Code Red Back For More

Brian Stretch writes: "The Code Red II worm was unleashed early this morning and appears to be very different than the original and far more dangerous. CR2 infected servers only attack servers within their Class A address block and their Class B address block in particular: since 9:11am EST I've logged 148 CR2 attack attempts, 89 of which are from within my Class B subnet, suggesting that only servers within Class A networks that were deliberately seeded are being attacked. The 24.x.x.x range is one of the hardest hit, and as before, it's folks with cable modems and DSL connections that are providing the most victims." Several @home customers have written about slowed service today, but they're definitely not alone.

In my honor too ...

Errrr.... More things named in my honor... This can't be good!

If worms start popping up with Linux4Green (my ICQ nick) then I know I'm bad luck. :-P

A few more details

It doesn't affect its own netspace exclusively. Initial analysis indicates that it will do so 6 out of 7 times. The 1 out of 7 will go outside its network range.

We'll have full details posted to the Incidents [securityfocus.com] list shortly.

Re:A few more details

Apparently the New worm doesn't really kill off the new worm. I was trying the telnet port 80 thing on a machine that was infected with V2.0, which address was in my logs.

When I went to telnet, the backdoor didn't work and I got the "Hacked by chinese" message.

Either the worms over write each other, or a machine can be infected by BOTH worms.

Re:A few more details

I haven't done any analysis of the worm myself, but has anyone questioned the possibility that this new version is phase two of the original worm? Not the same code per say, but perhaps the old code red does something to tell the new code red to "come here" or something?

The fact the old code red is turned off tells me that they might be linked to the same person/organization or something.. if I were some independant cracker I wouldn't bother getting rid of the old one since that's another thing which might break when I launch the new worm.

Re:A few more details:It's a root trojan

From this thread [infopop.net] on Ars Technica [arstechnica.com]:

Just discovered something interesting...

telnet 80

type GET /scripts/root.exe HTTP/1.0

and you have a command prompt..

Like this:
[root@server httpd]# telnet 24.xxx.xxx.xxx 80
Trying 24.xxx.xxx.xxx...
Connected to 24.xxx.xxx.xxx.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET /scripts/root.exe HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Sun, 05 Aug 2001 07:45:08 GMT
Content-Type: application/octet-stream
Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2195]
(C) Copyright 1985-1999 Microsoft Corp.

c:\inetpub\scripts>

[This message was edited by The_Hitman on August 05, 2001 at 03:56.]

Microsoft or security...

...Pick any one.

CodeRedNeck

Check out this heise.de article [heise.de] (in German, sorry)!!! Somebody apparently programmed a little Linux tool that may be able to slow the spread of the worm down a little. The idea was first introduced in the incidents.org forum [incidents.org]. May be worth a look.

Of course...

If you get tired of seeing the requests, you could always shut the server down [securityfocus.com] (the requesting server of course, not yours :).

Might not remove the worm, but at least gets the "admin" (ha) to pay some attention. Maybe make a request for YOU_HAVE_THE_CODE_RED_WORM_YOU_MORON.HTML right before you do it in case they check the logs :)

I made a rookie mistake in my story submission

It just occurred to me to look up the definition [wrq.com] of Class A/B/C addresses, and yup, I used the terms wrong in my story submission (argh!). What I meant to say was that when the worm generates addresses to scan, it appeared to always keep the first octet and a little over half the time (137 of 224 scans in my case) it keeps the second octet as well. That's no longer precisely true: I've since logged one scan from 152.72.x.x (grep XXXX access_log | grep -v 24.). And the high number of scans from within the first two octets may have more to do with that being a block of cable modem addresses rich in vulnerable IIS machines than anything else.

And now we know these poor bastards have been rootkitted. There has to be a way to use this to warn them?

Code Red - the soda pop - sales take off!

Taken from http://www.securitynewsportal.com/article.php?sid= 1354&mode=thread&order=0 [securitynewsportal.com]

Code Red--the soda--has been spreading almost as fast as its namesake computer worm, which has infected hundreds of thousands of computers to date. The caffeine-laden, cherry-flavored version of its pale-yellow cousin, Mountain Dew, was released in May, months before the Code Red worm threatened to clog Internet traffic. And as computer security experts work to contain the damage from the Code Red worm, the soda's maker, Pepsi, is coincidentally featuring a "Crack the Code" contest on the Mountain Dew Web site.

