Educause Security Discussion mailing list archives

Re: "Yay" Malware


From: "Flagg, Martin D." <FlaggMD () HIRAM EDU>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2007 09:53:12 -0500

Any suggestions for IDS and/or Layer 7 firewall detection?  Does usb.exe
get downloaded?

Marty
Hiram College 

-----Original Message-----
From: Parker, Ron [mailto:Ron.Parker () BRAZOSPORT EDU] 
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 9:16 AM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] "Yay" Malware

In cases where we've tried to repair the damage, without having a
removal tool available, I've seen some of my staff spend multiple days
trying to clean things up. As you know, then you never know for sure
that you've gotten it. I would guestimate that it has cost us several
hundred dollars in staff time per computer to try to clean up something.
We would only do that in very rare cases any more. These days, we
re-image with gusto. 

--
Ron Parker, Director of Information Technology, Brazosport College

 

-----Original Message-----
From: RL Vaughn [mailto:Randy_Vaughn () BAYLOR EDU]
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 7:49 AM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] "Yay" Malware

Indeed the file, C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\usb.exe, has been pinned as the 
culprit.
Reports are it overwrites binaries critical to IM, tray applications, 
and, apparently, the binaries of processes active at the time of 
infection including some AV.  The binary is UPX packed.  The infection

vector has not yet been determined to my knowledge.

Scott's reinstall or reimage option suggestion seems realistic rather 
than paranoid.  On that point, and other previous postings, does 
anyone have a ballpark guesstimate of how much it costs to repair a 
single machine after such an infection?

Scott Fendley wrote:
Heya Tim et al,

Thankfully we have not seen it on our campus as of yet.  
However, I do
know from communication with the Internet Storm Center that
a sample
has been sent to all of the major antivirus venders earlier in the 
day.  I would expect that definitions will be out for the initial 
variation of this malware soon.

After determining the attack vector/infection technique,  I would 
typically reinstall or reimage the computer.  I may be a little 
paranoid, but I really don't like not knowing positively what the 
state of security really is after a compromise of this nature.


It would be great if any determination could be made as to what the 
infection vector might have been.  Email, IM, website
download?   From
the reports I have seen it seems the file that appears to
be part of
the 1st stage infection is C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\usb.exe.

Hopefully I will have more details in the morning that I can share.

Scott

At 07:25 PM 1/11/2007, Tim Lane wrote:
Hi All,

has anyone seen (for want of a better term) the Yay
Malware.  We are
seeing a small window with the word "yay" in it appear on the 
desktop with a lot of outgoing traffic.  A search on Google cites 
quite a few people seeing this in the last 24 hours but
no resolution.

We have tried to remove it with:

Symantec AV
Adaware
Spybot S&D
Defender
XoftSpySE
MSRT

Seems like it may be very new and the AV vendors have not
caught on
yet....

If anyone has seen it and mitigated it I would be
interested to hear.

Thanks,

Tim


Tim Lane
Information Security Program Manager

Information Technology and Telecommunication Services
Southern Cross
University PO Box 157 Lismore NSW 2480

(02 6620 3290   7             02 6620 3033   - tlane () scu edu au
8 <http://www.scu.edu.au>http://www.scu.edu.au


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