Botnet Uses Default Passwords To Conduct "Internet Census 2012"

An anonymous reader writes "By using four different login combinations on the default Telnet port (root/root, admin/admin, root/[no password], and admin/[no password]), an anonymous researcher was able to log into (and upload a binary to) 'several hundred thousand unprotected devices' and run 'a super fast distributed port scanner' to scan the enitre IPv4 address space." From the report: "While playing around with the Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE) we discovered an amazing number of open embedded devices on the Internet. Many of them are based on Linux and allow login to standard BusyBox with empty or default credentials. We used these devices to build a distributed port scanner to scan all IPv4 addresses. These scans include service probes for the most common ports, ICMP ping, reverse DNS and SYN scans. We analyzed some of the data to get an estimation of the IP address usage. All data gathered during our research is released into the public domain for further study."

Comments

So this is what?

[Anonymous Coward]

267 months in federal prison?

Re:So this is what?

[Hatta]

The FBI only cares if you embarass a major campaign contributor. e.g. AT&T is the largest campaign contributor in the country, beating out even Goldman Sachs.

Re:So this is what?

[juancn]

He did 420000 intrusions, it's probably a lot more than that. In NY it would be up to 420000 years just for unauthorized computer use I believe.

Still, really cool hack (in the classic sense), it is conceptually similar to a Von Neumman probe.

Re:So this is what?

[moeinvt]

"The FBI only cares if you embarass a major campaign contributor..."

Unauthorized access to a government computer is a crime, even if you don't do any damage. The degree to which they will go after you and any resulting penalty will depend on whether or not the government likes you.

Re:So this is what?

[Spiridios]

"The FBI only cares if you embarass a major campaign contributor..."

Unauthorized access to a government computer is a crime, even if you don't do any damage. The degree to which they will go after you and any resulting penalty will depend on whether or not the government likes you.

J-walking is a crime. Just because it's illegal doesn't mean you will be prosecuted for it.

Ahahahaha (horrormirth)

[inode_buddha]

I don't know if it's hilarious or frightening that they did this with default words. I *do* wonder if they;re going to get into some trouble for doing this tho. You could make some serious money off a botnet like that.

I can see where this is going

[Daetrin]

Useful research into vulnerabilities, wasn't used for personal gain, was reported to educate others and so security lapses could be fixed.

They're so going to jail.

Re:I can see where this is going

[Anubis IV]

If you're an ethical researcher wanting to run a distributed scan of the 'net, the proper way to do it is to use something like PlanetLab, which has been designed for uses like that and is freely available for research use. It's what everyone else uses, and it works great. Either that, or go and use your grant money to provision yourself appropriately for a job like this, which is what we did when I was in grad school. Commandeering routers and other devices for personal use is inexcusable.

Honestly, my first thought was, "What research ethics committee gave him the go-ahead?" My guess: the researcher didn't ask, because none of them would ever let him do it. Besides consuming bandwidth for tens or hundreds of thousands of Internet users without their consent (some of whom were likely capped), he's also loaded code onto their machines: code which they have no guarantee will work as expected in all circumstances. In fact, for all they know, they may have bricked tens of thousands of devices without realizing they did so, then taken their lack of response later as a simple incompatibility with his code.

When I was in grad school, we were doing web crawler and search engine research that was considered to be a bit on the edge of what was permissible (and our work resulted in serious threats of lawsuits aimed at our university), but we would never consider doing something like what they did. No credible conference or journal would publish this sort of work either, which is as it should be. Researchers have a responsibility to act responsible, and this anonymous one didn't.

Also, you've said it was useful research, but it really wasn't. These vulnerabilities are widely documented, and those researchers were not only able to publish earlier, they were also able to do so without engaging in gross ethical violations.

Re:I can see where this is going

[Baloroth]

Useful research into vulnerabilities, wasn't used for personal gain, was reported to educate others and so security lapses could be fixed. They're so going to jail.

Of course. They used broke into others computers, uploaded and executed binary files on them, without their permission, for their own purposes. That is both illegal and unethical. They should be punished for that.

The reason why they did it is not terribly relevant (although it doesn't make it worse, since the end was not itself a crime). The ends do not justify the means. Breaking the door of a house down to tell the owners their door is easily broken down is still breaking and entering.

Re:I can see where this is going

[Anonymous Coward]

Beauty of the internet: you don't need the cooperation of a responsible conference or journal to get published.