Code Red has been an especially big hit with computer programmers, who often guzzle the high-octane drink to fuel late-night code-writing sessions. Among the drink's fans were the staff of eEye Digital Security, who say they identified the Code Red worm and named it after their favorite soda..

The rest of the story can be found on http://www.securitynewsportal.com/article.php?sid= 1354&mode=thread&order=0 [securitynewsportal.com] .

Its funny. Laugh. Please?

Re:what is code red. .

Someone should copyright the "code red algorithm".

Or maybe patent it. Also how about sending the BSA after anyone running it without a licence.

What are you talking about?

"Code red algorithm"??? It's called a random ip scan. In this variation, it's called a scan of the local subnet with a random ip thrown in every now and then. There's nothing special about it.

It's fast because that's how exponential growth works.

Re:What are you talking about?

Steve Friedl believes he has figured out the bizarre scanning of the new strain. From DSLReports forums:

OK, I know how the scanning works now. The worm starts with the user's IP address, and then changes adds a variable number of random octets. Let's say that our web server is on 192.168.1.7:

• One time out of eight, and entirely random IP address is generated
• Four times out of eight, the lower octet of the IP address is randomized (192.168.1.X)
• Three times out of eight, the lower two octets are randomized (192.168.X.Y)

This is entirely consistent with the patterns we've been seeing, so if somebody on your local network gets infected, you're gonna get pounded until they fix it.

Another point: if the web server in question is behind a NAT firewall, it will go nuts scanning the internal network. For a large company that has many NT systems internally, they will spend all day trying to infect each other.

What a worm.

Steve
--
Stephen J. Friedl / Software Consultant / Tustin, California USA / www.unixwiz.net

Looks like somebody did their homework and decided to really make Code Red nasty

The end is near...

So let me get this straight... Every machine on the planet practically has a list of infected IP addresses broadcasted to them, with a new one arriving every minute or so (up to 663 XXX's here in the past two hours).

So that means any loser with this list of infected IPs and some knowledge of perl literally has a small army of computers at their command?

I think we might be seeing some rather impressive DDoS attacks by this evening.

Hmm.. 3 more XXX's in the time it took me to write this... frequency's increasing...

@home preventative measures

Apparently @home is monitoring it's customers for Code Red.
I'd JUST reinstalled Win2k Pro on a new system, I'd added IIS for my own purposes and before I had a chance to run the service pack and patch, I got the Code Red worm (ok, so I was lazy and tired and was going to leave it for the morning)

@home unbound my cablemodem until I'd cleared the worm (disable IIS, reboot).

normally, I'd be a little annoyed at @home for monitoring my connection and cutting my connection rather than just block all traffic to that IP at router level. but hey, it saved me from contributing to a problem.

Re:@home preventative measures

You sure you just didn't dos yourself of the net? :)

Personally i don't see @Home taking you off and noticing you fixed it and putting you back online.

Check your outtage listings for your area.

What about....

My range, I don't seem to find anything coming from 127.x.x.x and I installed CodeRedII myself.

Breakdown of the new "features" of CRII

Ok, here's the latest on this new variant.

1. It makes a copy of CMD.EXE called ROOT.EXE in the;

\inetpub\scripts

and

\program files\common files\system\msadc

directories. Does this on both drive C: and D: (doesn't fail if D: doesn't exist).

2. It then runs its attack program code to infect itself upon numerous other boxes. This is done randomly, although there is a bias to attack boxes that are part of the same class A as infected attacker (so it hits your own boxes sooner rather than later). Attack code runs for 24 hours, 48 hours on Chinese language systems.

3. After attack code runs (and it seems to be based on clock ticks, not date), it then writes out a Trojan.

File Explorer.exe (8192bytes or 7K as displayed by Windows) is dropped (from the code in the original attacking URL) to the root of drive C: and D: (again, doesn't matter if D: doesn't exist).

