nanog mailing list archives
Re: Good Job, White House!
From: "Christopher A. Woodfield" <rekoil () semihuman com>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:54:11 -0400
Actually, what they did was disgustingly simple - it was observed that (1) the IP address, not the hostname, of www1.whitehouse.gov was hardcoded into the worm, and (2) the worm made a connection to port 80 on that IP address to make sure the host was live before launching the DoS. Given these two weaknesses, all that the whitehouse.gov admins had to do was move the server to a different IP, and nullroute the old IP. The worm tried to contact the old IP, couldn't open a socket, and quietly went dormant. I would expect that the next worm of this type will have neither of these vulnerabilities. -C
I'm personally more pleased with the network operators that dealt with the problem. Thanks, Guys! I'm not exactly sure what the White House did.
-- --------------------------- Christopher A. Woodfield rekoil () semihuman com PGP Public Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xB887618B
Current thread:
- Good Job, White House! Alan Clegg (Jul 23)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- RE: Good Job, White House! Rowland, Alan D (Jul 24)
- Re: Good Job, White House! Christopher A. Woodfield (Jul 24)