CAIDA Released Code-Red Worm Post Mortem 186
davidu writes "David Moore at CAIDA (The Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis) was monitoring an entire /8 network while the code-red worm traversed the net. His findings are really interesting and show just how swiftly code-red moved across the net and infected hosts. It was the sheer stupidity of the worm's creator and the skill of some network admins which limited the worms attack and DoS potential.
note: Check the graphs, these pictures really do tell a thousand words."
Re:sheer stupidity (Score:1)
Greetings Professor Falken (Score:1)
"No, I want to play Global Thermonuclear War..."
lesson 1: bounds checking code is mandatory (Score:1)
Things like the Code Red worm and particulary the analysis of it's propagation do provide valuable lessons. It does seem to me that languages used to produce products like IIS and Outlook should be constructed so that programmers already up to their necks in complex code and company meetings can just specify a compile time option or the inclusion of a security library or something to provide for generation of bounds checking routines.
What's a little mode code bloat after all if it will stop these rascals?
All remote exploits are dangerous, not just IIS (Score:1)
My point is, not all bugs of this class are used in a worm. It is MS' fault for creating this bug, but, as far as this bug goes, it is no worse than, say, bind's last remote root-exploit (you'd think both of them would have learned from their past mistakes!) Granted, most people who run bind are more clued than those who run IIS. (I can hope, can't I?)
Remember, any remotely exploitable hole which allows the attacker to run arbitary code can be turned into a worm (don't necessarily need root/admin privs) We're simply fortunate that most holes have not yet been used in this manner. It's only a matter of time before another multi-attack, multi-platform worm is released (remember RTM?) but with a more dangerous payload written by someone who has no morals and is not looking for instant gratification (e.g., spread slowly, then unleash destruction all at once)
Re:Prelude (Score:1)
If, in the case of SirCam, files were posted to an unmoderated news group instead of e-mailed randomly then the authors could retrieve them anonymously
I was thinking it would also be possible to integrate Cain-like or LophtCrack-like functionality into something like SirCam, and post computer+username+passwords to something like unmoderated newsgroups. My password is VERY cryptic (mostly not even alphabetic characters), so I thought I was safe until I saw Cain take less than a second to crack that password which I'd used on some Windows shares) Or a hotmail account. perhaps a virus a little more low-profile than SirCam, so that its not as easily detected.
Re:Don't be a jackass (Score:4)
Exaggeration. While this was true in the past, the rate of such bulletins has been slowing. I've received three for the entire month of July so far.
This patch in question requires SP1 to be installed as well. If the IIS server was up withoug SP1 then that requires 2 reboots to get the server patched.
And, as others have said, any system administrator worth his salt has already installed SP1 for Windows 2000. Therefore, it's really only one restart.
In many cases, the admins are overworked and cannot get to every patch all the time.
Indeed. That's why you put in extra hours to fix things. MS may not be the best server software in the world, but any competent MS system administrator applies the patches as they come out, maintains a reasonable schedule, and tells the bosses flat-out, "I'm installing this patch at such-and-such a time, and that's all there is to it." Few employers are willing to fire a system administrator who's doing their job.
Personally, I had 1 of 3 IIS servers at my job vulnerable and it was 'ploited.
Yes. Imagine how you would have felt if you'd stayed on top of it. It's easy to say that you don't have time to install the patch, but on any reasonable server-level machine, the patch takes maybe five minutes to install, and most of that is spindown/startup time.
I have enough on my plate then to jump at every damn MS Security Bulletin.
If this is your attitude, you need to find another line of work. I wouldn't want you administering anything of mine.
If you actually care about what you do, then you MAKE the time. Explain to people what you're doing. Encourage them to understand what's involved. Tell people to piss off, you're saving the company.
There are just so damn many of them!
39 this year. That averages to slightly more than one per week thus far. This is a lot, to be sure, but it is not "too many." The thought "too many" should be followed by the thought, "What are my alternatives?"
If you're that peevish about MS product security, then don't use MS products.
I am overworked as it is yet my CEO still asks "What exactly does he do again?"
Then quit. Get a job elsewhere. Do something else.
Re:Posturing (Score:2)
Network Admins (like BGP router gods) and Router Gnomes (the little guys in the routers who move the packets swiftly) did the work.
get your terms right....aye!
-davidu
Re:Unpatched version of server software (Score:2)
If I were an insurance adjuster trying to insure peoples' information technology assets, I would have my own experts supervising everyone who was on the insurance plan to ensure that they patched their fucking software.
