. But why don't the news-writers seem to recognize this? Why must every infection be a death sentence to support some nefarious plot with your unwitting computer?
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
Actually, I think the better solution would be... "they" obviously have the domain generating algorithm. Major ISPs could EASILY with a little ingenuity could identify which of their customers are infected. Cut them off, send them a letter, and make it really really clear that if they continue to "abuse ISP resources", they are liable for cleanup costs, plus penalties. And they have to agree to it before they get their service back. I'm sure there is some sort of slippery slope of abuse that I'm not quite seeing, but it is a step toward educating those obviously easily exploited.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Posts like this make me think that you've never done any tech support for the average home user in the real world.
Sure, those of who know what we're doing can avoid problems.
That doesn't hold true for the vast majority of windows users. If it did, it wouldn't be a problem.
It's the same kind of thinking that led to the problem being existent in the first place.
Don't get me wrong - I make a fairly nice side income doing tech support for home users on the side.
But I'd much rather go back to teaching people *how* to use their computers - actually making a difference - than fixing broken windows installations and removing viruses, even if it is much more profitable.
Call me old-fashioned or whatever, but that's what I'd prefer.
I'm not necessarily bitching at you in particular. I just remember what it was like, a long time ago, to spend my computer support time solving problems that didn't involve malware infestations. *Teaching* people how to use their computers. I miss it. It was fun. This isn't.
So anyone who says "Oh, I can keep my machine virus free" - whoopdefuckingdoo, so what, so can I. Most people can't, and it's because Microsoft can't write a decent *secure* fucking operating system to save their stock options.
Oh, and get off my damned lawn ;)
(Irritable? You bet. I'm a curmudge-only middle aged bastard...)
I can vent, can't I? *grin*
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Yes, because everyone is an idiot but you. They're not smart enough to deserve the internet. Let us take their PCs from them.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
Why are we discussing Windows/Linux/OS X preference at all? Does anyone have even the slightest clue how ignorant these statements sound? Replies like "My custom compiled super secure xxxxxx install is impervious to all attacks from anyone..." are inflammatory and pose no useful, relevant, or even accurate account of how things work in the real world. Don't be dumb. That's the best advise anyone can give. Someone please drop a comment that has useful information regarding the subject. It may actually contribute to understanding why this is doing what it is doing. When the aim of the ploy is understood, we can take steps to mitigate the damage and prevent future nonsense from happening.
Good grief it sucks to be associated with idiots like you.
Respectfully,
A programmer/technologist/"IT" guy
That brings to mind exploits for very common distributions that I've seen in the past.
But, in reality there have been some nasty ones. How many versions of OpenSSH were exploitable? I remember having the exploit, and running it against our own equipment to see what it would break. I love trying to break my own equipment. If I use the same script kiddie code, and I can't get in, neither can they.
Of course, it helps to have many things protected. I prefer to have SSH on a different port, with the firewall rules disallowing anyone to connect from anything but an authorized network (I love default DROP rules). Most exploitable things have only been available to my authorized networks, and only if they knew our port scheme.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
"Now get back on the phones, we're all hands on deck for lusers calling in with that Conficker crap."
Of course, with all the media hype over Conficker, combined with the fact that it is April Fool's Day, and it seems likely you're going to be getting a lot of calls from people who think they're Confickered just because they finally started paying attention to how slow their malware (non-Conficker) infested computer is. Along with potential pranksters calling in...I don't envy you...
At least Slashdot's April Fools jokes may bring you a smile...
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Maybe I'm wrong here, but doesn't it make more sense to get everyone trying to fight this virus/bot/whatever early rather than wait?
They're trying. Microsoft has released a patch that supposedly blocks the primary vector (a vulnerability in the Server service affecting all Microsoft operating systems since Windows 98), and updated their repair tool MSRT to detect and remove it (download it from a machine that's not infested). It has probably removed it from several million of the estimated 15 million infested machines. Microsoft is working with ICANN to block registration of the generated domain names in the case where they're not yet registered and the owners of the domains that were previously registered to mitigate downtime. Every managed service provider and major IT shop I know of has pushed out all of this stuff. Unfortunately, this is not even close to enough. The secondary vector, autorun, is pernicious. This thing is now on the root thousands of major shares and every time they remove it one of the thousands of Conficker clients puts it back. It's on millions of pen drives, millions of backups. It's been burned to millions of CDs. It's on iPods and mp3 players, Blackberries and iPhones and Windows Mobile phones, picture frames and DVDs. It's probably now in the root of DVD ISOs distributed via all the popular media distribution sites. Tertiary vectors include compromising network neighbors. Your grandchildren are going to be installing this thing if they don't figure out the whole "autorun is stupid" thing.
This thing is really very well engineered. The next one will be even better. And the next one better still. If you're in a Microsoft shop you're going to be working half your holiday weekends for the rest of your career, and a lot of planned vacations too. Remember that this is not the only Windows malware currently making the rounds. There are at least three major development groups and all of them have active botnets and a release schedule for new exploits.
