Re: Hacked web server

[Ryan Yagatich <ryany () pantek com>]

Hi all,
        As the answer to this has already been mentioned (iis unicode), I 
will skip the details behind it. My question is actually related to a more 
broader topic. 
        This is a case where a party utilizes their firewall to keep their 
network secure, as well as applying Microsoft Service Packs to their 
systems behind it. The problem that I see with this is that many NT 
administrators that I come across all have the same notion in mind that as 
long as they apply the latest service pack to their systems, whether it be 
immediately after it comes out, or a day or so after, they believe that 
the system is declared secure. 
        As many people know, and many do not, Microsoft releases security 
bulletins regularly which patch vulnerabilities and the such. If the 
administrator is using Microsoft Windows 2000, XP (or maybe others by now) 
Microsoft has created the 'auto update' scheduler which runs regularly 
'behind the scenes' that the administrator can use to have it 
automatically apply these patches.
        How is it that with services like this available that people are 
still not aware of them? Or, could it be that they are well aware of them 
but are falling victim to the notion that there really is no need for 
security in general, and that they are not at risk?
        Then we have the firewall. Again, many people believe that a 
firewall alone protects their network. In some scenarios you have 
firewalls that are performing (e|in)gres filtering, and some that are just 
machines with NAT on them being called a firewall. What about the other 
elements of a firewall? What about proxying, IDS's, monitoring, and 
integrity? What about protecting the firewall itself?
        So we have basically a world of technology where security is not 
really a big concern to many, which then introduces the fact that they are 
either uneducated or have insufficient funds to keep their systems secure. 
(yes there are more, but I'm just covering the basics here). So the next 
question is, how does the security community 'bridge the gap' between the 
people who are either uneducated enough or educated and not able to afford 
the security with that of a company/individual who is willing to 'make the 
sacrifice'?
        From my experience, the only real time when someone is interested 
in the security, at least interested being willing to move forward, is if 
their systems are compromised either once or many times over. The other 
side of this is persistence, I worked with a company at one point where 
they swore up and down that their systems were secure, exactly by the 
method as the email snippet from below. Over time, I continued to persist 
and state that services packs and firewalls are not the only elements of 
security. What wound up happening? Eventually they gave in and said 'here, 
go ahead and try to prove us wrong', and sure enough 15 minutes later 
their primary web server was found to be vulnerable to several different 
vulnerabilities.
        So, we have 2 scenarios where we can broadcast this information 
out, but since the world contains so many information systems that contain 
only the 'latest service pack', its almost overwhelming as to what to do 
to alert these people of the problems.
        My final question now, is, how are we to really communicate with 
the rest of the world with information like what is mentioned above? There 
are many companies out there which have been trying to advertise this 
information out to the world, but they usually get the typical responses 
declining the services.
        I am interested in hearing from both sides of this, from the sides 
of the people whom have had experience in dealing with this common 
scenario as well as those whom decline security services like IDSs and the 
such.

Thanks,
,_____________________________________________________,
\ Ryan Yagatich                     support () pantek com \
/ Pantek Incorporated                  (877) LINUX-FIX /
\ http://www.pantek.com/security        (440) 519-1802 \
/       Are your networks secure? Are you certain?     /
\___1E3695185FDAB9800641B94CC170FB8267C18DF695784F22___\

On Fri, 10 Jan 2003, Rogelio Vidaurri Courcelle wrote:

> Hi... my web server (NT 4.0 SP6a) was hacked last friday, it has only
> one NIC with a public IP
> we have an OpenBSD Firewall (PF) that filters both incoming and
> outcoming traffic.... this firewall has no ip addresses.....
> external users have access to our web server only by port 80... 
> we had a popup window in our default page.... i dont know if that's why
> he could hack our server.... i'm not an expert in these.. i'm a
> begineer.....
<SNIP>....


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