South Korea suffered a major cyber attack yesterday. The origin of the attack seems to be China at the moment, but that is far from being definite.

I happened to be in one of the (several) cyber security operation centers, by pure coincidence. I had a chance to see events unravel in real time. Several banks have been hit (including the very large shinhan bank) and a few broadcasting channels.

The damage is hard to assess, since it’s now in everyone’s advantage to blame the cyber attack on anything from a system crash to the coffee machine running out of capsules. Budget and political moves will dominate most of the data that will be released in the next few days.
It’s clear, however, that the damage substantial. I reached out to a few friends in technical positions at various MSPs and most had a sleepless night. They’ve been hit hard.

The most interesting part of this incident, in my opinion, was a report on car GPS crashing while the attack was taking place. I haven’t seen a news report about that yet, and I couldn’t personally verify it (as I mentioned, I was stationary at the time, watching the frantic cyber-security team getting a handle on a difficult situation) but this is making rounds in security forums and a couple of friends confirmed to me that their car navigation system crashed and had to be restarted, at the exact time the attack was taking place.

The most likely explanation is that the broadcasting companies, who send TPEG data to the GPS devices (almost every car in Korea has a GPS device, almost all get real-time updates via TPEG), had sent malformed data which caused the devices to crash. This data could have been just a result of a domino effect from the networks crashing, or it could have been a very sophisticated proof-of-concept by the attacker to see if they can create a distruption. Traffic in Seoul is bad even on a normal day; without GPS devices it can be a nightmare.

Which brings up an interesting point about fuzzing network devices. TPEG fuzzers have been available for a while now (beSTORM has a TPEG module, and you can easily write your own TPEG fuzzer). The difficult part is getting the GPS device to communicate with the fuzzing generator; this is something the GPS developer can do (but probably won’t) but it is also possible for a government entity to do the necessary configuration to make that happen, given the proper resources or simply by forcing the vendors to cooperate.

The choice of the attacker to bring down the broadcasting networks might be deliberate: other than knocking TV and radio off the air (an obvious advantage in a pre-attack strike) the broadcasting networks control many devices who rely on their data. Forcing them to send malformed data to crash a variety of devices can have interesting implications. If I was a little more naive, I would predict that this will push governments around the world to focus more on fuzzing to discover these kind of vulnerabilities before they see their adversaries exploit them. But in the world we live in, they will instead throw around the phrase “APT” and buy more “APT detection products” (an oximoron if I’ve ever heard one). Thank god for APT, the greatest job saving invention since bloodletting.

An detailed analysis of the attack here:

http://training.nshc.net/KOR/Document/virus/20130321_320CyberTerrorIncidentResponseReportbyRedAlert(EN).pdf

And in other news, Gunter Ollman joins in the debate as to whether Imperva’s quasi-testing is worth citing (just about) and, with more enthusiasm, whether AV is worth paying for or even still breathing. If you haven’t come across Ollman’s writings on the topic before, it won’t surprise you that the answer is no. If you haven’t, he’s thoughtfully included several other links to articles where he’s given us the benefit of his opinions.

If it’s free, never ever bothers me with popups, and I never need to know it’s there, then it’s not worth the effort uninstalling it and I guess it can stay…

Ollman notes:

In particular there was great annoyance that a security vendor (representing an alternative technology) used VirusTotal coverage as their basis for whether or not new malware could be detected – claiming that initial detection was only 5%.

However, he doesn’t trouble himself to explain why the anti-malware industry (and VirusTotal itself) are so annoyed, or to comment on Imperva’s squirming following those criticisms. Nor does he risk exposing any methodology of his own to similar criticism, when he claims that:

desktop antivirus detection typically hovers at 1-2% … For newly minted malware that is designed to target corporate victims, the rate is pretty much 0% and can remain that way for hundreds of days after the malware has been released in to the wild.