Good! Poor security needs to hit companies where not only it hurts, but boards of directors and shareholders will see it: in the insurance premium line on their budget.
Or I would make it against the law not to patch one's software, similar to the laws ensuring the vaccination of children, and for the same reasons; such an epidemic, viral or virtual, delivers a powerful blow to our economy and is a matter of national security.
This I would be going far. Every business should be allowed to make their own stupid decisions. Save regulation for where it actually can do some good; for example, keeping businesses from harming consumers or each other.
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Re:The world is safe again ... (Score:1)
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Re:I see a nice research paper in this (Score:2)
...phil
Re:I see a nice research paper in this (Score:3)
I posted to BugTraq that the published curves for Code Red infection rates looked very much like traditional biological infection rates, and was soundly rebuked in emails by people who obviously knew better, except they didn't.
"Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it." -- Santayanna
...phil
Stupid worm writer(s) (Score:1)
first: Employee of antivirus/security company with agenda to keep people aware of dangers of Internet/"hackers" and so on... Working hard but enjoying hoopla and good compensation packages - as long as company is growing/becoming more know/visible/important. Being careful not to make real damage and making sure his PR team is first to report new findings of company's always alert "antivirus" team.
second: Stupid hacker who is smart enough to make working worm able to break 359,000 hosts in 13 hours, yet stupid enough to be easily blinded and nice enough to kill itself (stop spreading) after two days.
This second variation is, at least for me - not easy to imagine. But then, I am only a programmer with no more than 18 years of programming experience - what can I know about programming?
Fun begins when all brave and smart "journalists" of the net start bitching around how these "virus/trojan/worm" writers are, in fact, only stupid.
Someone IS stupid, but who?
I see a nice research paper in this (Score:3)
Sure, the results aren't that surprising, but it's still an interesting comparison.
Re:lesson 1: bounds checking code is mandatory (Score:1)
Re:Don't be a jackass (Score:2)
That is definitely caused by MSFT's incompetence. One of the first rules of security is not to run any unnecessary services. I installed Win2K on my home machine and immediately discovered that it was running IIS, including FTP, W3SVC and SMTP. Sure, they were password protected, but they shouldn't have been running in the first place. How many home users *need* those services on by default?
Re:CAIDA Translation (Score:1)
Nova...
No va
Don't go
Kinda like that, anyway...
t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't®
Saved by Austin Powers (Score:1)
Sounds like a great idea for the next Austin Powers movie. I can hardly wait to see how they exploit the manipulation tools we have available today for graphics editing
Do they want to eat their cake, too? (Score:4)
Great. Do they have an artificially intelligent firewall, too? That's what it's going to take to allow people to run software with known security holes for very long.
Does anyone else remember the worms that were attacking unpatched Red Hat systems ~3 years ago? It was six months between the time the exploits were discovered/patched and the time that the worms started making their rounds. A more recent Red Hat attacking worm came out something like 3 months after the security holes it exploited were discovered. Now we've got an IIS security hole, with a worm exploiting it within a month.
Do you not see where this is going? We're at the point where virus/worm authors aren't just reusing each other's code, they're talking about writing modular hostile code in the first place! Take a "worm kernel", load in modules to install back door A, autonotification service B, and brand new exploit C, and send it off to the internet the same damn day you discover a new buffer overflow.
This is coming soon, and if you have computers hanging out on the internet, you need to be ready for it. Don't give me any BS about "rigorous change control". If you want to think of it in those terms, think about this: Running known exploitable, publically accessable software will cause your computer systems to undergo uncontrolled changes without your approval!
Throwing many MS OS/App patches into the mix without testing the effects of the patch on your systems environment is just as foolish as not installing the patch.
No, it really isn't. What's the worst that buggy MS patches can do to you, reformat your hard drive? Not installing the patch can result in your data being published to hostile destinations, your passwords being sniffed, other systems on your network being attacked by the compromised unpatched system, your network being flooded by the compromised system, and your business being brought to a halt for days while you explain to the feds why your computer was being used to try to crack *.fbi.gov. Oh, and for kicks, the attacker/worm might reformat your hard drive afterward anyway, to cover his tracks.
Re:Openness Good... (Score:1)
test.c:
#include
int main(void) {
char overrunme[10];
gets(overrunme);
}
gcc -o test test.c
/tmp/ccLMNOP.o: In function `main':
/tmp/ccLMNOP.o(.text+0xb): the `gets' function is dangerous and should not be used.
