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Botnets, Cybercrime, and Cyberterrorism: Vulnerabilities and Policy Issues for Congress
Order Code RL32114 Botnets, Cybercrime, and Cyberterrorism: Vulnerabilities and Policy Issues for Congress Updated January 29, 2008 Clay Wilson Specialist in Technology and National Security Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division Botnets, Cybercrime, and Cyberterrorism: Vulnerabilities and Policy Issues for Congress Summary Cybercrime is becoming more organized and established as a transnational business. High technology online skills are now available for rent to a variety of customers, possibly including nation states, or individuals and groups that could secretly represent terrorist groups. The increased use of automated attack tools by cybercriminals has overwhelmed some current methodologies used for tracking Internet cyberattacks, and vulnerabilities of the U.S. critical infrastructure, which are acknowledged openly in publications, could possibly attract cyberattacks to extort money, or damage the U.S. economy to affect national security. In April and May 2007, NATO and the United States sent computer security experts to Estonia to help that nation recover from cyberattacks directed against government computer systems, and to analyze the methods used and determine the source of the attacks.1 Some security experts suspect that political protestors may have rented the services of cybercriminals, possibly a large network of infected PCs, called a “botnet,” to help disrupt the computer systems of the Estonian government. DOD officials have also indicated that similar cyberattacks from individuals and countries targeting economic, -
A the Hacker
A The Hacker Madame Curie once said “En science, nous devons nous int´eresser aux choses, non aux personnes [In science, we should be interested in things, not in people].” Things, however, have since changed, and today we have to be interested not just in the facts of computer security and crime, but in the people who perpetrate these acts. Hence this discussion of hackers. Over the centuries, the term “hacker” has referred to various activities. We are familiar with usages such as “a carpenter hacking wood with an ax” and “a butcher hacking meat with a cleaver,” but it seems that the modern, computer-related form of this term originated in the many pranks and practi- cal jokes perpetrated by students at MIT in the 1960s. As an example of the many meanings assigned to this term, see [Schneier 04] which, among much other information, explains why Galileo was a hacker but Aristotle wasn’t. A hack is a person lacking talent or ability, as in a “hack writer.” Hack as a verb is used in contexts such as “hack the media,” “hack your brain,” and “hack your reputation.” Recently, it has also come to mean either a kludge, or the opposite of a kludge, as in a clever or elegant solution to a difficult problem. A hack also means a simple but often inelegant solution or technique. The following tentative definitions are quoted from the jargon file ([jargon 04], edited by Eric S. Raymond): 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. -
The Downadup Codex a Comprehensive Guide to the Threat’S Mechanics
Security Response The Downadup Codex A comprehensive guide to the threat’s mechanics. Edition 2.0 Introduction Contents Introduction.............................................................1 Since its appearance in late-2008, the Downadup worm has become Editor’s Note............................................................5 one of the most wide-spread threats to hit the Internet for a number of Increase in exploit attempts against MS08-067.....6 years. A complex piece of malicious code, this threat was able to jump W32.Downadup infection statistics.........................8 certain network hurdles, hide in the shadows of network traffic, and New variants of W32.Downadup.B find new ways to propagate.........................................10 defend itself against attack with a deftness not often seen in today’s W32.Downadup and W32.Downadup.B threat landscape. Yet it contained few previously unseen features. What statistics................................................................12 set it apart was the sheer number of tricks it held up its sleeve. Peer-to-peer payload distribution...........................15 Geo-location, fingerprinting, and piracy...............17 It all started in late-October of 2008, we began to receive reports of A lock with no key..................................................19 Small improvements yield big returns..................21 targeted attacks taking advantage of an as-yet unknown vulnerability Attempts at smart network scanning...................23 in Window’s remote procedure call (RPC) service. Microsoft quickly Playing with Universal Plug and Play...................24 released an out-of-band security patch (MS08-067), going so far as to Locking itself out.................................................27 classify the update as “critical” for some operating systems—the high- A new Downadup variant?......................................29 Advanced crypto protection.................................30 est designation for a Microsoft Security Bulletin. -