4. The system is then rebooted (probably a forced reboot).

5. When the system restarts, it loads the trojan Explorer.exe from the root directory on the boot drive. This code then does several things;

a) Launches the real Explorer.exe, so the system looks normal.

b) Sets SFCDisable in hklm\software\microsoft\windows nt\currentversion\winlogon to some undocumented value. Presumably this disables Windows File Protection (so critical files could be overwritten)

c) Creates two virtual directories (via the registry) in hklm\system\currentcontrolset\services\w3svc\param eters\virtual roots. Called "C" and "D", they are mapped to the root directories of the two drives and permissions are established in the virtual directory to allow script, read, and write access as well as setting execute permissions to scripts and executables.

d) goes into an endless sleep loop.

The end result of all of this action is to leave your box wide open to remote connection and total compromise.

Unlike "Code Red", this worm doesn't attack any single target at any point, although its attack strength seems to be much higher (it launches 300 threads right off, although some may only launch 100), so its propagation seems much higher.

The attack only works properly on Windows 2000 systems (preliminary analysis). ICSA Labs tested against an NT 4.0/IIS 4.0/SP3 box and received a standard error message. Reports from subscribers suggest that XP IIS 5.1 RC1 is invulnerable also. Its expected that it works on PWS and OWS equally to IIS (all on W2K).

Its obviously a short-lived attack, at least the process of collecting victims. What would be done with them once collected is another story. No attempt is made by the worm to send anything "home", although detecting compromised boxes is far too easy (very unfortunately) for anyone outside your network.

Cleaning a compromised box should really be done by reformatting. Although logging is left on for the new virtual directories created (meaning you'd see access in your IIS logs), there's really no way to be sure that files haven't been implanted to leave other backdoors (not as part of this worm, but as part of the use of the opening it creates).

Credits:

The bulk of the analysis was done by Nick Fitzgerald of Virus-L (and friends) and Roger Thompson of TruSecure. Additional help came from Bruce Hughes of the ICSA Labs.

Cheers,
Russ - Surgeon General of TruSecure Corporation/NTBugtraq Editor

If this can't break Microsoft's back nothing will.

If there isn't one thing that can break the straw nothing will.

I'm warned that smoking and drinking are bad for my health

Medicines and drugs aren't legal unless they're fully tested and approved

My car doesn't lock up and freeze

My microwave doesn't blue screen and cook my brain inside out.

SO WHY THE HELL IS THE CORE FUNCTIONALITY OF MY PC allowed to distribute my personal information, crash during critical functionality, be succeptable to cracks and attacks that are easily preventable.

WHY do i have to pay extra for the functionality of NOT being succeptable to virii and net attacks?

WHY doesn't microsoft NOTIFY me of the risks of using its OS?

I hope no ones bank is trusting microsoft, i hope anyone doing online transactions don't trust microsoft. I hope no one keeps personal, private, confidential and financial data on there pc's.

I hope no one running Windows is on the internet for that matter.

Re:If this can't break Microsoft's back nothing wi

Unlike a car that explodes to a design flaw, software that explodes due to a design flaw seems to be immune to the civil justice system.

C:\dos C:\dos\run | run\dos\run

Seeing a lot of "XXXX" and far fewer "NNNN" in the logs. This version appears to stay crunchier in milk than the first. Up to 25-30 per hour, from 10 this afternoon. The 24.x.x.x may be getting slammed, but I can see another that is just as bad.

Snipped from incidents dot org (emphasis added)

Both Henk Wevers and corecode submitted packet traces of the complete request as shown below. Comparing this trace with the original Code Red (see the Code Red Infection Illustrated section of the July 23 Handler's Diary at: http://www.incidents.org/diary/july2001.php) it is immediately obvious that we are dealing with a new worm. Note that line 820 shows that the worm is doing something with

CMD.EXE; also the dump contains the string 'CodeRedII' on line 230. Note the references to root.exe on lines 840 and 880.

Article also mentions that it appears the compromised servers are backdoored and rooted. Ouch.

The editorial accusations of crying wolf might look a little pale this evening...

Re:C:\dos C:\dos\run | run\dos\run

This worm is combining TWO worms; both the Code Red worm we know and love, and the less-recent SANDMIND worm (sp?), famous for running of DOS commands and posting an anti-US webpage at 'default.asp', 'default.html', 'index.asp', and 'index.html' on directories relative to the website root. Apparently this worm is using 'cmd.exe' to get root access; what it does beyond that, I have no idea... I haven't been hit by it. I guess the logic is .... if the box isnt patched against Code Red, chances are it isn't patched against SANDMIND, too.