Re:Mirror (Score:1)
A Better Analogy (Score:1)
It would be more accurate to ask, Can you sell a car with defective locks?
Then, what constitutes "defective"?
Can you design a lock that will keep out 90% of people trying to break in? Probably. Can you design a lock to effectively block all professional thieves? Don't bet on it. Worse yet, can you design a lock that will force all people to lock their cars? Not a chance.
So, if you can't even design idiot proof, perfectly secure cars (which we've had around for close to 100 years), then how are you ever going to create an idiot proof Internet?
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Re:What about licensing? (Score:1)
Hummm... If my brakes fail because I haven't maintained them, then people die.
If my server gets infected by a worm because I haven't maintained the software, then a couple other people (who are ALSO at fault) have their computers infected...
Sort of several orders of magnitude difference in consequences there.
I agree with your basic premise that people should be required to demonstrate their competence before handling dangerous systems, and that they should be held responsible for the consequences when they screw up, but I think you'll have a difficult time getting licensing regulations for owning and operating PERSONAL COMPUTER SOFTWARE passed in a country like this.
Seems to me that the manufacturers need to be held responsible for creating better, safer software, and for making it easier to update that software when problems are found.
(BTW, when's the last time you updated the Apache software on your system? Bet it was more than 30 days ago.)
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Re:I see a nice research paper in this (Score:2)
--
Re: Leniency (Score:2)
Hmmm.
Maybe having Bush is punishment enough. Even if the rest of us do have to suffer his ugly mug in the news...
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What's going to happen with ROM-based eppliances? (Score:2)
This worm had a doubling time somewhere between 30 and 40 minutes, until it had compromised a significant proportion of the vulnerable machines. This time is proportional to the rate that a compromised machine can attack new ones, and to the ratio of vulnerable machines to the address space. I believe that the speed of attack cannot be increased much, this worm was remarkably efficient -- it will only be increased as the number of broadband-connected machines increases. The advent of six-octet IP addresses will, for a while, dramatically lower the percentage of vulnerable IPs compared to the address space, although that won't happen for a while.
What worries me is the advent of internet e-ppliances. These will probably not be patchable, and so, if infected, will remain so. Don't think that because machines don't have disk drives that they are invulnerable to worms, as this current worm didn't touch the disk at all, but stayed memory-resident. What's going to happen when a million e-refigerators start attacking root DNS servers, say?
thad
Re:What about licensing? (Score:1)
--
Re:Wait til August 1st (Score:2)
- how long will it take before the Internet only becomes usable between the 20th and the end of each month?
And then how long will it take before someone feels compelled to release a countervirus that patches the security hole, or cripples Code Red?Hell, why stop there? How long until the internet becomes just one giant code battlefield, a la Core Wars?
My God - it just hit me. The language used in Core Wars is Redcode!
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Re:You can't blame them entirely (Score:2)
The only reason a fuss would be kicked up is because Microsoft would never stand for anybody besides them having that kind of access to computers running Microsoft OSes. If people switched to an Open Source OS, there could be multiple 'security providers' they could choose. The market could then choose the proper balance between security and privacy. I doubt anybody here would complain about that.
Re:You can't blame them entirely (Score:2)
Your analogies don't make sense. They lack the element of negligence.
A computer user passing a virus along to someone else is more akin to a driver drinking 10 beers and then crashing into someone else, in which case, his license will surely be revoked.
A pet that goes around biting other people will also certainly be put to sleep.
When you sign up with an ISP, you are making your machine a part of the Internet. If that machine does not play well with others (who are also paying for their access) it should not be allowed on the network.
Re:You can't blame them entirely (Score:4)
Simple. If a customer's machine is responsible for further spreading a virus, worm, etc. the ISP should CANCEL the customer's account without a refund. People would be more responsible if irresponsibility affected their wallets.
Posturing (Score:4)
Riiiggght. This is the second time Code Red has been mentioned on Slashdot with a reference to the "stupid" author. Compared to the skilled network admins? What, the ones who let Windows NT boxen on their network? The ones who got HACKED by the silly virus author? Yeah, they're skilled all right, truely elite.
Mock the author as you will, but the fatal errors in Code Red were choices that the author made. His options for those choices could have been stopped, too. It wasn't really the stupidity of the virus author that saved whitehouse.gov, but the vigilance of some people doing things that might be illegal under the DMCA or some other law in the near future.
