Re: Compromised Windows Server

[Harlan Carvey <keydet89 () yahoo com>]

Patrick,

> Came in this morning to find a windows 2003 server I
> manage scanning the
> Internet for machines listening on tcp 139 and 445. 
> While looking at the
> machine I noticed the following processes running.
>
> Mwvsta.exe found in c:\windows\system32
> rundll16.exe c:\windows\system23
> Ponoas.exe  c:\windows\system32
>
> I believe that the ponoas.exe is some sort of
> rootkit 

> although searching on
> google for this file name returns nothing.  Also
> searching mwvsta.exe returns nothing.  

I'm not surprised...files can be named anything.

> At this point I have removed these files
> from the system and registry 

Where were the references located in the Registry? 
Which key(s)?  Did you happen to get the LastWrite
times from those keys?

> but am weary that the server will get
> hit again.  Has anyone
> had an experience with the following file or have
> any idea what rookkit of
> virus they are associated with?

Well, to be honest, so far there's nothing to indicate
that there is a virus or a rootkit at work here.  This
may end up being the case, but so far all there is is
speculation, with no hard evidence.

Did you happen to do any other triage or evidence
collection prior to getting rid of the files?  Do you
have the files still?

More importantly, can you tell us why you think one of
the files is a rootkit?  

Thanks,

Harlan

------------------------------------------
Harlan Carvey, CISSP
"Windows Forensics and Incident Recovery"
http://www.windows-ir.com
http://windowsir.blogspot.com
------------------------------------------

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