RE: Publishing Nimda Logs

["Benjamin Tomhave" <falcon () cybersecret com>]

Whoa, whoa, whoa....having worked for an ISP in recent history, I can
honestly tell you that most knowledgable techs are just as frustrated with
infected end-users as everyone else, so sending single email messages with
each SYN, etc., is a BAD IDEA.  You're basically saying that you want to
further prevent these people from doing their jobs altogether, or to start
ignoring your messages altogether, because some end-users are universally
ignorant and negligent.

Instead, there are few things which ISPs can and should be doing with this
matter.  First, acceptable usage policies have to be updated to current
contexts and continuously presented to customers as a reminder of their
responsibility.  One of the key portions of updated policies should be
verbage along the lines of "If your system(s) become(s) infected with a
worm, virus, trojan, or has become compromised by attackers and used for
other purposes, ISP reserves the right to suspend and/or terminate your
service without prior notice."  Then the ISP can legally blackhole the
offenders.  Second, ISPs should not be allowing inbound traffic to accounts
that aren't paying for it.  In other words, firewall off those residential
(and problematic) users!  They aren't generally paying for business class
service, so why give it away?  Though this won't help defend against
customers who are already compromised, it should go a long way toward
minimize the compromise of residential (and perhaps even "basic business")
customers in the future.  Third, as much as it sucks, ISPs *must* be willing
to discontinue service to problematic customers, despite the desire to have
that revenue stream intact.  It's simply a matter of acting responsibly.
Along with this, if a customer has to be terminated for causes stemming from
compromise, negligence, etc., then local, state and federal authorities
(depending on scale) should be notified of the problem and lawyers should
probably be brought in, even if only as a precautionary measure.  The
contrapositive of this is to have fully open, completely unregulated
Internet service, which is a trend we are getting away from because of the
record for abuse.

On the idea about listing IPs, logs, etc. -- though I think this is an ok
idea, I agree with the comment regarding SMTP relays and the effectiveness
of ORBS and co.  Though it would be very cool to setup a system similar to
the RBL lists and be able to automate routing blackhole lists, I can see
this information being abused in a number of ways.  Furthermore, one of the
key frustration with the SMTP RBLs is that the lists often are not updated
and re-evaluated quickly enough, if at all.  In fact, I'm aware of some
rogue RBLs that have blackholed entire ISPs (Qwest, Sprintlink, BellSouth,
etc.) because they are "known spam hosters" -- which is hardly fair to those
customers who are not open relays, but get blackholed anyway.  Thank
goodness these people are the minority, but regardless, it doesn't make me
want to push use of RBL lists.  The other thing comes down to asking who
among us wants to donate the time to maintain a routing blackhole list for
this sort of thing?  If you're already a sysadmin/netadmin/infosec for your
company, you likely don't have a lot of time to chance these things down,
right?  So, that kind of kills things.

Just remember: Silver was a horse, not a bullet. :)

cheers,

-ben

-----Original Message-----
From: root () securityfocus com [mailto:root () securityfocus com]On Behalf Of
E
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 5:50 AM
To: incidents () securityfocus com
Subject: Re: Publishing Nimda Logs


I have struggled with this problem for months. My ISP has a large number of
broadband users,
and these people are still infected with nimda.I tried for weeks to get them
to
do something about it.
I even started offering them technical suggestions on ways to prevent it.
The
end result was
absolutely nothing. They obviously do not give a damn about it, and this
goes
for many other
ISP's and organisations. The people who are infected with nimda are being
criminally negligent.
They are allowing their machines to reinfect others. (Personally I also
think
Microsoft is
criminally negligent for releasing the bogus webserver and OS in the first
place).

 The last resort that I can think of is mailing your nimda logs to the ISP,
and
yes, I mean every single
SYN that comes in should go to them in a seperate email. Then perhaps their
tech / security people will
start to realise what a complete annoyance this worm is.

 Publishing the IP's will achieve nothing. Each infected person needs to be
notified that he/she is infected.
Many are just broadband users in dynamic ip pools, who probably are not
aware
of the problem anyway.
The bets are most network admins dont care about it, perhaps dont even know
their users are infected.

Serious lessons should be learned here. This is the kind of thing that
happens
when you dress up an OS
designed for secretaries as a webserver / multiuser OS, and put it in the
hands
of millions of
ignorant users. I am shocked that MS is not being held accountable for this
(and the multide of
other worms in the past couple of years).

 When are people going to realise that a corporation who puts its OS into
the
homes of millions of people,
bears some responsiblity for the damage, cost, annoyance and above all
wasted
time caused by poor
standards.


Deus, Attonbitus" wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
>   It is truly sad that so many people are still infected with Nimda. There
>   is a company with my corporate ISP that I have notified 3 times now that
>   they are attacking other systems. It seems they can't figure out how not
>   to install Win2k/IIS5.0 while connected to the net. The sad thing is
that
>   this is a computer company.
>
>   I have seen a site where people have published the IP of the offending
>   boxes for stuff like Nimda and CR. I am thinking about doing the same
>   thing so that people can either use that information to block the IP's
or
>   to do whatever they want for that matter.
>
>   I'm curious to see how other feel about this. Is it:
>
>   1) Recommended. Go for it and publish the IP's and let the "Gods of IP"
>   sort out the damage.
>   2) A Bad Thing. These are innocent victims, and you will just have them
be
>   attacked by evil people.
>   3) Boring. Who cares? It's Nimda, and an everyday part of life. Deal
with
>   it and ignore the logs.
>
>   If "1," then I was thinking of going with a "Hall of Shame" and
providing
>   ARIN look ups, contacts, and the whole bit. I could even allow other
>   people to post logs there and stuff like that...
>
>   Input appreciated.
>
>   AD
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: PGP 7.1
>
> iQA/AwUBPNgHPIhsmyD15h5gEQLsWACZASlsx6Wew0YfTHAzIHxotQYAdkAAoIoV
> VSob5Hcw7X9DDzDxNUzXftdm
> =Xv5m
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
> This list is provided by the SecurityFocus ARIS analyzer service.
> For more information on this free incident handling, management
> and tracking system please see: http://aris.securityfocus.com


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This list is provided by the SecurityFocus ARIS analyzer service.
For more information on this free incident handling, management
and tracking system please see: http://aris.securityfocus.com



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This list is provided by the SecurityFocus ARIS analyzer service.
For more information on this free incident handling, management 
and tracking system please see: http://aris.securityfocus.com