Remember that the next time you're feeling elite, yourself.
Re:I see a nice research paper in this (Score:2)
Thank you.
...
--
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations
We've seen this class and scale of problem before (Score:2)
It's worth remembering that this sort of problem has been seen before, with the Robert Morris Worm [mit.edu] is 1988. The similairities in terms of spread are clear, although the damaging affect (Morris brought down a large percentage of the then mainly academic based Internet) was much more severe - so far. The article makes clear that we need to be aware that things could be worse, when script kiddies start playing with this virus
Lessons were learnt then, and it probably makes sense to revisit them and ensure we haven't missed anything.
Those of us with machines at home running services should all be careful (be it Windows, Linux, Solaris, *BSD or whatever), and review our presentation to the world. Check out Bastille Linux [bastille-linux.org] for a start.
Re:What the hell are they waiting for? (Score:2)
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Re:You can't blame them entirely (Score:2)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:Unpatched version of server software (Score:2)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:"virii" (Score:2)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:IIS can be restricted and protected (Score:3)
MS has rules for how a Windows application should act, and the MS applications are even worse than most DOS application about following those rules.
I wonder if Linux will follow this tradition
(LDP : Linux Directory Plan? Or do I have the wrong acronym?)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:What the hell are they waiting for? (Score:2)
But seriously.. the english/engrish is so bad in some of these that it's a dead giveaway
What the hell are they waiting for? (Score:3)
And these guys seriously need to hook up with someone who knows English
Re:Don't be a jackass (Score:2)
That is definitely caused by MSFT's incompetence. One of the first rules of security is not to run any unnecessary services. I installed Win2K on my home machine and immediately discovered that it was running IIS, including FTP, W3SVC and SMTP.
Totally unlike RedHat which doesn't automatically install and run sendmail, apache, etc?
john
No only this, but... (Score:2)
The Scary Thing... (Score:2)
ZAN (Score:2)
So much for "zero administration" networking. Funny you never hear MS pushing that buzzword anymore. Of course technical people no doubt realised all along that it was just marketing BS, you have to know what you're doing and keep up to date to run servers, but now millions of not-so-clued-up people have fallen for the hype, they were led to believe that a few mouse clicks is all you need and you can sit back and relax while your server runs itself. Thanks to this attitude things like "code red" can flourish. Marketing people are quick to push terms like "zero administration" but won't readily mention "service packs", since that implies "non-zero-administration".
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Re: Leniency (Score:2)
But I find this hard to believe. The worm attacked whitehouse.gov, and although I truly dislike Bush and his administration, I can see how this could be construed as an attack against the United States itself. I understand that sentiment is very far-fetched, but remember, when it comes to things like this, there are hot-shot lawyers involved who will do, and say, whatever it takes to win their case. And yes, that too is a generality, but if the US catches this guy, I can see them using that as a viable argument.
Really bad analogy: Firing an unarmed nuclear warhead with anti-antimissle technology at the whitehouse lawn. "But I was just showing you that your systems were severly lacking ...", "But it wasn't armed ...", "But I meant ..." are all irrelevant. Leniency is not a concideration. The missle was fired at the whitehouse, all else is irrelevent.
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Absolutely correct (Score:3)
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Prelude (Score:3)
If, in the case of SirCam, files were posted to an unmoderated news group instead of e-mailed randomly then the authors could retrieve them anonymously.
Add in the ability to distinguish victims (such as hosts only on a certain domain); to quietly terminate itself if the victim isn't on "the list"; and stick to a specific task instead of just spamming and destroying -- you will have something truely devistating.
It makes me wonder what we AREN'T finding and what ISN'T getting the headlines.
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Charles E. Hill
Version 2.0 (Score:4)
I'm sure that version 2.0 of the worm will fix all of the problems.
Re:lessons learned (Score:2)
Of course, even then I restrict access with hosts.allow and/or firewalling at the machine iteself and remove it from inetd.conf once I'm done. And even though I don't use telnetd normally, I updated just in case. It's hard to argue that an encrypted telnet is always a bad thing to have around.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Re:You can't blame them entirely (Score:2)
You just described my Father.
And I'll bet that 95% or more of Slashdotters wouldn't fix their car themselves
I suspect you would lose that bet. Many of us were hacking on cars before we hacked on computers.
Re:You can't blame them entirely (Score:2)
Bob Cringely (Score:4)
I wish... (Score:2)
I'd really like to be able to check those graphs!
