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Rootkit May Be Behind Windows Blue Screen
L3sPau1 writes "A rootkit infection may be the cause of a Windows Blue Screen of Death issue experienced by Windows XP users who applied the latest round of Microsoft patches. It appears that the affected Windows PCs had the rootkit infection prior to deploying the Microsoft patches. Researcher Patrick W. Barnes, investigating the issue, has isolated the infection to the Windows atapi.sys file, a driver used by Windows to connect hard drives and other components. Barnes identified the infection as the Tdss-rootkit, which surfaced last November and has been spreading quickly, creating zombie machines for botnet activity."
That's one way of forcing users to take care of an infection.
If a system has been rooted, nothing short of booting to another OS from a known clean media, mounting the disk read only, and scanning, is guaranteed to detect a root kit.
That'd make updates a real pain in the arse to install...
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I've performed a forensic analysis on numerous Windows machines and have discovered rootkits that have lived on machines undetected for up to two years even though they were up to date on patches and AntiVirus defs. In fact one of the rootkits was unknown until I discovered it and sent a copy to threatexpert and virustotal.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Microsoft Update KB977165 triggering widespread BSOD One of Microsoft's "Patch Tuesday" security fixes is triggering a widespread "Blue Screen of Death" problem. The cause is not the update itself, but an existing infection. So far, reports suggest that this problem affects Windows XP and Windows Vista. Once the update is applied and the system rebooted, Windows will bluescreen at boot. When booted to Safe Mode, the system will freeze. Removing the update from the Windows Recovery Console or using live media will get the system booting again, at least until the update is reapplied. I have found that the root cause is an infection of %System32\drivers\atapi.sys, and that replacing this file with a clean version will get the system booting normally. This is not the first time that an infection hitting atapi.sys has caused updates to trigger bluescreens. If you are running Windows and have not yet applied this update, make sure you scan your computer thoroughly for infections before applying this update. If you are experiencing this problem, get your computer to a professional that can replace the infected atapi.sys and clean any other malware from your computer. References: http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=8209 http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vistawu/thread/73cea559-ebbd-4274-96bc-e292b69f2fd1 Detailed Repair Instructions Using the Windows XP Recovery Console 1. Boot from your Windows installation CD Insert your Windows installation CD and boot your computer. If your computer is not set to boot from CD first, you may need to reconfigure your BIOS or press a boot menu key (often F12, F8 or Esc). If you are unsure of how to do this, consult your favorite geek. As soon as the boot starts, you should see a message like "Press any key to boot from CD..." - press a key. 2. Start the Recovery Console After the CD loads (it may take a minute), you will be presented with a few choices. One of these options is to start a recovery by pressing "R". Press "R" to launch the Recovery Console. * You may be asked to choose a Windows installation. If so, choose the damaged installation (probably "1). * You may be prompted for the Administrator password. If you do not have one, press "Enter". 3. Identify your CD drive letter You should now be at the command prompt. Enter the following command: map Look for the drive letter for your CD drive. It may look something like this: D: \Device\CdRom0 In this case, your CD drive is "D:". 4. Replace ATAPI.SYS Enter the following, replacing "D:" with your CD drive: cd system32\drivers ren atapi.sys atapi.old expand D:\i386\atapi.sy_ You should see the message "1 file(s) expanded." - this indicates you have succeeded. 5. Reboot and scan for malware Reboot your computer. With a little luck, your computer will now boot normally. Because this problem is caused by malware, you should immediately scan your computer with up-to-date antivirus software. Tags: Malware, Security, Windows This entry was posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2010 at 17:22 and is filed under Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is facing a great battle." - Philo of Alexandria -
After all, there's no way that their malware tool could have spotted it, or the update could have checksummed the files before patching them.
Well, actually no. Most rootkits either modify the permissions or patch critical system files that cannot be easily replaced, as this one does. It's designed to be stealthy -- so if you scan it, it will return a byte-for-byte copy of the original, which is kept elsewhere, while the operating system loads the infected one at boot.
Saying Microsoft is responsible for ensuring compatability with 3rd party software is ludicrious. This is like potholes -- while the government has a responsibility to patch the roads up so they remain drivable, cars are nonetheless designed with shocks and drivers are expected to watch for road hazards and avoid them as much as possible as well. It is a joint responsibility. Microsoft is not the sole responsible party here: The user shares the responsibility of ensuring the system has not been compromised.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Isn't one of the things a rootkit does is attempt to prevent detection?
How do you know that they don't try and match checksums, only the rootkit was returning the "correct" data in order to hide its presence? I mean, it is in the system file that handles reading data from hard drives, which sounds like the perfect place to put in code designed to stealth out the rootkit.
