Slammer Source Code Provides Clues

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,848302,00.asp

By Dennis Fisher
January 27, 2003 

As corporate IT departments go about the business of cleaning up their 
networks, there are strong indications that the SQL Slammer worm that 
brought down portions of the Internet over the weekend is based on the 
work of an obscure Chinese cracking group. 

Signatures within the worm's source code indicate that a group known 
as the Honker Union of China - also known as the Hacker Union of 
China - may be responsible for writing the code, according to security 
experts who have analyzed the code. However, experts caution that 
although they are certain of the code's origins, someone else may have 
actually loosed the worm on the Internet. 

"We're 100 percent certain this was based on the CNHonker code," said 
Chris Rouland, director of the X-Force research team at Internet 
Security Systems Inc., in Atlanta. "But that doesn't mean they 
released it." 

Although the Honker Union has not yet claimed responsibility for the 
worm, it has posted on its Web site in the past several versions of an 
exploit for the vulnerability used by Slammer. The group has been 
quite active in pro-Chinese and anti-American hacking activity in the 
past and was involved in a U.S.-Chinese cyber-skirmish that erupted in 
early 2001. 

The worm did most of its damage in Asia, particularly South Korea, 
which was effectively taken off the Internet for several hours 
Saturday. And some experts have pointed out that the Slammer worm was 
released on the anniversary of a major offensive in the Korean War 
that began pushing back Communist Chinese forces that had penetrated 
South Korea. 

Despite the possible political motivations behind the worm's release, 
White House security officials downplayed the idea that this was an 
act of terrorism. 

"We'd rather characterize terrorism as something that physically kills 
people," said Marcus Sachs, director of communications infrastructure 
protection in the Office of Cyberspace Security in Washington. "There 
was no lasting damage done to the infrastrucutre. We'd like to see the 
term cyber-terror dropped." 

The worm, known variously as Slammer and Sapphire, hit the Internet 
around 12:30 a.m. Eastern on Saturday and began spreading quickly. 
Within the first hour, it had infected more than 50,000 machines, 
Rouland said. It continued to spread throughout the day Saturday and 
has now found its way into more than 200,000 machines, experts say. 
Its infection rate was much faster than the Code Red worm of 2001, 
even though there are far fewer SQL servers on the Internet than there 
are Web servers running the Microsoft Corp. IIS software that Code Red 
attacked. 

But, while Code Red continued to spread for several days, Slammer was 
contained relatively quickly. The shorter life-cycle is due to several 
factors, but much of it has to do with quick reactions from ISPs and 
large network operators who all agreed to block traffic on port 1434, 
which is the port Slammer uses to infect machines. This kind of 
wholesale filtering is virtually unheard of and would not have been 
possible with Code Red. Also, government agencies reacted much more 
quickly to Slammer than they did to previous attacks, thanks mainly to 
experience and help from private-sector security firms. 

"There was quite a bit of activity going on here," said Sachs. "We 
first saw it, I think at the [National Communications System] at about 
1 a.m., and by 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. everyone who needed to know was out of 
bed and notified." 

Others agreed that the cooperation among the various ISACs, government 
agencies and private firms was key to the worm's containment. 

"I was the first one to call the [National Infrastrucutre Protection 
Center] and that was at about 3:45 a.m., and we had a pretty good 
handle on the analysis by then," said Pete Allor, director of 
operations for the Information Technology Information Sharing and 
Access Center and manager of the threat intelligence service at ISS. 
"We had the packet captures early, and the analysis was pretty 
straightforward. We talked to the Financial Services ISAC, [and] 
worked closely with the telecom folks, all of them." 



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