Post-Mortem of a Zombie: Conficker Cleanup After Six Years Hadi Asghari, Michael Ciere, and Michel J.G
Post-Mortem of a Zombie: Conficker Cleanup After Six Years Hadi Asghari, Michael Ciere, and Michel J.G. van Eeten, Delft University of Technology https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity15/technical-sessions/presentation/asghari This paper is included in the Proceedings of the 24th USENIX Security Symposium August 12–14, 2015 • Washington, D.C. ISBN 978-1-939133-11-3 Open access to the Proceedings of the 24th USENIX Security Symposium is sponsored by USENIX Post-Mortem of a Zombie: Conficker Cleanup After Six Years Hadi Asghari, Michael Ciere and Michel J.G. van Eeten Delft University of Technology Abstract more sophisticated C&C mechanisms that are increas- ingly resilient against takeover attempts [30]. Research on botnet mitigation has focused predomi- In pale contrast to this wealth of work stands the lim- nantly on methods to technically disrupt the command- ited research into the other side of botnet mitigation: and-control infrastructure. Much less is known about the cleanup of the infected machines of end users. Af- effectiveness of large-scale efforts to clean up infected ter a botnet is successfully sinkholed, the bots or zom- machines. We analyze longitudinal data from the sink- bies basically remain waiting for the attackers to find hole of Conficker, one the largest botnets ever seen, to as- a way to reconnect to them, update their binaries and sess the impact of what has been emerging as a best prac- move the machines out of the sinkhole. This happens tice: national anti-botnet initiatives that support large- with some regularity. The recent sinkholing attempt of scale cleanup of end user machines. -
Large-Scale Malware Experiments
LARGE-SCALE MALWARE EXPERIMENTS ... CALVET ET AL. LARGE-SCALE MALWARE • Unlike with in-the-wild experiments [1], there are fewer ethical or legal issues to deal with than when performing EXPERIMENTS: WHY, HOW, AND arbitrary attacks against infected computers. SO WHAT? • Having an in vitro environment provides us with a way to Joan Calvet, Jose M. Fernandez conduct computer security research in a scientifi c way: we École Polytechnique de Montréal, Montréal, Canada can reproduce experiments and test the effect of various independent variables. Email {joan.calvet, jose.fernandez}@polymtl.ca We decided to use the Waledac botnet as a fi rst experiment for the following reasons: Pierre-Marc Bureau ESET, Montréal, Canada • Thanks to prior reverse engineering [2], we had in-depth knowledge of this threat family. Email [email protected] • This malware does not replicate, thus limiting the risk of running an experiment that might get out of control. Jean-Yves Marion LORIA, Nancy, France • There exists a set of vulnerabilities in Waledac’s peer-to- peer protocol that were worth investigating. We wanted to Email [email protected] evaluate the impact of a mitigation scheme against the botnet. ABSTRACT 1.1 The Waledac case study One of the most popular research areas in the anti-malware The architecture of the Waledac botnet is split into four layers. industry (second only to detection) is to document malware The fi rst layer contains infected hosts with private IP addresses characteristics and understand their operations. Most initiatives that are referred to as spammers. They are essentially the are based on reverse engineering of malicious binaries so as to ‘worker’ bots and constitute approximately 80% of the botnet. -
The Botnet Chronicles a Journey to Infamy
The Botnet Chronicles A Journey to Infamy Trend Micro, Incorporated Rik Ferguson Senior Security Advisor A Trend Micro White Paper I November 2010 The Botnet Chronicles A Journey to Infamy CONTENTS A Prelude to Evolution ....................................................................................................................4 The Botnet Saga Begins .................................................................................................................5 The Birth of Organized Crime .........................................................................................................7 The Security War Rages On ........................................................................................................... 8 Lost in the White Noise................................................................................................................. 10 Where Do We Go from Here? .......................................................................................................... 11 References ...................................................................................................................................... 12 2 WHITE PAPER I THE BOTNET CHRONICLES: A JOURNEY TO INFAMY The Botnet Chronicles A Journey to Infamy The botnet time line below shows a rundown of the botnets discussed in this white paper. Clicking each botnet’s name in blue will bring you to the page where it is described in more detail. To go back to the time line below from each page, click the ~ at the end of the section. 3 WHITE -