Not that I can get to the article ("Error establishing a database connection"), so I have no idea if that's the case, but it seems quite possible to me that if it's a rootkit, it's actively hiding from detection, which would seem to let Microsoft off the hook. Except for however the rootkit infected the machine in the first place.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
And some other salient responses:
Michael Bristow says:
2010-02-12 at 11:48
I had a machine come across my bench with this issue, first thing Wednesday morning. One of the first things I tried was running SFC form an ERD boot disk. it replaced several files including atapi.sys, but was still would not boot. only way to get the PC back up and running was to remove the patch.
Multiple scans, with no infection detected, and I tried re-installing the patch, only to get right back to Blue Screens.
In short, there is obviously more going on than just a problem with infected atapi.sys files.
Jim Blizzard says:
2010-02-12 at 12:00
Very nice work Patrick,
We have seen this occur on a few machines at the FAA so I wrote a vbscript to loop through an .xls of machines and record the MD5 Checksum. Thought it may come in handy for yourself and some of your readers..
http://home.comcast.net/~jblizz/Atapi_MD5_Checker.zip
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is facing a great battle." - Philo of Alexandria -
Next time you might consider doing some backwards compatibility testing with popular rootkits, yes? Just a free tip Microsoft!
"Yes, our security update crashed your computer. We hope you enjoyed our anti-rootkit feature."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I've seen this Tdss-rootkit on many machines. Usually it infects a disk driver like atapi.sys or iastor.sys. Typically an infected machine will boot in normal mode, but NOT in safe mode (blue screens). If Windows will boot, running ComboFix has removed the rootkit for me every time. The author of ComboFix is a genius.
That is BS and you know it.
The user installed the virus into their system by doing something stupid.
Its like blaming the US Government for letting businesses go over sea when you still shop at Walmart.
Your response is a cop out.
Your response is what is commonly known as 'blaming the victim.' Seriously, you can't imagine any other way for malware to get onto a system except user stupidity? I'd call that a failure on your part. You know, Windows fanbois remind me of battered women, explaining to others how they walked into a door or fell down some stairs. No you didn't, you let somebody beat the shit out of you and then covered it up.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
After all, there's no way that their malware tool could have spotted it, or the update could have checksummed the files before patching them.
If they put half as much effort into their anti-malware activities as they do into their DRM regime, the world would be a better place. We'd all have unicorns, and a pot of gold.
Microsoft does detect it - and has since last October.
File atapi.sys received on 2010.02.11 21:58:49 (UTC)
Virus:Win32/Alureon.A
Updated: Dec 07, 2009
Aliases:
Win32/Olmarik!generic (CA) Rootkit.Win32.TDSS.u (Kaspersky)
W32/TDSS.drv.gen4.A (Norman)
Mal/TDSSPack-V (Sophos)
Encyclopedia entry
Updated: Dec 07, 2009 | Published: Dec 02, 2009
Aliases
Win32/Olmarik!generic (CA) Rootkit.Win32.TDSS.u (Kaspersky)
W32/TDSS.drv.gen4.A (Norman)
Mal/TDSSPack-V (Sophos)
Alert Level
Severe
Detection initially created:
Definition: 1.69.77.0
Released: Oct 23, 2009
There are no common symptoms associated with this threat. Alert notifications from installed antivirus software may be the only symptom(s). When the infecting trojan is run, it infects a system driver, usually 'atapi.sys'. It has also been observed to infect 'iastor.sys' but other system drivers may also be targeted. The system driver detected as Virus:Win32/Alureon.A is infected by the addition of code, whose function is to load a part of the Alureon rootkit. The Alureon rootkit is a component that gives Alureon the ability to avoid detection; it is created by the same Alureon trojan that infects the system driver. The rootkit loaded by Virus:Win32/Alureon.A has the ability to avoid behavior blockers, which allows it to perform its malicious routines uninterrupted. It can also hide files and disk sectors.
Manual removal is not recommended for this threat. To detect and remove this threat and other malicious software that may have been installed, run a full-system scan with an up-to-date antivirus product such as Microsoft Security Essentials... . Win32/Alureon may modify DNS settings on the host computer, thus the following steps may be required after the Win32/Alureon removal is complete:
If the computer has a network interface that does not receive a configuration using DHCP, reset the DNS configuration if necessary
> Saying Microsoft is responsible for ensuring compatability with 3rd party software is ludicrious.
And saying Microsoft is responsible for ensuring compatibility with _malicious_ 3rd party software is even sillier.
If your system is screwed up by a rootkit, there is no way to 100% predict what could happen if you try to continue using it (including trying to install patches).
If the BSODs are only happening to rootkitted XP boxes then it's clearly not Microsoft's fault.
You know, it is far from easy to implement a "secondary, encrypted, trusted "update partition" that only the Windows root can edit, and only during shutdown" on a PC that has been rooted, unless you support this in hardware. And I can already hear the screaming and gnashing of teeth if some people, present company very much included, learned that PCs come with something like that.
I would certainly not be happy running hardware that I knew had something that I and no one I know could get into. And I can get into it, it's not that "trusted", is it?
No good deed goes unpunished...