Wait til August 1st (Score:5)
However, since it appears the number of infections capped at about 359,000 machines, I would venture that at least a quarter of those machines will not be repaired/rebooted by August 1st. If the number of infections went from zero to 359,000 in a couple of days at most, imagine what kind of storm is going to kick off on August 1st when nearly 100,000 machines restart the infection phase of the worm! How long will it take for the estimated 6 *million* vulnerable IIS servers to be patched?
Just for the sake of gloom-and-doom, how long will it take before the Internet only becomes usable between the 20th and the end of each month, due to Code Red infection storms between the 1st and the 19th? I don't think the core Internet routers can perform stateful-enough inspection as to route "Code Red infection" attacks to
--
Steve Jackson
Notice from SecurityFocus (Score:2)
I thought that was a good idea for admins that didn't know about the worm.
Re:Unpatched version of server software (Score:3)
As for the law and patching, you need to realize that for many Fortune 1000 organizations, patching is a bad thing. They want stable systems and have a rigorous change control process to guard against problems. Throwing many MS OS/App patches into the mix without testing the effects of the patch on your systems environment is just as foolish as not installing the patch. For some, applying a patch to server software is a several day process!
Re:The world is safe again ... (Score:3)
Hi! How are you!
I send you this file in order to have your advice.
[Attachment: Dastardly Plan Details.doc.pif]
k., who's gotten about a dozen of these so far.
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people
are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Disturbing thought (Score:4)
Take a look at the domains that were the most-infected -- they were, by and large, cable modem providers, and the study concludes that home and small business users (read: Microsoft's target market for most of their products) were responsible for most of the worm's spread.
It's really disturbing to think that the Internet's stability rests on the shoulders of these people, half of whom probably don't even understand the concept of keeping up-to-date with security patches.
The ironic thing is that this tide is probably being held back by the fact that in order to "legitimately" run a server off a broadband connection, you generally have to pay through the nose, meaning that those who don't have a vested interest or Daddy's money need not apply.
Disturbing all around, really...
Redcode was hitting my Apache (Score:2)
212.244.30.10 - - [19/Jul/2001:18:28:35 -0500] "GET
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
u6858%ucbd3%u7801%u9090%u6858%ucbd3%u7801%u9090
31b%u53ff%u0078%u0000%u00=a HTTP/1.0" 400 252
There were about half a dozen such requests from other hosts. I thought it might be interesting to show those of you who don't have webservers running what it looks like.
Ian
Re:Bob Cringely (Score:2)
10 PRINT "Hello, World!"
20 END
Or for those with slightly more skill
Dim test As Variant
test = MsgBox("Hello, World!", vbExclamation, "Hello, World!")
Re:IIS can be restricted and protected (Score:3)
Changing anything that Microsoft considers 'default' or 'normal' can be a problem, even when the change is relatively easy to make. In your example, I have a feeling that if you installed any additional software to work with IIS, especially MS software, it would have issues with your simple change. It just assumes that everything is the default, even if it could just check the registry during install.
To make myself a little bit clearer (while my coffee is still kicking in this morning), I'll give an example. I am a command line user, even in Linux and Windows. Try using Program Files in a command line path. It gets very, very repetitive. So I changed it to Programs. Registry search and replace, rename, a couple of other things. Yes, there is a registry key for the location of Program Files, and properly written software looks for it during an install or run. But try to install a a patch, or an upgrade, or anything else, and watch your Program Files directory magically reappear. The assumption is that nobody changes it, so Program Files is hard coded.
My point? Even when MS leaves a way to change things, they often don't honor it. So the harder you try to customize or secure a system, the more you have to work to make sure that you haven't broken something else. A sad state of affairs, it is.
Stupid? (Score:2)
Most stupid people can't write even write a virus.
...in x86 assembly
...that infect over 200,000 webservers in under 24 hours.
Mitnick only compromised a handful of systems. I guess this makes him a complete retard?
Re:Unpatched version of server software (Score:2)
If you're seeking insurance against the costs of a DDoS attack, your insurance assessor can reasonably insist on knowing details of your infrastructure and what procedures you have in place to decide what premiums to charge. But the administrators of the population of vulnerable machines that the DDoS attack is exploiting are not the ones likely to be asking for insurance (the report suggests from the distribution of attack host domains that "at home" machines on cable and DSL were playing a significant role, for example), so the scope for direct pressure is rather limited. And the statistics on what makes a vulnerable DDoS target are still very inexact, and will continue to be for as long as victim corporations are unwilling to go public and admit they've been DOS'd.