Re:I can see where this is going

[mcgrew]

No, they left binaries on the devices and took data. That's more analogous to someone going into your unlocked house and trading your copy of LOTR with a candy bar wrapper left on the floor. Much more than simple trespass, it's trespassing, littering, vandalism, and theft.

Re:I can see where this is going

[ThatsNotPudding]

Honestly, my first thought was, "What research ethics committee gave him the go-ahead?"

The Google Street View ethics commitee?

Re:I can see where this is going

[fuzzywig]

They left the binaries in RAM, so just a reboot would remove them. They also left a text file with contact info and an explanation in, and they didn't take data from the affected systems, they used the systems to probe other IPs.

There's not really a physical analogy that fits here but the only damage they did to each individual device would be to slightly raise it's power consumption and bandwidth usage. Insignificant to any individual, although it might well have added up to quite a lot.

Re:I can see where this is going

[Flea of Pain]

Oh ya? My router drops ALL requests...

It may be time for a new router.

Re:I can see where this is going

[Lazere]

The internet's a bad neighborhood. If you're in a bad neighborhood and don't lock your doors, then you do deserve some of the blame. Yes, the people that actually did it are horrible and should never have done it, but you knew where you were, and you knew the potential consequences for leaving your door unlocked.

Re:"researcher"? Hardly.

[plover]

If an unnamed biologist did his research this way (constructed a virus that infects creatures around the world), he wouldn't be called an "anonymous researcher", he'd be called a "mad scientist".

And how do you know he didn't conduct these scans from his underground lair? For all we know, he may even own a Persian cat!

Re:correction

[ls671]

So he is the guy responsible for all these logs on my firewall. I am glad he is over with his research. Those nasty log lines and the alerts I get should now go away!

Mar 19 14:08:29 myhost sshd[15477]: Failed password for root from 58.247.50.59 port 33203 ssh2
Mar 19 14:08:26 myhost sshd[15475]: Failed password for root from 58.247.50.59 port 60725 ssh2
Mar 19 14:08:24 myhost sshd[15473]: Failed password for root from 58.247.50.59 port 59984 ssh2
Mar 19 14:08:22 myhost sshd[15471]: Failed password for root from 58.247.50.59 port 59254 ssh2
Mar 19 14:08:19 myhost sshd[15469]: Failed password for root from 58.247.50.59 port 58527 ssh2
Mar 19 14:08:17 myhost sshd[15465]: Failed password for root from 58.247.50.59 port 57790 ssh2
Mar 19 14:08:16 myhost sshd[15463]: Failed password for root from 58.247.50.59 port 57082 ssh2
Mar 19 14:08:13 myhost sshd[15461]: Failed password for root from 58.247.50.59 port 56363 ssh2
Mar 19 14:08:11 myhost sshd[15459]: Failed password for root from 58.247.50.59 port 55647 ssh2
Mar 19 14:08:09 myhost sshd[15457]: Failed password for root from 58.247.50.59 port 54922 ssh2
Mar 19 14:08:06 myhost sshd[15455]: Failed password for root from 58.247.50.59 port 54195 ssh2
Mar 19 14:08:04 myhost sshd[15453]: Failed password for root from 58.247.50.59 port 53487 ssh2
Mar 19 14:08:01 myhost sshd[15449]: Failed password for root from 58.247.50.59 port 52734 ssh2
Mar 19 14:07:59 myhost sshd[15447]: Failed password for root from 58.247.50.59 port 52018 ssh2
Mar 19 14:07:57 myhost sshd[15445]: Failed password for root from 58.247.50.59 port 49218 ssh2
Mar 19 14:08:38 myhost kernel: CONNECT LIMIT: IN=eth2 OUT= MAC=00:0a:cd:1c:43:7d:00:26:cb:70:f0:4f:08:00 SRC=58.247.50.59 DST=X.X.X.X LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=46 ID=12700 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=33971 DPT=22 WINDOW=14600 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0
Mar 19 14:08:32 myhost kernel: CONNECT LIMIT: IN=eth2 OUT= MAC=00:0a:cd:1c:43:7d:00:26:cb:70:f0:4f:08:00 SRC=58.247.50.59 DST=X.X.X.X LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=46 ID=12699 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=33971 DPT=22 WINDOW=14600 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0
Mar 19 14:08:29 myhost kernel: CONNECT LIMIT: IN=eth2 OUT= MAC=00:0a:cd:1c:43:7d:00:26:cb:70:f0:4f:08:00 SRC=58.247.50.59 DST=X.X.X.X LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=46 ID=12698 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=33971 DPT=22 WINDOW=14600 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0

Re:Door

[NeutronCowboy]

Man, some people are a paranoid bunch. If someone leaves a flyer on my door that says "You had 2 open windows and one unlocked door", and a similar flyer is on everyone's door, I'll actually thank the good Samaritan. If I see someone looking at doors and windows, taking notes, then putting a flyer on my door, I'll ask him what he's doing, why, and find out what he's actually up to. If he's friendly and forthcoming, I'll thank him and send him on his way. If he's belligerent, then maybe I'll start to consider self-defense.

