Security Incidents mailing list archives

RE: Monkeybrains.net and badtrans compromise information


From: "Michael Graham" <jmgraham () midsouth rr com>
Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2002 15:04:20 -0600

I really don't want to sound whiny, but:

Can we PLEASE stop the constant cross-posting to the various secfocus
lists?
If you're interested in more than one list, subscribe to them
individually.  I'm sure though that some passing interest is no excuse
to effectively spam the mailboxes of anyone who is subscribed to
multiple lists.  It only takes a couple of these cross-posted threads at
the same time to turn into tons of redundant e-mail.

Thanks


Michael Graham
CCSA CCSE
Line Haul Systems Integration
FedEx Services


-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Pfeil [mailto:Ken () infosec101 org] 
Sent: Friday, January 04, 2002 2:50 PM
To: van Wyk, Ken; incidents () securityfocus com
Cc: focus-virus () securityfocus com
Subject: RE: Monkeybrains.net and badtrans compromise information

Here's a little snippet from the site. Any legal experts in the crowd?


"Individuals
MonkeyBrains is doing these requests for information for free for
individual
users. The software, time, energy, and the whole site is run by one
person:
me! So, if you utilize this service, then feel free to donate $10 (or
more,
or less) to my ISP, monkeybrains.net. Or, if you need some consulting,
buy
me a plane ticket, give me some $$$ and I'd love to work for you for a
couple of days or weeks. Traveling is fun!

Corporations
If you are on the security team for an isp or corporation, and wish to
have
a list of all the compromised accounts and email addresses, you must
contribute at least $10 for me to email you domain wide results. I was
doing
this for free, but after about 100 requests, I noted: "Fark, this is
taking
up a lot of my time. These corporatations have the money and will not
mind
parting with a little, so I am going to charge them for my time." Also,
while this service was free, I received ZERO donations, so now, this
free
service is a pay-for service. Now, you may wonder, who the heck would
use
this service from some random guy; well, these domains have used this
service:
.nasdaq-online.com
.prudential.com
.motorola.com
.etrade.com
.saic.com
.mmm.com
.bp.com
.mil
(organized by number of charaters)

Also, I am forcing good policy on corporations:

abuse () yourdomain com must be a valid email address at your domain.
Results
are only sent to that address for requesting domains. This ensures that
sensitive information is not sent to joe_schmoo () yourdomain com.
Furthermore,
as an ISP operator, I get highly annoyed when domains do not have abuse
accounts set up.
Microtransactions between large companies and users of the Internet are
encouraged by making PayPal the payment method for this service.

$1 - Thanks!
$5 - This site is great
$10 - Send me the info!
$20 - Take a coffee break and walk the dog!
$50 - Fancy dinner with girlfriend
$100 - This site helped me patch up a bunch of compromised accounts!
In closing, I don't want to sound like a money grubber, but I am self
employed and received $0 to make this website. Help out if you like, and
if
you don't want to, that is fine too.

- Rudy (badtrans () monkeybrains net)"

-----Original Message-----
From: van Wyk, Ken [mailto:Ken () para-protect com]
Sent: Friday, January 04, 2002 2:38 PM
To: incidents () securityfocus com
Cc: focus-virus () securityfocus com
Subject: RE: Monkeybrains.net and badtrans compromise information


Jon Williams writes:
I've got to admit, I was suspicious when I got the same
message, but when
I
tried getting the information and was told essentially "You've got
compromised passwords, but you have to pay us to find out which," it
sounds
more like extortion than good cyber citizenship.

I'd just like to point out a couple things briefly:
1) We have no affiliation whatsoever with monkeybrains.net;
2) We were unaware of their intent to charge for this information;
3) After scanning for ":443" in their database/web site and seeing >
2000
compromised SSL-encrypted sessions, we started alerting our customers;
4) We alerted a number of companies whose employees, customers, etc.,
were
in that database, however there was no obligation or fee to any of
those
companies for our alerts;
5) Had we known of monkeybrains.net's intention to charge for
releasing the
information, we would have noted so in the alerts that we sent to
companies
that we found in their database.

Cheers,

Ken

Kenneth R. van Wyk
CTO & Corporate Vice President
Para-Protect, Inc.
www.para-protect.com




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