Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: 0day: PDF pwns Windows
From: Jason <security () brvenik com>
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2007 10:30:13 -0400
J. Oquendo wrote:
Crispin Cowan wrote:This is a perfectly viable way to produce what amounts to Internet munitions. The recent incident of Estonia Under *Russian Cyber Attack*? <http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3678606> is an example of such a network brush war in which possession of such an arsenal would be very useful. CrispinOne would presume that governments across the world would have their shares of unpublished exploits but with all the incidences of government networks being compromised, I don't believe this to be the case. What happened in Estonia though was nothing more than a botnet attack on their infrastructure (http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199602023) not an 0day attack. 0day's defined as "unpublished exploit" wouldn't do much in a cyberwarfare theater as country against country as the purpose of such warfare would LIKELY be to disconnect/disrupt communications. In the cases of industrial/country vs. country espionage it might (likely) will be more effective for the long haul but in the short term, 0days will be useless in this type of "cyberfight". Think about it logically, you want to "disrupt" country X's communications, not tap them. You'd want to make sure their physical army had no mechanism to communicate. You'd want to make sure financially you would cripple them. Not worry about injecting some crapware onto a machine for the sake of seeing what their doing. Reconnaissance is usually something done beforehand to mitigate your strategy. Not mitigate what's happening after you possibly sent 1Gb of traffic down a 100Mb pipe.
You present a valid position but fall short of seeing the whole picture. As an attacker, nation state or otherwise, my goal being to cripple communications, 0day is the way to go. Resource exhaustion takes resources, something the 0day can deprive the enemy of. Knocking out infrastructure with attacks is a far more effective strategy. You can control it's timing, launch it with minimal resources, from anywhere, coordinate it, and be gone before it can be thwarted. The botnet would only serve as cover while the real attack happens. I am more inclined to believe that botnets in use today really only serve as cover, thuggish retribution, and extortion tools, not as effective tools of warfare. No real warfare threat would risk exposing themselves through the use of or construction of a botnet. _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/
Current thread:
- Re: defining 0day, (continued)
- Re: defining 0day scott (Sep 25)
- Re: defining 0day Zow (Sep 27)
- Re: defining 0day David Gillett (Sep 25)
- Re: defining 0day evilrabbi (Sep 26)
- defining 0day Gadi Evron (Sep 25)
- Re: defining 0day Juergen Marester (Sep 25)
- Re: defining 0day Juergen Marester (Sep 25)
- Re: 0day: PDF pwns Windows Lawrence Paul MacIntyre (Sep 25)
- Re: 0day: PDF pwns Windows Crispin Cowan (Sep 25)
- Re: 0day: PDF pwns Windows J. Oquendo (Sep 25)
- Re: 0day: PDF pwns Windows Jason (Sep 25)
- Re: 0day: PDF pwns Windows J. Oquendo (Sep 25)
- Re: 0day: PDF pwns Windows Valdis . Kletnieks (Sep 25)
- Re: 0day: PDF pwns Windows Gadi Evron (Sep 25)
- Re: 0day: PDF pwns Windows Jason (Sep 25)
- Re: 0day: PDF pwns Windows North, Quinn (Sep 25)
- Re: 0day: PDF pwns Windows Steven Adair (Sep 25)
- Re: 0day: PDF pwns Windows Gadi Evron (Sep 25)
- Re: 0day: PDF pwns Windows Iggy E (Sep 25)
- Re: 0day: PDF pwns Windows Geo. (Sep 21)