Or I would make it against the law not to patch one's software, similar to the laws ensuring the vaccination of children, and for the same reasons; such an epidemic, viral or virtual, delivers a powerful blow to our economy and is a matter of national security.
I can't see that proposal flying. What I can see is that the current free-for-all where there are no controls whatever on the fitness for use of software products will be brought to an end. You want to produce software for commodity sale and use? Fine, then you/ your company must have the appropriate certificate of good practice and have your products and procedures reviewed regularly, and you'll probably need malpractice insurance, as well. If you just want to play with software as a hobby, then that's OK, but you need a license before you're allowed out on the public net, and/or you need to put your creations behind a certified firewall.
Re:The world is safe again ... (Score:3)
This is a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situation. If you order your henchmen to do it, they will certainly screw it up, and, depending on the movie rating, will be severely injured to killed.
At least if you have your henchment bring the hero(es) to the secret lair, you don't have to pay out as much disability or have as high employee life insurance. This is why usually contractors are brought in, not because they really are the badest killers from the four corners of the earth, but because by going corp-to-corp, you won't impact your premiums when they are killed. Plus it keeps employee morale up.
Re:DoS Attacks (Score:4)
Don't be a jackass (Score:4)
Personally, I had 1 of 3 IIS servers at my job vulnerable and it was 'ploited. Of course, when it the Code Red worm infected that server, the server took out one of my 2500 series Cisco routers. That was fun since it was still too early in the day to know that it was indeed the worm causing the problems. I am the only IT person here, supporting 75 users, 17 servers, 100+ workstations. I do support, net admin, and IT department management. I am currently upgrading the corporate website, doing a software audit, a hardware audit, reconfiging our routers, I have 30+ helpdesk issues in my queue and I am late on 4 projects. I also advise our development team on network related aspects and I am trying to put up a new FTP server, backup server and mail server. I have enough on my plate then to jump at every damn MS Security Bulletin. There are just so damn many of them! I am overworked as it is yet my CEO still asks "What exactly does he do again?".
In the future will I put a little more time at getting the patches on the IIS servers when they come out? Sure will. Did I learn a lesson? Yes. Did my company learn a lesson? Nope. Not until I leave this place and they have nobody around...
You can't blame them entirely (Score:5)
But we're not a typical cross-section of the public. People are used to buying something and having it work. They don't need to patch their TV every couple of months to prevent people abusing it, and they just don't (and probably never will) see why they should do this for their PC, which is just another appliance (to them at least). And I'll bet that 95% or more of Slashdotters wouldn't fix their car themselves if it started burning a lot of oil - it's all a matter of whether you're willing and able to do the job.
The only way you're going to stop people like this propagating worms or virii or whatever in this manner is by taking that need for vigilance out of their hands. Quite how you do that without infringing on their privacy is beyond me. But just think about the fuss that would be kicked up here on Slashdot if Microsoft wrote it's software to require MS full access to it's OS at all times over the phone line under the pretext of helping home users keep their machines up to date.
Don't criticise the regular consumers unless you've got a better solution. And I don't count banning them from the net as better (even if it does have a certain appeal).
Re:Openness Good... (Score:3)
That's very true actually. I mean, I'm pro *nix, anti Microsoft/Windows but lets not forget that buffer overflows come from the use of the crappily designed stdlibc which is only still a standard because of years of acceptance in the Unix community.
I mean, sure it's the developers fault for using these functions but as a community, we should have kicked scanf and friends out decades ago. Compilers should complain if you use them. Heck, they should refuse to use them unless you define #NOTTOBEUSEDONAPRODUCTIONSYSTEM or something.
Rich
G7 summit - Conspiracy Theories (Score:2)
Or you could look at the flip side of this - instead of it being an attack by activists, it could have also been an attack created by someone else. By timing it right, and adding the right message (and the right target), blame is easily passed to someone else completely.
Or, you could go with the theory that our own law enforcement agencies have set this up as a way of deeping the distrust of the Internet within the rest of the government (US, for those Non-US readers) so that harder CyberCrime laws are passed and larger budgets allocated.
I love the conspiracy game - it's so easy to find multiple targets for something like this! ;-)
Re:Don't be a jackass (Score:3)
Re:What's wrong with IIS? (Score:2)
Wait...I'm growing a brain!!! Please disregaurd everything I said about IIS and Outlook. I think I will start using Apache...
