RE: Intrusec 55808 Trojan Analysis

From: David J. Meltzer (djmat_private)
Date: Tue Jun 24 2003 - 07:54:52 PDT

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    First, understand the basic concept of this distributed trojan seems to
    be to collect a bunch of data (in this instance packet captures) and
    then periodically upload the captures to a known IP address.
    
    The basic idea of this "change of address" command that is not fully
    implemented is that a hacker, knowing the location of the trojans
    running on the Internet, could deliver a spoofed packet anywhere on the
    subnet the trojan is listening, and by doing so could change the trojan
    to deliver its packet captures to a different server on the internet.
    
    Since the delivered packet looks mostly like all the other spoofed 55808
    packets flying across the internet, the "change address" command is
    unlikely to attract much attention.  Since it can be delivered anywhere
    on the subnet the trojan is listening promiscuously on, it is difficult
    to figure out where the trojan is actually located even upon capturing
    this command.  
    
    On further review, this implementation is fairly ridiculous.  Why go
    through all the trouble of all this promiscuous mode sniffing and
    scanning to completely avoid the ability of anyone to detect the
    existence of the trojan, and then try to make a plain TCP connection,
    revealing the existence and location of all the trojans to anyone
    looking for that traffic?  An early unfinished version?  Poor code?
    Amateur work?  A joke?  A proof of concept?  Who knows...
    
    One could imagine future trojans that used these concepts in more viable
    and useful manners, but I will leave it to others to speculate on how to
    write a better trojan as I'm more interested in how to stop them.
    
    Hope that answers your question.
    
    -Dave
    
    -------------------
    David J. Meltzer
    djmat_private   
    CTO, Intrusec, Inc.
    
    -----Original Message-----
    From: gwhy555at_private [mailto:gwhy555at_private] 
    Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2003 2:30 AM
    To: incidentsat_private
    Subject: Re: Intrusec 55808 Trojan Analysis
    
    
    In-Reply-To: <008d01c3371a$fd5417d0$be01a8c0@ian>
    
    
    Say, could you explain a little further on the paragraph that reads:
    
    "The trojan appears to contain some functionality to change the IP
    address it delivers its packet captures to, but this functionality is
    not operational in the trojan we have obtained.  It appears the stubbed
    out code, if activated, would function as follows:  If a packet is
    captured that contains a window size of 55808 and a TCP option window
    scale of 2, the trojan modifies the IP address packet captures are
    delivered to based on the sequence number of that packet."
    
    Specifically what effect would this have if it were to be made 
    operational. I'm not really a tcp pro but I am interested in what this 
    thing might look like in the near future. 
    
    much appreciated.
    
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