Apparently he knows this from his own experience, so there’s no need to justify the percentages. And by way of distraction from this sleight of hand, he introduces ‘a hunchbacked Igor’ whom he visualizes ‘bolting on an iron plate for reinforcement to the Frankenstein corpse of each antivirus product as he tries to keep it alive for just a little bit longer…’ Amusing enough, I suppose, at any rate if you don’t know how hard those non-stereotypes in real anti-malware labs work at generating proactive detections for malware we haven’t seen yet and multi-layered protection. But this is about cheap laughs at the expense of an entire industry sector that Ollman regards as reaping profits that should be going to IOActive. Consider this little exchange on Twitter.

@virusbtn
Imperva’s research on desktop anti-virus has stirred a fierce debate. @gollmann: bit.ly/XE76eS @dharleyatESET: bit.ly/13e1TJW

@gollmann
@virusbtn @dharleyatESET I don’t know about “fierce”. It’s like prodding roadkill with a stick.

What are we, 12 years old? Fortunately, other tweeters seem to be seeing through this juvenilia.

@jarnomn
@gollmann @virusbtn @dharleyatESET Again just methaphors and no data. This conversation is like trainwreck in slow motion

The comments to the blog are also notable for taking a more balanced view: Jarno succinctly points to VirusTotal’s own view on whether its service is a realistic guide to detection performance, Kurt Wismer puts his finger unerringly on the likely bias of Ollman”s nebulous methodology, and Jay suggests that Ollman lives in a slightly different (ideal) world (though he puts a little more politely than that). But no doubt the usual crop of AV haters, Microsoft haters, Mac and Linux advocates, scammers, spammers and downright barmpots will turn up sooner or later.

There is, in fact, a rational debate to be held on whether AV – certainly raw AV with no multi-layering bells and whistles – should be on the point of extinction. The rate of detection for specialized, targeted malware like Stuxnet is indeed very low, with all-too-well-known instances of low-distribution but high-profile malware lying around undetected for years. (It helps if such malware is aimed at parts of the world where most commercial AV cannot legally reach.) And Gunter Ollman is quite capable of contributing a great deal of expertise and experience to it. But right now, it seems to me that he and Imperva’s Tal Be’ery are, for all their glee at the presumed death of anti-virus, a pair of petulantly twittering budgies trying to pass themselves off as vultures.

David Harley
AVIEN/Small Blue-Green World/Mac Virus/Anti-Malware Testing
ESET Senior Research Fellow

PCAVAST7.RVW   20120727
Comparison Review

Company and product:

Company: ALWIL Software
Address: Trianon Office Bldg, Budejovicka 1518/13a, 140 00, Prague 4
Phone:   00 420 274 005 777
Fax:     00 420 274 005 888
Sales:   +42-2-782-25-47
Contact: Kristyna Maz nkov /Pavel Baudis/Michal Kovacic
Email:   mazankova@avast.com baudis@asw.cz
Other:   http://www.avast.com
Product: AVAST! antiviral

Summary: Multilayered Windows package

Cost: unknown

Rating (1-4, 1 = poor, 4 = very good)
“Friendliness”
Installation      3
Ease of use       4
Help systems      1
Compatibility           3
Company
Stability         3
Support           2
Documentation           1
Hardware required       3
Performance             3
Availability            3
Local Support           1

General Description:

Multilayered scanning, activity-monitoring, and change-detection software.  Network protection including Web and email monitoring.

Comparison of features and specifications

User Friendliness

Installation

The product is available as a commercial package, but also as a free download for home or non-commerecial use.  As previously noted in other reviews, this is highly desirable not simply as a marketing and promotional effort by the company, but because making malware protection available to the general public reduces the malware threat for the entire computing and network environment.  One important
aspect is that the free version, unlike some antivirus products which reduce available functions, appears to be complete.  Scanning, disinfection, network protection, reporting, and management functions all seem to be included in the free version, making Avast a highly recommended product among free downloads.

I downloaded the free version, and installed it with no problem.  It was compatible with Windows 7, as well as previous versions.  The basic installation and configuration provides realistic protection, even for completely naive users.

