Hackers could be planning major attack, says White House

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1102/111202h1.htm

By Shane Harris
sharris () govexec com 
November 12, 2002 

A new computer worm infecting a popular World Wide Web technology is
proof that computer hackers have grown more sophisticated and could be
preparing a significant attack, according to a senior White House
official.

Marcus Sachs, director of communication and infrastructure protection
at the White House Office of Cyberspace Security, said hackers driven
to "the back streets and back alleys of the Internet" by intense law
enforcement scrutiny following the Sept. 11 attacks have quietly been
building new threats. The new worm, widely known as Slapper, is a
prime example of their abilities, he said.

Officials believe millions of devices are vulnerable to Slapper, which
is a computer code that burrows into a server, the program that
provides the files that constitute Web pages. It enters through a
well-known weakness in the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) that connects
servers to the Internet. Once inside, the worm forces the server to
seek out other infected machines, forming an army of so-called
"zombies" that could bombard Web sites with bogus requests for
information, causing a massive traffic jam on the Internet.

The attack method, known as a distributed denial-of-service attack,
has been used to disrupt service on sites such as Yahoo! and eBay.  
Attacks last year by other worms, such as Code Red and Nimda, caused
billions of dollars in damage and targeted some government Web sites,
including a White House server.

The Slapper worm was identified two months ago, but federal officials
still are concerned that many infected or at-risk organizations and
individuals haven’t taken adequate steps to protect themselves. The
FBI’s National Infrastructure Protection Center has found four
variants of the worm, and notes that rates of new infection have
declined. However, the agency also has warned that between 25,000 and
30,000 servers have already been infected. A steady buildup of
infections preceded the Code Red and Nimda attacks.

Sachs said Slapper represents a "double barrel" feat of hacker
engineering, because it targets two well-known devices that have long
been considered quite secure. The Apache server the worm attacks and
the hole in the SSL connection through which it enters are open source
products, meaning their design is publicly available. Sachs said there
has been a longstanding myth that open source technologies are safer
than proprietary systems because their design can be improved by
anyone who wants to examine them. The Slapper worm is helping to
dispel that notion, he said.

The SSL vulnerability exists on a number of products, but Slapper is
infecting only Apache servers that use the device.

Computer security experts believe Slapper is an evolution of previous
worms and viruses because it includes some of the capabilities of its
predecessors. It allows a remote attacker to hijack and command the
infected system, and it may cause network disruption when the zombie
systems communicate with one another, according to the Computer
Emergency Response Team Coordination Center, a federally funded
security research organization run by Carnegie Mellon University in
Pittsburgh.

Some believe Slapper is a sign of threats to come. "These types of
worms have the potential of becoming the much bigger problem out
there," said Vincent Weafer, senior director of the Symantec Anti
Virus Research Center in Santa Monica, Calif., who worked with the FBI
to investigate Code Red and other worms.

Advisories from the center and the FBI list a number of steps to
protect systems against Slapper.



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