Re: Turnitinbot exploits webserver vulnerabilities?

[Lanny Trager <lanny () cybernex net>]

On Thursday 20 May 2004 16:36, Keith T. Morgan wrote:
> Our IDS picked up this request against one of our webservers and I
> couldn't find a reference to it via a quick google search:
>
> GET /scripts/boo.bat/..%C1%9C..%C1%9C..%C1%9C..%C1%9C.%C1%9C..%C1%
> 9C..%C1%9Cwinnt/system32/cmd.exe?/c+echo+MinhaNossaSenhoraDoPe
> rpetuoSocorro HTTP/1.0 Host: 216.12.X.X  User-Agent:
> TurnitinBot/2.0
> http://www.turnitin.com/robot/crawlerinfo.html..Accept:
> text/html, text/plain, application/pdf
>
> Ok, well, yeah, there's a fairly typical code-red type
> cmd.exe get thing.  No big deal.  But it attempts to exploit
> (ancient) web-server vulnerabilities and echo this
> "MinhaNossaSenhoraDoPerpetuoSocorro" phrase?  Why does it
> include a url to turnitin.com in the exploit attempt? Have they had an
> intrusion?
>
>
> siglite@hornet:~$ host 64.140.49.68
> 68.49.140.64.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer cr4.turnitin.com.
> siglite@hornet:~$ host cr4.turnitin.com
> cr4.turnitin.com has address 64.140.49.68
>
> Well, the host resolves both ways to cr4.turnitin.com.
>
> From www.turnitin.com/robot/crawlerinfo.html:
>
> "Chances are that you are reading this because you found a
> reference to this web page from your web server logs. This
> reference was left by Turnitin.com's web crawling robot, also
> known as TurnitinBot. This robot collects content from the
> Internet for the sole purpose of helping educational
> institutions prevent plagiarism. In particular, we compare
> student papers against the content we find on the Internet to
> see if we can find similarities. For more information on this
> service, please visit www.turnitin.com"
>
> From www.turnitin.com:
>
> "Recognized worldwide as the standard in online plagiarism
> prevention, Turnitin helps educators and students take full
> advantage of the Internet's educational potential. Used by
> thousands of institutions in over fifty countries, Turnitin's
> products promote originality in student work, improve student
> writing and research skills, encourage collaborative
> learning, and save valuable instructor time."
>
> I fail to see how exploitation of old webserver
> vulnerabilities, and the execution of a "boo.bat" file serves
> the purposes they're listing above.  So exactly what kind of
> crawler is this?  An exploit crawler?  Are we going to see it
> hitting SSL sites next?  Building a database of vulnerable
> servers?  Are they running a rudimentary sploitbot?
> I emailed them directly but failed to receive a response.
> That was last week sometime.  Figured I'd give the list a heads-up.
Keith,

It looks like you got scanned by a vulnerability scanner called iis_promisc 
v2.0, it can be obtained from SecuriTeam.com.

If you confine your Google search term to "GET /scripts/boo.bat/" you'll get 
some results.  The third result down is a GCIA practical that explains it in 
detail.  Click on the view as HTML for ease and when you get to the page 
search it for boo.bat.  That should answer everything for you.

Lanny

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