But to shoot someone just because they are walking around the neighborhood, surveying every house? Yeah, the US doesn't have a gun problem. We have a response problem.

As a tax payer, don't waste my money

[Anonymous Coward]

If no actual harm was done then chasing after the researchers for prosecution is a waste of public money in my opinion, speaking as a tax payer.

And I mean actual harm, not the made-up harm of "unlawful use of computer equipment" or similar ones which are just infringements in principle, without actual harm done.

There are so many really bad guys out there to chase that this researcher should be way down on the priority list for enforcement, or using a bit of commonsense, not on it at all. And if he is identified then all he really deserves is a rap across the knuckles just for being unethical.

Re:As a tax payer, don't waste my money

[RandomFactor]

If s/he was truly careful enough that no systems showed issues and noone noticed, it is entirely possible law enforcement won't pay much attention (no complaints, bigger fish). Just needs to be careful not to fall into their laps.

Still, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the security research community doesn't take at least a passing look at things to see if they can track back to the author.

This is all very bad

[houghi]

Postings all go about how this is illegal and not about the technical situation.

It is sad times when people are more worried about the legal thread and ruining their lives and not about the technical implications.

How many people do not dare to bring solutions because they might be punished?

Re:enitre

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but what about the all the people who actually *chose* those passwords?

Guy deserves any jail time he gets

[byeley]

While I personally support this kind of research,

The author is presumably an academic or industry professional (based on the formatting). As such, he knew what he was doing was illegal and had a significantly detrimental effect on low-resource systems. Furthermore, he can't blame a conviction on over-zealous prosecution or recent anti-hacker sentiment because he's obviously emulating Robert Morris (who received three years jail time for the Morris worm - convicted in 1990).

I also question how useful his scientific contribution is. While arguably more complete than other sources of data, there are a multitude of other projects offering data of similar(if not better) accuracy.

Which is why

[Overzeetop]

Which is why I always use admin/root for username and password on my systems. You'd think these people would learn not to be so careless. :-)

Re:correction

[butalearner]

Why no fail2ban or DenyHosts? I suppose my sshd doesn't allow root login so stuff like that showing up on my logs is not a big concern anyway.

Expand this into survey research

[coldsalmon]

Have a team go door-to-door during working hours, when most people are not home. If they find an empty house with an unlocked door, go inside and use the phone to call a bunch of people and conduct your research. As long as you publish the addresses of all of the houses for academic purposes, nobody should mind.

Re:After a reboot ...original state

[malakai]

They didn't force the reboot. So they don't need to calculate for lost uptime.
But they do concede what bandwidth they used and processing time. You could argue they used extra energy, CPU load, and bandwidth, and that equates to money.

What they really got 'lucky' on, is that they didn't code in a fatal flaw and accidentally create something that had a race condition that resulted in distributed DOS to every IP on the network. We've seen things come close to that in the past with worms. I put quotes around lucky, because I think these guys did their homework, and specifically validated their experiment in a limited environment before releasing it.

That said, your test environment is rarely a perfect simulacrum for the real world.

It's a very scary grey hat project. I thought this finding was interesting though:

So, how big is the Internet?
That depends on how you count. 420 Million pingable IPs + 36 Million more that had one or more ports open, making 450 Million that were definitely in use and reachable from the rest of the Internet. 141 Million IPs were firewalled, so they could count as "in use". Together this would be 591 Million used IPs. 729 Million more IPs just had reverse DNS records. If you added those, it would make for a total of 1.3 Billion used IP addresses. The other 2.3 Billion addresses showed no sign of usage.

Based in their rather thorough analysis, only about half the IPV4 address space is being actively used.

I kind of feel this is a little akin to working with scientific research that comes from morally grey or even black experiments...

Another thing to consider about this, is based on the platform they built, they could go for the Black Knight approach, and rescue all the flawed devices without their consent. You could easily see taking this project and saying "How do we patch the devices in a way that causes the least amount of harm, and adds the most amount of security".....

Inoculation can kill though...