CONTENTS in THIS ISSUE Fighting Malware and Spam
MARCH 2008 Fighting malware and spam CONTENTS IN THIS ISSUE 2 COMMENT EVASIVE ACTION Home (page) renovations Pandex has attracted very little attention from the media and generated little 3 NEWS discussion between malware Botherders herded researchers and among the 29A folds general populace. Chandra Prakash and Adam Thomas provide an overview of the Pandex operation and take an in-depth look at VIRUS PREVALENCE TABLE 3 the underlying code that has allowed this malware to evade detection for so long. 4 MALWARE ANALYSIS page 4 Pandex: the botnet that could PACKING A PUNCH In the fi nal part of the series on exepacker 9 FEATURE blacklisting, Robert Neumann takes a look at how all the processing and analysis techniques are put Exepacker blacklisting part 3 into practice in a real-life situation. page 9 15 CONFERENCE REPORT AVG TURNS 8 Black Hat DC and CCC 24C3 John Hawes gets his hands on a preview version of the latest offering from AVG. 18 PRODUCT REVIEW page 18 AVG Internet Security 8 22 END NOTES & NEWS This month: anti-spam news and events, and Ken Simpson considers the implications of rising spam volume despite increasing accuracy of content fi lters. ISSN 1749-7027 COMMENT ‘It is hoped that within all sizes of business. It is hoped that the comment facility will promote discussion among visitors and that the comment facility in some cases the more knowledgeable of VB’s readers will promote will be able to guide and assist those less well versed in discussion among the complexities of anti-malware technologies. -
An Introduction to Malware
Downloaded from orbit.dtu.dk on: Sep 24, 2021 An Introduction to Malware Sharp, Robin Publication date: 2017 Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link back to DTU Orbit Citation (APA): Sharp, R. (2017). An Introduction to Malware. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. An Introduction to Malware Robin Sharp DTU Compute Spring 2017 Abstract These notes, written for use in DTU course 02233 on Network Security, give a short introduction to the topic of malware. The most important types of malware are described, together with their basic principles of operation and dissemination, and defenses against malware are discussed. Contents 1 Some Definitions............................2 2 Classification of Malware........................2 3 Vira..................................3 4 Worms................................ -
An Analysis of the Asprox Botnet
An Analysis of the Asprox Botnet Ravishankar Borgaonkar Technical University of Berlin Email: [email protected] Abstract—The presence of large pools of compromised com- motives. Exploitable vulnerabilities may exist in the Internet puters, also known as botnets, or zombie armies, represents a infrastructure, in the clients and servers, in the people, and in very serious threat to Internet security. This paper describes the way money is controlled and transferred from the Internet the architecture of a contemporary advanced bot commonly known as Asprox. Asprox is a type of malware that combines into traditional cash. Many security firms and researchers are the two threat vectors of forming a botnet and of generating working on developing new methods to fight botnets and to SQL injection attacks. The main features of the Asprox botnet mitigate against threats from botnets [7], [8], [9]. are the use of centralized command and control structure, HTTP based communication, use of advanced double fast-flux service Unfortunately, there are still many questions that need to networks, use of SQL injection attacks for recruiting new bots be addressed to find effective ways of protecting against the and social engineering tricks to spread malware binaries. The threats from botnets. In order to fight against botnets in future, objective of this paper is to contribute to a deeper understanding of Asprox in particular and a better understanding of modern it is not enough to study the botnets of past. Botnets are botnet designs in general. This knowledge can be used to develop constantly evolving, and we need to understand the design more effective methods for detecting botnets, and stopping the and structure of the emerging advanced botnets. -
Iptrust Botnet / Malware Dictionary This List Shows the Most Common Botnet and Malware Variants Tracked by Iptrust