Also, 90% of the 'NNNN's in my server logs came from my Class A subnet (and much more frequently than the 'XXXXX' requests).

Logs available upon request, etc.

Never name a virus by the name its author intended

From the article [unixwiz.net]:

In particular, the fact that it has "CodeRedII" inside means that it couldn't possibly be the original worm -- the name wasn't attached until after it was released.

If this beast is truely wicked, it will scan assorted websites such as Slashdot, Wired, etc, and as soon as it will see talk about itself [slashdot.org] it will enter its active phase...

And the depressing thing is...

I wrote the following shell script to mail webmasters on infected hosts:
#!/bin/bash

# OK: the rationale behind this is that it will lookup the name of each host
# which probes us with the Code Red style probe, and then see whether that
# name resolves back to the number. If it does there's some hope that it's a
# real host, so we'll try to mail webmaster@

log=$HOME/codered.log

for ip in `grep default.ida /var/log/httpd/access_log |\
awk '{print $1}'`
do
grep "$ip" $log > /dev/null

if [ $? -ne 0 ]
then # it's not there
echo $ip >> $log # remember so we don't mail them again

host=`dig -x $ip -Aq +nocmd +nostats +noheader +noauthor \
+noaddit | tail -3 | awk '{print $5}' | sed 's/\.$//'`

echo -n "Seen $ip [$host]"

echo $host | grep '^[a-z0-9.-]*$' > /dev/null

if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
echo -n "...appears to be valid..."

valid=`nslookup $host | tail -2 | grep '^Address:' |\
awk '{print $2}'`
fi

if [ "$ip" = "$valid" ]
then
mail -s "Your machine appears to be infected by Code Red" \
webmaster@$host <<EOF

Dear Webmaster

We have received a request for 'default.ida' from your server at
$ip. This is usually an indication that you have been
infected by the 'Code Red' or 'Code Red II' worm, currently
attacking Microsoft IIS servers. To secure your server, download
and install the appropriate patch from Microsoft


* Windows NT 4.0:
http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/Release.asp?Rel easeID=30833

* Windows 2000:
http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/Release.asp?Rel easeID=30800

Or, better still, switch to a proper operating system
EOF
echo " ...mailed"
else
echo " ? not valid?"
fi
fi
done

I've been hit by 61 different unique IP's today, of which 17 had IPs which resolved to addresses which resolved to the same IPs. So how many of my mails were actually accepted for delivery?

That's right, none.

logs

automatically generated list of attacks against my server [kryptolus.com]

147 attacks so far

the page is generated through a perl script that reads my apache logs

Re:logs

For those who are interested in the source:
http://www.kryptolus.com/red.txt

On another note, a server whose identity I will not name(solaris w/ apache) was hit with 17000 attacks as of yesterday(the server handles a lot of ips).

Re:Source?

Why not use the sort mentioned in the paper [sysarch.com] by Uri Guttman and Larry Rosler? It was made for this.

print join "\n", map substr($_, 4) => sort map pack('C4' => /(\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+)/) . $_ => @ip;

Now that is funny!

This guy's computer is infected and attacking me every 10 minutes or so. I went to his web page and found this [66.1.83.146] resume which indicates the guy is a Windows2000 expert and Network Technician!

Re:a quick fix

Fuck me...read a little farther down where it says that, based on random scans of the 359k IP addresses infected last time 'round, they estimate that thirty percent are still infected!

What the fuck? What the fuck is going on? How the fuck is it that I can have old ladies calling me up at work (tech support for an ISP) and asking if the reason they can't pick up their email is because of the Code Red worm, 'cos they saw the press conference and, hey, they're wondering, and something like 105,000 separate IP addresses are still infected? Did the rapture happen when I wasn't looking, and God took the people responsible for these computers, those left behind couldn't find the passwords anywhere? How is this possible?

(I know, I know; not everyone lives w/in viewing distance of CNN, default installations of MS whatever -- but still, this absolutely amazes me.)