We've been playing this game for a long time and the black hats are getting more proficient than the white hats. The problem is that the target platform - Windows - cannot be made invulnerable to these threats without defeating its main selling point: application compatibility. Most of the people who work with this toxic stuff do their development on BSD, OS-X or Linux and refer to Windows boxes as "targets". If Microsoft makes Windows so secure that this junk won't spread, most of the apps for it won't run. You might as well run an OS that's not a target now as wait for that to happen.
But TFA is right. April Fools is the day the botmaster begins to harvest his crop of bots. May 22 is more likely the beginning of operations. I could be wrong about this because I previously guessed January 16.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
So what is exaggerated? How much people are afraid of Cornficker or its potential to cause damage?
Neither. The fear is warranted because the potential damage will almost certainly be realized to a significant degree. It's already proven its capacity to cause damage or we wouldn't be talking about it. What's exaggerated may be the April First date. April 1 might just be a mode shift day planned by the programmer where the thing goes into a "less stealthy" mode in order to improve a node's chances of catching a control.
For each 1% of infected systems that attach with a successful domain hit, the botmaster will have a net of 150,000 zombies to give up their secrets and do his bidding. Remember that he can continue to sow his infectious apps and reap his harvest of bots for the rest of forever while his owned bots do his work. If the rest of his network is as bulletproof as his infection apps, he's not going to be caught and this is going to be a bad one. The worst case would be if the app started to look at DSNs. What grouped databases might your clients have access to? Would there be SSNs in there? Maybe credit applications? You wouldn't have transaction processing on this consumer grade crap, would you?
I have to admit that I was at first dismissive of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". It turns out that Eric S. Raymond deserves some credit for capturing a primitive truth and crystallizing it into an essay, even if the elements were common knowledge at the time. It turn out that this work defines the source of this problem and contains the cure.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
posting anonymous because I know the windows users will mod me down, but as an uninvolved bystander (I wont name my platform but I no longer touch windows) I find the whole thing incredibly amusing. can you imagine if a particular model of a particular car manufactures electronics system could be compromised by filling up at a particular fuel station; possibly turning the cars into moving timebombs on a certain date. do you think we'd all be sitting around wondering what is going to happen on that day? no fucking way, that model car would be recalled as a danger to public safety. but because its windows and everyone is too scared to cut the fucking cord we end up in this situation where we know terrible shit is going to happen april 1st and nobody is doing anything about it at all.
I know my network will be running smoothly on april 1st; I hope my ISP can say the same. I really hope everyone infected with conficker gets their hdd zeroed. these days it seems like things have to get so far beyond bad before people get motivated to change their bad habits it's just not funny... even as someone who's not directly affected by the stupidity.
i've been thinking that linux needs a 3'd user level, say a 'personal user' to go along with super user and just plain old user. similar to needing a password to get super user privileges one would need to enter a password to gain access to sensitive files, maybe have it be optional whether read access is allowed without the password or not. something like this would make it harder for malicious individuals to compromise sensitive information from anyone. really, for a home user, compromising the system isn't a big deal, it's the information you've got in /~ that's important.
My favorite is how it's an "unknown error".
Bullshit! There's no such thing as a fucking unknown error. If it's unknown then how do you know there's an error? Tell me THAT!
Of course this could all get changed or enhanced with an update that could occur on April 1st.
Now, what I want to point out with this comment is that you can end up with a complete infected LAN by only having overlooked or spared out just one system that remained unpatched and here is why:
If you happen to end up with an infection of a system and you log in as domain admin to it the virus has got everything it needs to spread to every system, particularly to the central file server. And if you do not happen to run an AV client for real-time monitoring there or if an updated version is not detected by the systems AV client signatures, you can get infected pretty badly.
When Conficker has domain admin privileges, it creates scheduled processes to execute a copy of itself on remote systems. In order to prevent this, you can either disable the scheduling process or you can write-protect the Root folder on your central file server.
So you might want to CYA and make sure that:
Ok... so here's what I don't get:
Security experts are well aware of this botnet client and are keeping a close eye on it. They've picked the client bot apart line by line. They know exactly how it is supposed to behave on the client side, but they of course don't have a clue about the server side. So why can't they hijack the hijacker?
For example, say this client bot is programmed to go to IP address on April 1st and DL some update. Ok..., block that IP address on the internet or trace the IP address back to the owners and stop it there. Those don't seem hard. (ok... and before someone calls me an idiot for saying "block the ip address on the internet", what i mean is that you can get the major service providers, certainly here in the US, and potentially abroad to "lose" anything sent to a specific address.)
Ok... so let's say that the client bot is programmed to go to IP address to and ping each one to ask for an appropriate update, verifying each update against a specific hash key. Ok... then grab IP address and put in something that DLs a file that neutralizes the bot. There can be no hash key that the researchers can't figure out because they can pick through the entire client bot's code bit by bit.
I'm clearly not getting something crucial here, but it just seems that in all the moaning about how bad this is that it wouldn't be that hard for someone person to write some kill code for it as long as enough time and effort had already gone into understanding the client side code.
Someone please help out a clueless non-security, non-software engineer understand why this is so hard.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!