Don't run it on FreeBSD...
Patches are a part of running a server. Security holes are a part of life. It has nothing to do with this being Windows. The worm could just have easily been written for FreeBSD. If I didn't mind risking getting thrown in jail for the rest of my life, I'd consider proving that.
Re:Wait til August 1st (Score:2)
I don't think the core Internet routers can perform stateful-enough inspection as to route "Code Red infection" attacks to /dev/null.
No, but they can automatically block anyone repeatedly sending packets to the old whitehouse site, and not start routing them again until they've spoken to someone on the phone.
I'm back from the future... (Score:2)
Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday, July 30, @14:01PM
from the scalpel-video-camera dept.
BadDoggie writes "David Moore at CAIDA (The Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis) was monitoring his /8 network again after this story [slashdot.org] appeared in Slashdot. His findings are somewhat interesting and show just how swiftly Slashdotters across the world can take down a server." It was shier stoopidity of the Editurs and the bad luk of CAIDA that noone mirord the siet and grafiks. note: Chek the the grafs, these pikshirs really dew tell a 1000 word.
Re:Redcode was hitting my Apache (Score:2)
I spread the news around, just to illustrate what a good idea it had been picking Apache on Linux for our webservers!
Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
Goodbye NT (Score:3)
- A bloated API. The implies complexity, which guarantees a continuing stream of new exploits.
- No outside review of its design. You can't take a software vendor's word for it when they claim their product is secure. Whatever the economic shortcomings or moral strengths of open source, it does seem to be the only way of guaranteeing the absence of undiscovered exploits.
As I've said before, the day will come when it will be illegal to operate an insecure system on the public internet. Perhaps sooner than later.Side note: what's with wasting all that bandwidth on Quicktime animations? The Flic files are a fraction of the size, and run on the same viewers.
__
Available animation formats (Score:4)
how much you want to make a bet that a lot of folks are going to grab the 13 meg quicktime file?
The .fli file works just fine.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip
IIS can be restricted and protected (Score:3)
Re:Disturbing thought (Score:2)
The problem of course gave our trouble resolution group fits.
To make matters worse most of the CPE (customer premise equipment) on the network has some type of web based interface. I don't know all the ins and outs of this worm but I do know that it caused a bit of havoc on all these routers stitting out there listening for port 80 requests. This also gave our trouble resolution group fits.
Just goes to show, worms don't just kill servers.
Re:lessons learned (Score:2)
Mirror (Score:2)
Microsoft Bundles Worm with IIS (Score:3)
Take a look at Microsoft Bundles Worm with IIS [bbspot.com]!
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Re:Absolutely correct (Score:2)
Openness Good... (Score:2)
At the risk of sounding like a /. drone, I'm happy to see this sort of analysis done. There are surely some who'd argue that the conclusions drawn [i.e., the next attack could be designed better and be much more effective] might spur someone on to building a nastier worm. Sure. Probably will happen. But if everyone will learn what causes this problem--duh, not updating the security fixes--then the problems will become minimized.
Of course, it also provides every reason for non-IIS/MSFT users and sysadmins to chuckle, but who's to say that hubris won't set in?
Re:You can't blame them entirely (Score:2)
And many of us where hacking on computers years before we were old enough to drive.
-JS
didnt spend 6 years in evil medsch to be called mr (Score:2)
then wipe out the HD (no random chance BS)
random chance bs?! you obviously havent been to the dr evil school of evilness. sure you could just shoot austin in the head, but how much fun would that be?
Re:Still Out There (Score:2)
Code Red: The IIS-worm that would have attacked whitehouse.org, but blew over for most of us
SirCam: The email-driven trojan infecting millions of Windoze PC's and sending misc. files to the whole OE-addressbook or every emailaddress in memory, presumably sent to wipe out the harddrive somewhere in October.
Code Red wasn't nearly as tough as SirCam, as there are more people on this world who open attachments without checking the filename than people able to set up IIS.
Actually, both groups should be dragged out on the street and shot...
Re:Priorities (Score:4)
Ditto for SirCam at some ISP's (Score:2)
I throttled fetchmail to not download e-mails over 200K, leaving all those damn viruses up on the server, and using webmail access to check and see if they are valid e-mails or viruses. If they are viruses, I've been sending people a form letter informing they are infected with the SirCam virus and giving the URL of an anti-virus vendor page on how to remove it.
