Dailydave mailing list archives

Re: Wrox: Professional Rootkits


From: "matthew wollenweber" <mwollenweber () gmail com>
Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 16:29:22 -0400

I'm not a rootkit expert, but I had a similar impression as Jamie of the Rox
book. To me it seemed like a watered down version of the content from
Jamie's book and rootkits.com. It's possibly a bit more user friendly but
just a compilation of stuff resources done by others.

On 5/8/07, James Butler <butlerjr () acm org> wrote:

Dave,

I am surprised that you liked this book. Well, with code and concepts
"borrowed" from many of the contributors at rootkit.com and Russinovich, I
guess it couldn't be bad.  Yes, Ric is an exile, but from HBGary. He
worked
there as a tester for some things we were developing.

My problem with his book is that it makes no attempt to cite previous
bodies
of work. As one example, he talks of DKOM tricks of how to hide processes
without mentioning FU. He even renames structures I have used in talks and
papers, which are Microsoft structure names. If the reader is not familiar
with the space, you would think he invented every rootkit technique
currently being used, when in actuality, his book doesn't bring anything
new
to the table.

For the rest of you who haven't bought it yet, please consider carefully
before you support someone blatantly making a profit from other people's
work.

Jamie

It is because of Ric and companies with this attitude that has driven the
free disclosure of ideas underground on rootkit.com.

Yes, I have a dog in this fight.


-----Original Message-----
From: dailydave-bounces () lists immunitysec com
[mailto:dailydave-bounces () lists immunitysec com] On Behalf Of Dave Aitel
Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2007 1:53 PM
To: dailydave
Subject: [Dailydave] Wrox: Professional Rootkits

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http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/productCd-0470101547,descCd-download_
code.html

I picked up a copy of Professional Rootkits by Ric Vieler. So far it's
great! You get the feeling Ric is an exile from some random intel
organization that he left after about ten years of writing rootkits.
This book doesn't try to be super cutting edge - it is instead filled with
practical advice for the professional rootkit writer. It's a small,
understandable book.

One criticism: There's a weird mini-disassembler on pages 74-96, which he
uses to analyze a target binary to add hooks into it. This is the sort of
thing that is a great idea, but wastes a lot of pages in the book. This
should be downloadable, but perhaps not printed out line for line. If you
really want a disassembler, you'll also probably want an analyzer, and
you'll want do to something cool with your analyzer in order to make your
hooks "future-proof".  This is probably something I'll have someone do
with
Immunity Debugger someday. A PGP trojan that works no matter what version
of
PGP they have, because it has a full binary analysis engine built in.
Sound
fun? Send me a estimate. :>

- -dave
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--
Matthew  Wollenweber
mwollenweber () gmail com
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