ipTrust Botnet / Malware Dictionary This list shows the most common botnet and malware variants tracked by ipTrust. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, since new threat intelligence is always being added into our global Reputation Engine. NAME DESCRIPTION Conficker A/B Conficker A/B is a downloader worm that is used to propagate additional malware. The original malware it was after was rogue AV - but the army's current focus is undefined. At this point it has no other purpose but to spread. Propagation methods include a Microsoft server service vulnerability (MS08-067) - weakly protected network shares - and removable devices like USB keys. Once on a machine, it will attach itself to current processes such as explorer.exe and search for other vulnerable machines across the network. Using a list of passwords and actively searching for legitimate usernames - the ... Mariposa Mariposa was first observed in May 2009 as an emerging botnet. Since then it has infected an ever- growing number of systems; currently, in the millions. Mariposa works by installing itself in a hidden location on the compromised system and injecting code into the critical process ͞ĞdžƉůŽƌĞƌ͘ĞdžĞ͘͟/ƚŝƐknown to affect all modern Windows versions, editing the registry to allow it to automatically start upon login. Additionally, there is a guard that prevents deletion while running, and it automatically restarts upon crash/restart of explorer.exe. In essence, Mariposa opens a backdoor on the compromised computer, which grants full shell access to ... Unknown A botnet is designated 'unknown' when it is first being tracked, or before it is given a publicly- known common name. -
Detecting Botnets Using File System Indicators
Detecting botnets using file system indicators Master's thesis University of Twente Author: Committee members: Peter Wagenaar Prof. Dr. Pieter H. Hartel Dr. Damiano Bolzoni Frank Bernaards LLM (NHTCU) December 12, 2012 Abstract Botnets, large groups of networked zombie computers under centralised control, are recognised as one of the major threats on the internet. There is a lot of research towards ways of detecting botnets, in particular towards detecting Command and Control servers. Most of the research is focused on trying to detect the commands that these servers send to the bots over the network. For this research, we have looked at botnets from a botmaster's perspective. First, we characterise several botnet enhancing techniques using three aspects: resilience, stealth and churn. We see that these enhancements are usually employed in the network communications between the C&C and the bots. This leads us to our second contribution: we propose a new botnet detection method based on the way C&C's are present on the file system. We define a set of file system based indicators and use them to search for C&C's in images of hard disks. We investigate how the aspects resilience, stealth and churn apply to each of the indicators and discuss countermeasures botmasters could take to evade detection. We validate our method by applying it to a test dataset of 94 disk images, 16 of which contain C&C installations, and show that low false positive and false negative ratio's can be achieved. Approaching the botnet detection problem from this angle is novel, which provides a basis for further research. -
The Ecology of Malware
The Ecology of Malware Jedidiah R. Crandall Roya Ensafi Stephanie Forrest University of New Mexico University of New Mexico University of New Mexico Dept. of Computer Science Dept. of Computer Science Dept. of Computer Science Mail stop: MSC01 1130 Mail stop: MSC01 1130 Mail stop: MSC01 1130 1 University of New Mexico 1 University of New Mexico 1 University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001 Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001 Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Joshua Ladau Bilal Shebaro Santa Fe Institute University of New Mexico 1399 Hyde Park Road Dept. of Computer Science Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 Mail stop: MSC01 1130 [email protected] 1 University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001 [email protected] ABSTRACT General Terms The fight against malicious software (or malware, which includes Security everything from worms to viruses to botnets) is often viewed as an “arms race.” Conventional wisdom is that we must continu- Keywords ally “raise the bar” for the malware creators. However, the mul- titude of malware has itself evolved into a complex environment, malware ecology, malware analysis, worms, viruses, botnets and properties not unlike those of ecological systems have begun to emerge. This may include competition between malware, fa- 1. INTRODUCTION cilitation, parasitism, predation, and density-dependent population regulation. Ecological principles will likely be useful for under- Modern malware defense involves a variety of activities and is standing the effects of these ecological interactions, for example, quickly becoming unsustainable. So many malware samples are carrying capacity, species-time and species-area relationships, the collected from the wild each day that triaging is necessary to deter- unified neutral theory of biodiversity, and the theory of island bio- mine which samples warrant further analysis.