Fine line... very fine line. End of the day, these guys hacked and compromised systems with their own binaries, and then used them to compromise other devices. They'd go to jail if they were discovered. Simple truth.

Why are there no counter attacks?

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

I mean it should be possible to create a system that emulates an "open" server, but when a hacker opens up a connection and tries to upload or download data, then fire off a counter measure that will cripple the hacker's system?

I mean after 30+ years of connected networks there is no such thing as an offensive strike in cyber terrorism?

I can't believe that hackers are that smart as to outwit servers attempting to back-deploy payloads onto their systems, or even could block a counter attack. I mean with the mentioned botnet hack, it would seem pretty easy that if it "broke" into an unprotected server that server could send back a crippling packet or something. The botnet is running a service that scans and returns data so the violated server should be able to exploit that and dump terabytes of garbage data back to cripple the botnet. A Denial of Hack.

Actually if I was an active hacker I would rather enjoy luring other hackers to my "unprotected" servers only to f**k with them and mess up their systems.

Re:Why are there no counter attacks?

[Stuarticus]

I have a program that will do all this and make the hackers computer explode, email me $500 to buy it.

Re:Why are there no counter attacks?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I mean after 30+ years of connected networks there is no such thing as an offensive strike in cyber terrorism?

Because it is a terrible, terrible idea. If automated counter-attacks were to become the norm, then all it would take to start a "war" between two groups is for someone to compromise just one system at the first group and set it to attacking the second group. Think mutual assured destruction except Anonymous has their finger on the button and it's labeled "lulz."

Re:Why are there no counter attacks?

[bbartlog]

I think the technical difficulties are greater than you are making them out to be. You're talking about trying to automatically pwn some unknown box that just contacted yours. Unless the hacker is really stupid, he's not going to have the kinds of open ports, services, and other associated vulnerabilities that many internet machines would have. The utmost you could plausibly do is DDoS the attacker, if you happen to have your own botnet handy. Furthermore, the odds that the attacker is using some third party's platform as a launch pad is probably pretty high. If you did manage to trample all over such a device, they'd just chuckle and use some other zombie under their control.

Re:Why are there no counter attacks?

[Cassini2]

This used to be done, back in the early dails of email and usenet. If someone was sending spam, someone else would send their server 10,000 email messages and knock if off line.

It doesn't really work anymore:
a) Users are dumb - they don't even know their account/computer has been compromised, and might not care even if it has.
b) One mail server serves millions of users. That means millions of people pay the price for the actions of one bozo.
c) Revenge mails look like spam. It gets the sender blacklisted.

Re:"researcher"? Hardly.

[tqk]

If an unnamed biologist did his research this way (constructed a virus that infects creatures around the world) ...

What "infection" did this researcher transmit to his "victims"? Isn't this more like someone offering free susceptability tests? They're on the net, meaning they're open to the offer. The net's always a potentially dangerous place if you're connected to it. Researcher tests to see if they're in any way vulnerable. Shazam, they are. Where's the story?

Re:Door

[berashith]

They did slightly more than look to see what was open. This is more like, "you had 2 open windows and one unlocked door, so I left some yogurt in your fridge and took pictures of your wife while she was sleeping. I will be posting the pictures to the world as proof, you are welcome for the yogurt. Enjoy!"

Re:correction

[Lumpy]

After 1 attempt for ROOT I blackhole the ip address for 90 days Nobody should ever try to log in as root, so any login attempt should black hole that IP forever. 3 minutes of script writing is all it takes to do that.

Re:Door

[malakai]

This wasn't a simple port scan. I RTFA, so let me help you out.

He ( there is no They or We, read the end of the article ) compromised devices and uploaded his own code. He was 'nice' about it, in the sense he set the priority to 'NICE' and he put in some watchdogs and throttled bandwidth usage. He then used those compromised devices to further utilize other devices to do even more work ( like using your Router HTTP interface to execute Traceroute on his behalf, possibly inside your network ).

For the vast majority of the IP's he just NMAP/ICMP sure, that's nothing these days. For the half a million devices he turned into his own bot net.... that's illegal.

Also, he then released all the data. You could say that's good, or you can say that as a script kiddie, all I have to do is d/l that torrent to get a list IP's that run a version/flavor that I have a 0day on. No more need to scan the net myself.

This is going to accelerate bot net growth. That may be good, maybe we'll finally figure out some way to detach/block IP's that fail to patch.

Re:"researcher"? Hardly.

[malakai]

He uploaded a binary to 'insecure' devices, to run his code and build his own 'ethical' botnet.

This isn't just checking ports and default logins and reporting back.