It's not safe to install IIS while on a network...

With this high a number if scans it is now suicidal to install IIS while connected to the net. Chances are very good that your box will get compromised before you have a chance to apply the patch, even if you do so right away. And since people can easily set up a reverse hack to automatically do other nasty stuff to your box after THEY get probed, the risk is even higher.

Solution, never ever have your box plugged into the network while installing a Windows server. Only plug it in after all patches, service packs, and hot fixes have been applied first.

Proposal for White Hat'ing CR][

Since it seems that it's possible to run, and basically do, anything trivially on any of these infected computers via the root.exe "script" I'm guessing that a lot of shit is going to go down in the next two days that will probably be both good and bad for Microsoft and the public's understanding of network security.

I'm also guessing that right now a bunch of /.'ers are doing one of two things:

1) Writing scripts to make things suck more for those who have been compromised (shame on you)
or
2) Writing scripts to fix the compromised servers

I propose that if a script is created to fix these servers (Code Green? :)) that it not be launched until after Monday afternoon around 3 or 4PM, since this is a serious problem for both sysadmin's and Microsoft. If a large part of the damage is avoided by white hat hackers sending a cure for the virus out, it will only happen again. If you don't give them time to sweat, then nothing will be changed and a even more malicious virus (which say, deletes the entire contents of the drives or something) will be unleashed soon enough.

So, before you go out and launch a cure for the problem, think twice about the long term effects of doing so. Create it, make sure it works, and then the Open Source movement can release a cure for the problem faster than anyone else and "we" (I'm not really part of the OSS movement, or whatever) will look like the good guys. Instead of the media holding Microsoft on high for providing the cure to a problem they caused, if the patch is done and ready and launched by Monday afternoon they will have egg on their faces.

Thanks.

Top 8 things to do with Code Red

Bah, what a waste. Screw that, here are some other things you should do along with your white hat program:

1. Distribute Elcomsoft's e-book reader to all compromised boxes; search for any Adobe e-books and write out a plaintext copy.
2. Append the code to DeCSS to all Word documents on the box.
3. Modify the code to only patch the box when Dmitry is finally released from jail.
4. Install Linux; reboot.
5. Install BSD; reboot.
6. Configure box to DoS MS's IIS patch servers; condemn MS for making patches inaccessible.
7. Script all boxes to respond to /. stories with one of two comments: "dammit, this is a duplicate! Here is the original at goatse.cx", or "Katz iz 4 t00l!!!1@".
8. Install SETI; add the box to your team; brag about your high score.

Note: these are jokes. Please, please, do not do these things. Especially because if you do, the feds will come knocking on my door. :)

Why don't they...

Modify the code red code to apply the security patch to the vulnerable IIS servers and reboot the system? While this is potentially destructive to your system (I'm told -- MS security patches and all that) it would pretty well take care of this problem...

Re:Why don't they...

Modify the code red code to apply the security patch to the vulnerable IIS servers and reboot the system? While this is potentially destructive to your system (I'm told -- MS security patches and all that) it would pretty well take care of this problem...

Nah, this will just make the sysadmins even lazier.

SysAdmin #1: Dude, your NT machines are all infected with Code Red!

SysAdmin #2: I know! I'm just waiting for for them to be infected with the fix... should be any day now...

Something that should happen more often.

Man, I'm glad that I'm not using [Microsoft Product]. This new [virus/worm/trojan] exploits a [flaw/bug/backdoor] in [Microsoft Product], and it [does/doesn't] use Outlook and the stupidity of users. Luckily, I'm running [Free alternative to Microsoft product], so I'm not at risk. In fact, [Free alternative to Microsoft product] has protected me from [any integer over 200] [viruses/worms/trojans]. And just look at the [hundreds/thousands/millions/billions] of dollars that I've saved using [Free alternative to Microsoft product]. I hope that this [Free alternative to Microsoft product] takes off, along with [free alternative to Microsoft OS]. Unfortunately, my [company/home] has to pay for the stupidity of Microsoft: this [virus/worm/trojan] sucked [250KB/250MB/250GB/250TB] of bandwidth!

Re:MSNBC Coverage

They are now: http://msnbc.com/news/606910.asp [msnbc.com]