I made the mistake of quoting the text portion of the virus just to show what had bit them. When replying to an @home user, I got an e-mail bounce giving an error 554: You have been infected by the SirCam virus. (I doubt it, I'm running Linux)
Apparently, some ISP's are scanning for SirCam on incoming mail, or at least for its text strings, and bouncing viral e-mails. Not bad; that at least informs the victim who is clueful enough to read the mailer-daemon error message. Not great; they apparently aren't scanning outgoing e-mails from their own users.
Unpatched version of server software (Score:3)
If I were an insurance adjuster trying to insure peoples' information technology assets, I would have my own experts supervising everyone who was on the insurance plan to ensure that they patched their fucking software.
Or I would make it against the law not to patch one's software, similar to the laws ensuring the vaccination of children, and for the same reasons; such an epidemic, viral or virtual, delivers a powerful blow to our economy and is a matter of national security.
Re:What's going to happen with ROM-based eppliance (Score:2)
But I sincerely doubt the majority of people will hook up appliances to teh Internet - there is no need and it costs too much (even with teh advent of super tiny an inexpensive web servers - its still a siazble cost when you consider access - running wire to it or wireless.
OSS can help limit the damage of IIS infections... (Score:2)
The post above about security focus sending emails to infected machines - we could deveop a toolset/module that could assist in alerting admins who got hit. Obviously it would need a central DB to track who got nailed so the poor guys email server didn't crash when thousands of Apache servers sent emails to webmaster@yourdomain.com after they got probed. But seriously, the idea of a network of webservers running specialized tools being able to either alert webmasters once or twice when a probe from them arrives or even (shakey legal grond of course) having the ability to send out an anti-worm to patch teh server automagically and be done with it. Imagine the headlines the day after 'Linux web servers fix compromised IIS servers after DeathWorm IV spreads like wildfire'
We could call the project 'IISafe' or something.
Hey - it could happen :)
Friends don't let friends install WinNT? (Score:2)
So I guess this could be the new Red Hat marketing slogan: "Friends don't let friends install Windows NT."
Eerie parallel with biological epidemics (Score:5)
If ever there was a more graphic proof why monopolies are bad...
What I find interesting is the parallels with biodiversity. One of the argument for biodiversity, especially in agriculture, is that a wide variety of species will slow the growth of any disease or epidemic. If everyone planted the exact same species and variety of wheat, a single organism could wipe out the global harvest; but if everyone used whatever species or variety they felt like, an opportunistic organism's growth would be blunted. The organism can't adapt and infect to a hundred varieties of a crop, so it will try to infect unideal hosts and fail.
This same argument can be said for software. If everyone uses the exact same software from the same company, then an opportunistic hacker or virus could rapidly take over everything; but if there were more companies and products out there, then the virus/worm would either have to learn how to hack a dozen or more different systems, or it is limited to growth among one particular system. So if MS gets its way, we'll get computer equivalents to AIDS and Ebola creating pandemics of worms and viruses. But if there were more competitors, then no single worm or virus could ever pose much of a threat.
Right on Hemos! (Score:2)
It was the sheer stupidity of the worm's creator and the skill of some network admins which limited the worms attack and DoS potential.
Let's reverse engineer this sucker and get this thing working better next time!
Okay NSA,. you should hire better Worm Coders next time if you want to frame the Chinese.
What about licensing? (Score:2)
What about licensing? Here I mean "license" in in the governmental-regulation sense (like a driver's license), not in the GPL sense.
People own cars; cars are valuable tools. Yet it is in the public interest to ensure that cars are in good repair. Licensing a vehicle implies a small penalty in terms of privacy, but one that most people acknowledge is necessary.
As the damaging potential of computers increases, I can forsee a future in which computers have a "license plate", and the owner is required to maintain basic security provisions, or face the equivalent of a traffic ticket - or even a more serious criminal offense if the negligence was deliberate.
The world is safe again ... (Score:5)
It was the sheer stupidity of the worm's creator and the skill of some network admins which limited the worms attack and DoS potential.
Once again, evil is thwarted because, just as on television, the villans are incompetent while the virtuous are strong and intelligent.
I wonder if the virus author also committed any of the following classic villan errors:
So, the world is safe again ... but ... for how long?
Re:Absolutely correct (Score:2)
--
What's wrong with IIS? (Score:2)
Unix = Server (Score:2)
A jpeg is worth 1024 DWORDS.
I gotta know... (Score:2)