RE: Publishing Nimda Logs

From: Benjamin Tomhave (falconat_private)
Date: Wed May 08 2002 - 09:15:18 PDT

  • Next message: Thomas Frerichs: "Re: Publishing Nimda Logs"

    Whoa, whoa, whoa....having worked for an ISP in recent history, I can
    honestly tell you that most knowledgable techs are just as frustrated with
    infected end-users as everyone else, so sending single email messages with
    each SYN, etc., is a BAD IDEA.  You're basically saying that you want to
    further prevent these people from doing their jobs altogether, or to start
    ignoring your messages altogether, because some end-users are universally
    ignorant and negligent.
    
    Instead, there are few things which ISPs can and should be doing with this
    matter.  First, acceptable usage policies have to be updated to current
    contexts and continuously presented to customers as a reminder of their
    responsibility.  One of the key portions of updated policies should be
    verbage along the lines of "If your system(s) become(s) infected with a
    worm, virus, trojan, or has become compromised by attackers and used for
    other purposes, ISP reserves the right to suspend and/or terminate your
    service without prior notice."  Then the ISP can legally blackhole the
    offenders.  Second, ISPs should not be allowing inbound traffic to accounts
    that aren't paying for it.  In other words, firewall off those residential
    (and problematic) users!  They aren't generally paying for business class
    service, so why give it away?  Though this won't help defend against
    customers who are already compromised, it should go a long way toward
    minimize the compromise of residential (and perhaps even "basic business")
    customers in the future.  Third, as much as it sucks, ISPs *must* be willing
    to discontinue service to problematic customers, despite the desire to have
    that revenue stream intact.  It's simply a matter of acting responsibly.
    Along with this, if a customer has to be terminated for causes stemming from
    compromise, negligence, etc., then local, state and federal authorities
    (depending on scale) should be notified of the problem and lawyers should
    probably be brought in, even if only as a precautionary measure.  The
    contrapositive of this is to have fully open, completely unregulated
    Internet service, which is a trend we are getting away from because of the
    record for abuse.
    
    On the idea about listing IPs, logs, etc. -- though I think this is an ok
    idea, I agree with the comment regarding SMTP relays and the effectiveness
    of ORBS and co.  Though it would be very cool to setup a system similar to
    the RBL lists and be able to automate routing blackhole lists, I can see
    this information being abused in a number of ways.  Furthermore, one of the
    key frustration with the SMTP RBLs is that the lists often are not updated
    and re-evaluated quickly enough, if at all.  In fact, I'm aware of some
    rogue RBLs that have blackholed entire ISPs (Qwest, Sprintlink, BellSouth,
    etc.) because they are "known spam hosters" -- which is hardly fair to those
    customers who are not open relays, but get blackholed anyway.  Thank
    goodness these people are the minority, but regardless, it doesn't make me
    want to push use of RBL lists.  The other thing comes down to asking who
    among us wants to donate the time to maintain a routing blackhole list for
    this sort of thing?  If you're already a sysadmin/netadmin/infosec for your
    company, you likely don't have a lot of time to chance these things down,
    right?  So, that kind of kills things.
    
    Just remember: Silver was a horse, not a bullet. :)
    
    cheers,
    
    -ben
    
    -----Original Message-----
    From: rootat_private [mailto:rootat_private]On Behalf Of
    E
    Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 5:50 AM
    To: incidentsat_private
    Subject: Re: Publishing Nimda Logs
    
    
    I have struggled with this problem for months. My ISP has a large number of
    broadband users,
    and these people are still infected with nimda.I tried for weeks to get them
    to
    do something about it.
    I even started offering them technical suggestions on ways to prevent it.
    The
    end result was
    absolutely nothing. They obviously do not give a damn about it, and this
    goes
    for many other
    ISP's and organisations. The people who are infected with nimda are being
    criminally negligent.
    They are allowing their machines to reinfect others. (Personally I also
    think
    Microsoft is
    criminally negligent for releasing the bogus webserver and OS in the first
    place).
    
     The last resort that I can think of is mailing your nimda logs to the ISP,
    and
    yes, I mean every single
    SYN that comes in should go to them in a seperate email. Then perhaps their
    tech / security people will
    start to realise what a complete annoyance this worm is.
    
     Publishing the IP's will achieve nothing. Each infected person needs to be
    notified that he/she is infected.
    Many are just broadband users in dynamic ip pools, who probably are not
    aware
    of the problem anyway.
    The bets are most network admins dont care about it, perhaps dont even know
    their users are infected.
    
    Serious lessons should be learned here. This is the kind of thing that
    happens
    when you dress up an OS
    designed for secretaries as a webserver / multiuser OS, and put it in the
    hands
    of millions of
    ignorant users. I am shocked that MS is not being held accountable for this
    (and the multide of
    other worms in the past couple of years).
    
     When are people going to realise that a corporation who puts its OS into
    the
    homes of millions of people,
    bears some responsiblity for the damage, cost, annoyance and above all
    wasted
    time caused by poor
    standards.
    
    
    Deus, Attonbitus" wrote:
    
    > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
    > Hash: SHA1
    >
    >   It is truly sad that so many people are still infected with Nimda. There
    >   is a company with my corporate ISP that I have notified 3 times now that
    >   they are attacking other systems. It seems they can't figure out how not
    >   to install Win2k/IIS5.0 while connected to the net. The sad thing is
    that
    >   this is a computer company.
    >
    >   I have seen a site where people have published the IP of the offending
    >   boxes for stuff like Nimda and CR. I am thinking about doing the same
    >   thing so that people can either use that information to block the IP's
    or
    >   to do whatever they want for that matter.
    >
    >   I'm curious to see how other feel about this. Is it:
    >
    >   1) Recommended. Go for it and publish the IP's and let the "Gods of IP"
    >   sort out the damage.
    >   2) A Bad Thing. These are innocent victims, and you will just have them
    be
    >   attacked by evil people.
    >   3) Boring. Who cares? It's Nimda, and an everyday part of life. Deal
    with
    >   it and ignore the logs.
    >
    >   If "1," then I was thinking of going with a "Hall of Shame" and
    providing
    >   ARIN look ups, contacts, and the whole bit. I could even allow other
    >   people to post logs there and stuff like that...
    >
    >   Input appreciated.
    >
    >   AD
    >
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    >
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