Firewall Wizards mailing list archives

Re: new topic-professional hacking tecniques


From: "REID FOX" <reidfox () direct ca>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 12:04:40 -0800

Im not advocating a standard whois query system for ISP's just some kind of
page you could go to, first of all how could you write a web page that is
able to query all ISP's when there is no standard and secondly what ISP
would allow the amount of traffic to this list that would occour if this
were to happen?
easy to accomplish- have a searchable database only accessable through the
ISP's search engine -there are several small search engines available that
are able to provide this type of security even force the one who wishes to
make such a query to give an email address to obtain a password just as some
web sites do. Now we are able to create a log of  who is making queries
about the individual.
Dont we already have rules about unsolicited e-mail? I  dont have it all
figured out, just an idea I had. All Im saying is that half the trouble with
Internet ethics is that it is too anomanous. If you dont think this is going
to be a major problem in the future just take a look at some of these
script-kiddie tools, they are getting more and more sofisticated.
There are real gurus who are writing applications with a user-interface that
is designed to attack known vulnerabilities on a system. Or you can get an
application that will write viruses, you dont even need to know how a virus
works.
Why do these guys write these applications? maybe if there is enough of this
going on then they can sneak around less noticed,
maybe half these apps are trojans that are used by the programmer, the
script kiddie stumbles onto something good and the guy who wrote the app
uses the trojan to launch a real attack.
My brother in law plays with these things (against my advice) he showed me
this "boot" program designed for use on chat that is able to "get into" the
other guys system as well as "protect you" from this type of attack. I took
a look at it , this thing installs with "full authority" over the entire
system by way of the unknowing user saying "yes to everything" because he is
wanting "security",can I have control of the registry? "yes" can I have
control of the kernal? "yes" can I have access to all logfiles? "yes" can
you say TROJAN?
I cant remember right now what the name of it was, but Im sure there are
several of them, here he is giving "all priveleges" to this unethical app
that promises "protection"
so now a resourceful "real hacker" has an army of unaware "script kiddies"
who have downloaded and installed this thing from a temporary website.
Privacy is important but this is all completely untracable
sound scary? They are getting more sopisticated all the time
REID


IMHO, Reid's idea is terrible!  (no offense).

Adding a whois query to people's IP address demolishes privacy.  How would
you like ot AUTOMATICALLY be placed on every web site's mass mailing list
just by visiting their site?  In fact, you could be going through the
394,423,548 matches on altavista about what you were looking for, knowing
full well that 394,423,543 of them are irrelevant (but you need to find
those 5 good ones...).  Just think how many spam sources you could get from
just one day of research/surfing/whatever.

Hit a XXX site...  forget about it!  Now they "know" or at least "believe"
you'd visit their site, they'll NEVER leave you alone.  (I've often
searched
for stuff and somehow ended up in XXX sites...  for one thing, do a search
on any actor/actress).

IRC now becomes no longer anonymous, in fact, nothing else does.

Steven Osman
Terratron Technologies Inc.

----- Original Message -----
From: Matt Doughty <doughtym () bsjkk co jp>
To: REID FOX <reidfox () direct ca>
Cc: <firewall-wizards () nfr net>
Sent: Friday, November 05, 1999 1:33 AM
Subject: Re: new topic-professional hacking tecniques


On Wed, Nov 03, 1999 at 10:29:26AM -0800, REID FOX wrote:

However if say ISP's start to use static IP addresses for their
client's
then perhaps the ISP's could post a directory (a whois)  not with any
sensitive personal info but maybe just an e-mail and a name. That would
make
users more accountable just as Domains are accountable (or known) on
the
net. I cant see any honest client having a big problem with that. Like
I
said before this is no security cure but it is however a step in the
right
direction.
eg. Your getting some degree of attack from a certain IP regularly.
You trace it back to an ISP look it up in the ISP's whois list
e-mail the person "are you aware of ......? If this continues your ISP
will
be notified ...."
the next day you get a reply from a parent of some script kid  "I use
this
PC for business ..... dont know whats happening"
send reply "If you have portscan , crackers. BO Netbus etc on your
system
then someone is using your PC unethically, you should uninstall these
applications otherwise your system has been compromised etc etc.."
I am sure that an honest person wether they know computers or not would
promptly deal with it  and if your lucky and the person does know a
little
bit about these things then now the seasoned hacker is unaware that his
mask
is off.
The advantage of this is
1: If it's a teen then the parents are informed without getting into
trouble
with their ISP  (ISP dont need to be involved)
2: Also the parents do not allow this to continue because they now know
what
certain apps are.  (cracker BO Netbus etc) where before they had no
idea
what their kids were capable of doing with these strange programs.
3: The new ISP when the parents get sucked into thinking that they were
wrongfully cut off, does not have to deal with it.
4: One more future hacker on the road to ethics.
Now the question is who has to deal with this growing problem?
The ISP's or the Parents?
You assume a relatively high level of knowledge of the parents....
I mean your basically asking to hold someones hand through a search
of their system for these programs. Kids tend to know a lot more
about the computers then the parents.
besides if you started contacting the people directly then crackers
are just going to start filtering the mail first so their parents
never get the message.

file://Matt





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