Re:Door

[NeutronCowboy]

Except he did not activate any webcams or gathered any data beyond what ports were available and whether he was able to install his rootkit. Why didn't you extend the analogy even further to raping my daughters and defecating in my bed? I mean, why not go all out in the attempt to generate an emotional response to a completely unrelated problem? Does your post also mean that you would shoot the writer of this study, if you found out who he was?

And I feel again confirmed that the US doesn't have a gun problem, but a response problem: you conflate one thing with something vastly different, then determine response based on the emotional reaction you have to the vastly different thing.

Re:Door

[NeutronCowboy]

The end-result was a list of ports that I may have open on my router/computers. Yes, the process used was illegal. Big fucking deal, so are a lot of things that are ok among civilized people. See for example betting on sports. But there was zero impact while his scan was on-going, and there was zero footprint left behind.

As for your comment that know a script kiddie has a list of unsecured IPs: that's my problem if my IP is on that list. He did a trivial scan, and if I take my security seriously, I should not be on there. If anything, it should be a test whether I can even talk about security in my own house, and I should be thankful for it.

Was it all clear, and would I have liked to get a heads-up? Sure. But if he did find my network, it's an incentive for me take a closer look at security. Not to shoot the guy.

Re:Door

[mark-t]

Ostriches do not stick their heads in sand or ever try to simply ignore danger.

Ostriches are not cowardly, they will definitely put up a fight when they believe they have a good chance of winning. If you have ever seen an ostrich close up, you probably realize that they are big-ass birds that could easily wipe the floor with a good percentage of other creatures in the animal kingdom. If they encounter a situation that they cannot mitigate, however, then they will run away... being exceptionally good at it (they are the fastest running creature on two legs).

If, and only if, they have nowhere to run to, and they cannot mitigate the danger themselves, then they will lie very still, presumably in the hope that they will be ignored. They do not pretend that the danger is not there, however... and will generally resort to fleeing at the first opportunity. Their practice of lying still is where the myth that they stick their head in the sand comes from, and it's ironic that what is actually a very atypical behavior for that type of bird ever got to be somehow associated as something that they generally practice.

Where is the manufacturer's responsibility?

[sl4shd0rk]

I see a lot of people complaining about the actions of the researcher, but what about the actions of the manufacturer? If Medeco made a lock that had the equivalent of "admin/admin telnet" on it, they'd be strung up. I'm not saying the researcher is not responsible for his actions, however putting all the blame on him isn't reasonable either.

Re:correction

[Lost Race]

99.9% of the time those are (1) someone goofing around, not a real threat, or (2) drive-by from a botnet, never going to hit from that address again. So you're adding complexity and extra points of potential failure to your router with no real benefit.

Obviously I pulled that "99.9%" figure out of my ass, but seriously, whom do you think you're protecting yourself from with this script?

Re:correction

[michelcolman]

Lots of people use dynamic IP addresses. The address you are blocking now, may well belong to a perfectly innocent user tomorrow. You're blocking the wrong people.

Re:BitTorrent

[viperidaenz]

No one is refusing to prosecute illegal activity on peer to peer networks. There is a 3 strikes law in my country with the specific purpose of doing exactly this.

What is wrong is making the mechanism illegal because it can be used for illegal purposes. It's like banning teaspoons and lighters because people use them to take drugs.

Should it be illegal to buy steak knives, because people use them to commit murder?

Re:correction

[viperidaenz]

Just take a root login attempt from slashdots hosts. Then we won't have to hear from him for 90 days.

Re:BitTorrent

[Stalks]

Bittorrent is an easily replaceable protocol. Going after it isn't going to stop any piracy. Its like outlawing a model of car because they're being used to traffic drugs.

Bittorrent is just a vehicle, of which there are 100's of different types to choose from that will replace it.

Re:After a reboot ...original state

[melikamp]

It's a very scary grey hat project.

This is a black hat project because computers and resources were used without owners' knowledge or consent. They said they reverted them to the pre-hack state, but they can't even begin to justify this claim, since they have not a slightest idea about the respective OS configurations. The motive had a selfish component: fame. I would call it a grey-hat hack if it provided significant benefit to people whose computers got hacked, but this is not the case here.

Fantastic project

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of the most amazing things I've read on slashdot - a very interesting dataset gathered in a just as interesting way, with fascinating results, all fully documented and released to the public domain. The nay-sayers who can't see past the legality issue to the technical achievement and gold-mine of a dataset below, should hand in their geek-card on they way out. This is news for nerds, not news for lawyers.