Full Disclosure mailing list archives
RE: [inbox] malware added in transit
From: Nick FitzGerald <nick () virus-l demon co uk>
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 12:48:14 +1300
Frank Knobbe <frank () knobbe us> wrote:
However, the topic at hand doesn't lend itself to a quick switch or simple addition of data at the end of the stream. If you want to add malware to an SMTP session on the fly, you will have to intercept and rewrite the email. ...
Well, that really depends on what was meant by "in transit" and on the Email architecture between sender and "victim"...
... A plain text email will have to be converted to a MIME encapsulated email so that you can add the attachment on the fly.
Nah -- most "user friendly" MUAs will find UUencode "begin" lines arbitrarily deep in messages these days (after all, perhaps the single most used MUA -- OE -- still supports this format for outgoing attachments, though does not default to this for SMTP; only NNTP), so all you need to do is insert your encoded malware at the end of the SMTP data stream (i.e. immediately before the ".<CR><LF<CR><LF>"). That in turn is even easier if you can get to run on a machine relaying between sender and victim, or acting as mail server for either.
Tricky, but very doable. It probably won't take long and you'll have an adware/malware adding email proxy in the wild :)
Well, a few self-mailing viruses have already done it, if you count acting as a relay on the sending machine as "in transit". The first successful self-mailer, Ska (aka Happy99) did just this, intercepting a couple of critical WinSock APIs (send and receive from memory) and interdicting an additional Email (carrying an encoded copy of itself) into the Email sending chain, after copying the headers of the victim's actual Email. Thus, each address a Ska victim sent a message to (that was delivered from their PC into the Internet Email chain via port 25) would receive another message, apparently also from that person, which was actually a copy of the virus. (Ska was "thoughtful" in keeping a list of addresses it had already sent itself to and checked the address on each outgoing message was not already in this list, only sending itself to those addresses not already on the list.) One of the Hybris plugins also did much the same, except it added itself (via MIME) as an attachment to actual messages from its victims, and I have a vague idea some of the Klez variants may have been up to similar jiggery-pokery... -- Nick FitzGerald Computer Virus Consulting Ltd. Ph/FAX: +64 3 3529854 _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html
Current thread:
- RE: [inbox] malware added in transit Vincent . Maes (Mar 18)
- RE: [inbox] malware added in transit Frank Knobbe (Mar 18)
- RE: [inbox] malware added in transit Nick FitzGerald (Mar 18)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- RE: [inbox] malware added in transit James . Cupps (Mar 18)
- RE: [inbox] malware added in transit Frank Knobbe (Mar 18)