I run a small computer repair shop, and we first started seeing this ATAPI.SYS virus a few weeks ago. When I would submit it to VirusTotal, it would always come back as clean on every single virus scanning engine - but I could tell it was infected. I even had a computer in here just yesterday which had the infected ATAPI.SYS file, yet it was not detected as such - even when the hard drive was mounted as a secondary drive in another system and scanned with several up-to-date antivirus programs.
The virus itself is actually quite a clever little beast. After infecting the file, it sets the file modification time back to the original date & time, which makes it hard to tell that it's been modified. Also, I've noticed that the byte counts between infected and non-infected versions of the file are almost always identical. But to do that, it appears to be injecting its code into the area normally used to store the file version information. The upshot is, if you check the file properties and there's no file version information (the Version tab under XP or the Details tab under Vista/Win7), there's a good chance the file is infected.
I have not had any computers come in to the shop with the BSOD mentioned in the articles yet, but I'm expecting them at any time...
Rootkit? I don't see it. Maybe it's because this damn blue screen is blocking my view.
The game.
Or you don't pay for the OS, and you don't have to pay for antivirus.
Isn't free software great?
Yes, this was from a virus/trojan/worm/whatever. Who cares? It could just as easily have been a custom file for custom hardware.
You don't know how rootkits work, do you?
It may not be possible to detect differences in a compromised file on a rooted system, because the rootkit will respond to requests with the original file's information.
So, for all we know, Microsoft did check the file before replacing it, but the rootkit told the OS it was unmodified.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
As much as I hate defending MS, I can't help but doing it here.
A rootkit (and that is one) in a system means that you, being software running on that system, have no chance of detecting it, at least if it has done its homework. For the patcher, those checksums might even have been correct.
It also needn't be manipulated files. Windows, as any OS that has to allow low level drivers, allows you to load non-MS ring0 drivers. Like, say, Linux. It's either that or writing a device driver for every single pesky little controller out there. Do you think MS would do that? Or even do it well?
Now, you don't need drivers for hard drives themselves, but for their controllers. And spyware is quite keen on snuggling up to those controller and "filtering" the calls between them and the OS. Now, those spyware drivers are deemed part of the I/O system (for obvious reasons, they are part of the HD controller drivers as far the OS is concerned). If that driver cannot be loaded because that patch fixes a loophole the spyware used, the OS identifies that as a critical error in the HD controller driver and cannot access the hard drive anymore. BSOD.
The very same would probably happen in Linux, in BSD, in ... whatever Apple's OS is called, I forgot. You have a driver that is deemed critical by the system that fails to load.
If you want to blame anything on MS here, it's probably that this rootkit drivers could be installed in the first place. And I honestly don't know if it's MS to blame or the user. What should MS do if the user clicks "allow" on anything he gets asked? Take away control from the user? I doubt you'd like that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You can do it, but it's basically worthless if your system has been infected with a rootkit. The rootkit can (and usually does) show you a perfectly healthy system instead of the reality on the drive. As has been said before, the rootkit probably keeps a copy of the original file somewhere and only "shows" it to you in its original place (where now that rootkit file is located). It doesn't usually affect its operation, since it has already been loaded and unless it needs more data from its file (unlikely), nothing bad happens from the fact that the file that is loaded differs from the file that is shown on the disc.
If you now try to calculate a MD5 from the file on the disc, you will be supplied the original copy (that was replaced by the rootkit) and calculate your MD5 from the healthy file, making it appear a_ok and fine.
Once a system has been rooted you have lost. I hate to use the same words I always get to hear from consultants, but here they fit: You cannot identify some problems from within the system.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Over 90% of current infections are due to social engineering (aka "user stupidity"). The rest is usually due to certain third party software from a company with a big A, usually a certain reader for a Pretty Dumb Format or a tool to make webpages flashy.
If it's blaming the victim to say that it's effing stupid to open attachments that are sent by "Lawyer" and titled "last reminder" or run "security patches" their bank sends them because else their account is closed immediately, then yes, I blame the victim. Stupidity is no excuse. And this behaviour is, bluntly, EFFING stupid!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Checksums, 'nuff said...
Apps: Calc this for me...
rootkit: errrrrr.... ?
Apps: Busted, fscker! *and warns user*.
Here be signatures
Won't work. To take your analogy a bit farther...
The thief is the rootkit, you're the kernel, and the patch is the police.
The thief is already in, hiding behind the sofa with a gun pointed at your head. The officer knocks on your door and asks if you're being robbed. The answer is 'no'.
A rootkit can invade the lowest-level of the Virtual File System, so when a patcher running in user space asks for the checksum of the file it's about to patch, it gets a 'clean' result, even if the -real- file on the disk is something entirely different.
There are a lot of misconceptions about what rootkits really are. I encourage anyone to take a few hits of LSD and explain physics to me, or perform surgery on themselves while under the influence, that's about the closest thing I can compare to patching or rootkit detection on a system that's already compromised.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails