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Security Nerd Stuff

NEW: Twitterank - ranking your gulability NOT your Twitterness

author Posted by: ash on date Nov 13th, 2008 | filed Filed under: Uncategorized

There’s a site getting around the twitter circuit at the moment called “Twitterank” that’s meant to rate your Twitterness in the “Twitterverse”.

The site in fact is used to steal your Twitter username and password - it’s a farce!

Oliver Marks has done a write up about the events on ZDNet so go and have a read about it over there (I don’t want to pinch his hard work)

Register Now! SANS Security West, January 24-February in Las Vegas

author Posted by: ash on date Nov 13th, 2008 | filed Filed under: Uncategorized
Hey all .. I know I’m a long way away .. but not all of you guys that read this are in Australia like me (and Chris - don’t forget he’s mentoring a course soon! Get the details HERE) ..so you should make the effort to get along to the SAN Security West shindig!
From their site -

“SANS is pleased to be back in Las Vegas for SANS Security West 2009 on January 24-Feburary 1, 2009 with our top-rated instructors and 19 outstanding course offerings. Now is the time to improve your information security skills with the best security training your money can buy. Then, join us and 200 of your closest friends for SANS Super Bowl XLIII Party (February 1). Why not register now?

Managers: Here are five really great reasons to consider sending your IT staff to SANS Security West 2009 in Las Vegas.

Register now and use your remaining 2008 Training budget for 2009 training.
Getting chilly where you are? Vegas in January daytime temps are near 60 degrees.
Depending on the departure city, flights to Vegas can be cheaper than to other major cities.
Between hands-on immersion courses and evening cutting-edge content sessions, your staff will bring back top-level security training that they can use back in your office the first day back.  This could be the most important thing you do for you company as you ensure that your IT staff has the tools and knowledge to protect your business.
Seasonal Affective Disorder or Winter Blues can be a demotivating factor in the workplace and lead to discontent and loss of productivity. Give your employees a week in the sun and dry desert heat of Vegas during the worst of the Winter Blues.”

Register Now! SANS Security West, January 24-February 1 in Las Vegas http://www.sans.org/info/35143
Who knows .. maybe you’ll meet some nice cocktail waitress and get married by a fat Elvis impersonator while skydiving AND learn all about security!! Sounds like a date to me!

Has this happened to you? AVG deletes important Windows files

author Posted by: ash on date Nov 11th, 2008 | filed Filed under: Uncategorized

"The popular virus scanner AVG released an update yesterday that caused their software to mark user32.dll as a virus. Since this is a rather critical file, AVG's suggestion to remove it caused problems for users around the world who are now advised to restore the file through the Windows Recovery Console. AVG just posted an update about this (FAQ item 1574) in the support section of their site. Their forums are full of complaints."

How to find an MX record for a domain using nslookup on a Windows machine

author Posted by: ash on date Nov 6th, 2008 | filed Filed under: Uncategorized
Just had to give one of our helpdesk guys a quick run down on mx records and how to find them .. I thought I would just add it on here in case someone needed to know how to do it (on a Windows machine)
 

An MX record or Mail exchanger record is a type of resource record in the Domain Name System (DNS) specifying how Internet e-mail should be routed using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). Each MX record contains a preference and a host name, so that the collection of MX records for a given domain name point to the servers that should receive e-mail for that domain, and their priority relative to each other.

 

 

To find an MX record on a Windows machine with nslookup

 

1.     Open a DOS Command Prompt 

2.     Type "nslookup". 

3.     Your computer's DNS Server name and IP address will be displayed. 

4.     Type "set type=mx" - This will cause NSLOOKUP to only return what are known as MX (Mail eXchange) records from the DNS servers. 

5.     For an example, type "hotmail.com". 

6.     Results returned should look similar to this:

 

Server:  ns1.xxx.com

Address:  192.168.0.1

 

Non-authoritative answer:

hotmail.com     MX preference = 5, mail exchanger = mx2.hotmail.com

hotmail.com     MX preference = 5, mail exchanger = mx3.hotmail.com

hotmail.com     MX preference = 5, mail exchanger = mx4.hotmail.com

hotmail.com     MX preference = 5, mail exchanger = mx1.hotmail.com

 

hotmail.com     nameserver = ns1.hotmail.com

hotmail.com     nameserver = ns2.hotmail.com

hotmail.com     nameserver = ns3.hotmail.com

hotmail.com     nameserver = ns4.hotmail.com

mx2.hotmail.com internet address = 65.54.254.145

mx2.hotmail.com internet address = 65.54.252.230

mx2.hotmail.com internet address = 65.54.166.230

mx3.hotmail.com internet address = 65.54.254.140

mx3.hotmail.com internet address = 65.54.253.99

mx3.hotmail.com internet address = 65.54.167.5

mx4.hotmail.com internet address = 65.54.254.151

mx4.hotmail.com internet address = 65.54.253.230

mx4.hotmail.com internet address = 65.54.167.230

mx1.hotmail.com internet address = 65.54.254.129

mx1.hotmail.com internet address = 65.54.252.99

mx1.hotmail.com internet address = 65.54.166.99

ns1.hotmail.com internet address = 216.200.206.140

ns2.hotmail.com internet address = 216.200.206.139

ns3.hotmail.com internet address = 209.185.130.68

ns4.hotmail.com internet address = 64.4.29.24

 

7.     Note the first line after "Non-authoritative answer".

 

The "MX preference" specifies which mail server to use and in which order. The lower the number, the more preferred the mail server is. In this case, since the preferences for each mail server are the same, you can use any of the four "mail exchangers".

SANS Hacking course in Sydney January 2009 - Chris Mohan

author Posted by: ash on date Nov 3rd, 2008 | filed Filed under: Courses, sans, security

Are you in Sydney? <insert yes here>

Do you like SANS courses? <insert yes here>

Are you interested in hacking techniques, exploits or incident handling? <insert yes here>

Oh really?? Then you should sign up for Chris Mohan’s next mentoring program!!

Chris has successfully applied to be a mentor for the SANS Security 504: SANS Hacker Techniques, Exploits and Incident Handling course.

He’ll be running the course in Chatswood, Sydney on the starting on Wednesday 21st of January 2009, every Wednesday evening from 6:30pm to 8:30pm for ten weeks.There’s plenty of parking and it’s easy to get to via public transport on trains or buses.

What Chris hopes you’ll come away from the ten weeks isn’t that you’ll be able to break in to top security systems; it’s that you have a better capacity to understand how common, freely available tools are being used against now. Working with that awareness and developing of strategies to build up your own in depth defences and responses to better secure your systems.

For those CISSP’s out there, the course is worth 36 CPE’s.

TUITION DISCOUNTS!

SANS offers group registration discounts for 2 or more students who register from the same organization. To obtain the Group Discount fee and Registration Code offered for this course, contact Miranda Ruddick at mentor@sans.org PRIOR to registering, and provide the names and e-mail addresses of all the students registering within your organization.

If you’re a member of ACS or AISA, discounts are also available, so check with your local branch for the discount code.

If you’re not a either of those, then drop Chris a line and he’ll beg SANS for a discount code on your behalf!

You can’t ask more that than!

Please drop him a line if you have any questions Christopher {dot} Mohan [@] gmail {dot} com.

While you’re at it, you should check out his site too http://www.chris-mohan.com/

A little bit more info on the MS08-067 trojan/worm

author Posted by: ash on date Oct 27th, 2008 | filed Filed under: Uncategorized

Troj/Gimmiv-A is a Trojan for the Windows platform.

When Troj/Gimmiv-A is run, the following file is dropped:

<System>\wbem\sysmgr.dll

This file is also detected as Troj/Gimmiv-A

Troj/Gimmiv-A sets the following registry entries to link the dll with svchost.exe:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SvcHost
sysmgr
sysmgr

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\sysmgr\Parameters
ServiceDll
<System>\wbem\sysmgr.dll

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\sysmgr\Parameters
ServiceMain
ServiceMainFunc

Troj/Gimmiv-A then also creates a service with the a Service Name of "sysmgr" and a Display Name of "System Maintenance Service" to run the dropped dll on startup by running "<Root>\System32\svchost.exe -k sysmgr".

The dll includes functionality to send information about the infected computer to a remote website, including information about what anti-virus product is being run.

Gimmiv.A exploits critical vulnerability (MS08-067) - details

author Posted by: ash on date Oct 27th, 2008 | filed Filed under: security

I pinched this from the ThreatExpert Blog - hope you guys don’t mind .. but it’s a really good breakdown of the “worm” that’s exploiting this new vulnerability!

 

Gimmiv.A exploits critical vulnerability (MS08-067)

Critical vulnerability in Server Service has only been patched by Microsoft (MS08-067), as a new worm called Gimmiv.A has found to be exploiting it in-the-wild.

Once executed, the worm will drop 3 files: winbase.dll, basesvc.dll and syicon.dll into the directory %System%\Wbem\basesvc.dll.

It will then install and start up a new service called BaseSvc with the display name “Windows NT Baseline”. The service BaseSvc will force svchost.exe to load the DLL winbase.dll which is specified as a ServiceDll parameter for BaseSvc.

Once loaded, winbase.dll will load 2 additional DLLs into the address space of the system process services.exe: basesvc.dll and syicon.dll.

After dropping and loading the aforementioned DLLs, the worm will collect system information from the compromised computer, collect passwords from the Windows protected storage and Outlook Express passwords cache, and post collected details to a remote host. The details are posted in an encrypted form, by using AES (Rijndael) encryption.

The collected information seems to specify if the following AV products are found to be installed on the compromised system:

  • BitDefender Antivirus
  • Jiangmin Antivirus
  • Kingsoft Internet Security
  • Kaspersky Antivirus
  • Microsoft’s OneCare Protection
  • Rising Antivirus
  • Trend Micro

Details collected by Gimmiv.A are then posted to a personal profile of the user “perlbody”, hosted with http://www.t35.com hosting provider. At this time, the collected details are displayed at this link.

At the time of this writing, there are 3,695 entries in that file. Every line contains an encrypted string, which could potentially conceal current victims’ details, indirectly indicating how many victims have been compromised by this worm so far.

The worm also fetches a few files from the following locations:

  • http://summertime.1gokurimu.com
  • http://perlbody.t35.com
  • http://doradora.atzend.com

One of the downloaded files is a GIF image shown below:

The most interesting part of this worm is implemented in the DLL basesvc.dll. This DLL is responsible for the network functionality of Gimmiv.A.

What needs to be clarified here, is that the exploit MS08-067 used by Gimmiv.A allows remote code execution, which makes it potentially “wormable”. Considering that the vector of attack is RPC DCOM and the code is similar to typical RPC DCOM network-aware worms, which is used against other hosts in the network, Gimmiv.A is determined in this post as a worm. However, it could technically be classified as a network-aware trojan that employs functionality of a typical RPC DCOM network-aware worm to attack other hosts in the network.

Gimmiv.A starts from probing other IPs from the same network by sending them a sequence of bytes “abcde” or “12345″. The worm then attempts to exploit other machines by sending them a malformed RPC request and relying on a vulnerable Server service. As known, Server service uses a named pipe SRVSVC as its RPC interface, which is registered with UUID equal to 4b324fc8-1670-01d3-1278-5a47bf6ee188. In order to attack it, the worm firstly attempts to bind SRVSVC by constructing the following RPC request:

Next, Gimmiv.A submits a maliciously crafted RPC request that instructs SRVSVC to canonicalize a path “\c\..\..\AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” by calling the vulnerable RPC request NetPathCanonicalize, as shown in the traffic dump below (thanks to Don Jackson from SecureWorks for the provided dump):

As this is a critical exploit, Microsoft strongly recommends that users apply the update referred to in Security Bulletin MS08-067 immediately.

MS08-067 - Critical - OUT OF BAND

author Posted by: ash on date Oct 24th, 2008 | filed Filed under: Uncategorized, security
Got this alert from Sophos & Microsoft this morning
 
MS08-067 - an out-of-band Windows critical security update 

When Microsoft decides to release an out of band security update only a week after the regular monthly update you can be sure that we are dealing with a serious issue.

You can read more about it in Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-067 and we have also created our own advisory.

The vulnerability can be exploited using an unauthenticated SMB/RPC session. It is a classic buffer overflow vulnerability with a potential to cause serious headache to system administrators if left unpatched.

It is the first such buffer overflow remote execution vulnerability we have seen in the last few years.

The last time we saw a similar vulnerability, if I remember correctly, was in 2004, with the W32/Sasser worm.

It remains to be seen how interested the virus writers will be in this vulnerability, considering a general trend towards hidden malware that does not replicate. The noise of generated network traffic seen with large scale outbreaks of self-replicating malware may not appeal to modern day virus writers.

Let us hope that the dark days of Blaster and Sasser history will not be repeated.

Vanja Svajcer, SophosLabs, UK

Wireshark 1.0.4 Released

author Posted by: ash on date Oct 23rd, 2008 | filed Filed under: Uncategorized
Wireshark 1.0.4 Released

Wireshark 1.0.4 has been released. Installers for Windows, Mac OS X Intel 10.5, and source code is now available.

In this releaseSecurity-related bugs in the Bluetooth ACL,
Bluetooth RFCOMM, PRP, Q.931, MATE, and USB dissectors, as well as the
Tammos CommView file parser have been fixed. See the advisory for details.

Many other bugs have been fixed.

This release includes an experimental package for Mac OS X Intel 10.5. For a complete list of changes, please refer to the 1.0.4 release notes.

Official releases are available right now from the download page.

A Chronology of Data Breaches

author Posted by: ash on date Oct 21st, 2008 | filed Filed under: security

I’ve known about this site now for a while … it’s an interesting place to go when you have a few free minutes.

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (if that is their real name *narrows eyes*) have a running list of all the reported security breaches.

From their page:

What does the Chronology of Data Breaches contain?

The data breaches noted below have been reported because the personal information compromised includes data elements useful to identity thieves, such as Social Security numbers, account numbers, and driver’s license numbers. Some breaches that do NOT expose such sensitive information have been included in order to underscore the variety and frequency of data breaches. However, we have not included the number of records involved in such breaches in the total because we want this compilation to reflect breaches that expose individuals to identity theft as well as breaches that qualify for disclosure under state laws. The breaches posted below include only those reported in the United States. They do not include incidents in other countries.”

The list is an eye opener .. the fact that I think is more disturbing is that this is the original number of records reported, as we all know this number generally changes as the investigation goes on (and it very rarely decreases). As we have seen recently with the UK MOD incident (where they lost an unencrypted hard drive) the number of records went from 100,000 to 1.7 million .. big difference huh!

Anyway .. go have a look through the list and have a stroll down memory lane .. just for old times sake!