Ease of use

With ten basic, and a larger number of minor, functions now included in the program, the interface is no longer very easy to figure out.  For example, one of the first things I (as a specialist) need to do is to turn off scanning of my “zoo” directory.  I initially thought this might be under the large “Maintenance” button.  No, “maintenance” is reserved for upgrading and buying additional features.  I did finally find the function I wanted under a much smaller “Settings” tab.  However, as noted, most users will not require any additional functions, and need not worry about the operation of the program.  The default settings provide decent protection, and updating of signatures, and even the basic program, is almost automatic.  (The updates for the free version do push the user to “upgrade” to the commercial version, but it is not necessary.)

I located (eventually) some great functions in the program which I found very helpful.  Admittedly, I’m a very special case, since I research malware.  But I really appreciated the fact that not only could I turn scanning off for a particular directory (my “zoo”), and that I could pull programs out of the quarantine easily, but that I could also turn off individual network protection functions, very easily.  Not only could I turn them off, but I was presented with options to stop for 10 minutes, 1 hour, until the next reboot, or permanently.  Therefore, I could turn off the protection for a quick check, and not have to remember to turn it on again for regular work and browsing.

However, I cannot commend Avast for some of the reporting and logging functions.  Late in the review period it reported an “infected” page, but refused to tell me where/what it is.  In addition, recently Avast has been blocking some of my email, and the message that an email has been blocked is the only available information.

Help systems

Help is available onscreen, but it is not easy to find.  There is no help button on the main screen: you have to choose “? Support,” and then, from a list of six items choose the last one, “Program Help.”  (The standard Windows F1 key does bring up the help function.)  Most other help is only available online via the Web, although there is a downloadable PDF manual.

Compatibility

The system scores well in malware detection ratings from independent tests.  I have been running Avast for over a year, and have not seen a false positive in a scan of the computer system.  I have observed only one false positive blockage of “known good” Websites or email, although this is of some concern since it involved the updating of another malware package under test.

Company Stability

Avast has been operating (previously as Alwil Software) for over twenty years.  The program structure is thoughtful and shows mature development.

Company Support

As noted, most is via the Web.  Unfortunately, in the recent case of a false positive the company, even though I had alerted them to the details of both the review and the warning I had noted, there was no useful response.  I received email stating that someone would review the situation and get back to me, but there was no further response.

Documentation

The documentation available for download is primarily for installation and marketing.

System Requirements

The system should run on most extent Windows machines.

Performance

The antivirus system has minimal impact on the computer system.  When performing a full scan, there are other programs that run faster, but Avast runs very well unattended.

As noted above, the free version has complete and very useful functionality.

Local Support

None provided.

Support Requirements

Basic operation and scanning should be accessible to the novice or average user.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 1995, 2012   PCAVAST7.RVW   20120727

In the spirit of many infosec and antivirus company “announcements” of “new threats” in the past year:

A leading (if unemployed) information security and malware researcher, today noted startling developments (which were first mentioned in 1988, but we’ll leave out that bit) in cross-platform malware.

Dubbed the “metavirus,” this threat could completely swamp the Internet, and render literally billions of computers useless.  The chief researcher at the Vancouver Institute for Research into User Security has found that these entities can be created by almost anyone, even without programming knowledge or skills.  “This doesn’t even require a malware kit,” said Rob Slade, who has “discovered” this unregarded vulnerability.

Although the number of metavirus “families” are very small, in comparison to the millions of viruses, worms, and trojans discovered yearly, they are remarkably resistant to disinfection.  Infections tend to be clustered, and can affect almost all machines in an infected company, network or group.

“This is definitely cross-platform,” said Slade.  “It doesn’t rely on a specific operating system, program, or even virtual machine, like Java.”  Infections have jumped between Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhones, Android, and even CP/M and VMS machines.  Transmission can occur via email, sneakernet, wireless, and even phone and fax.  In all cases productivity is affected as time is lost.  In one class of the threat machines can be rendered inoperable.

Rob Slade can be made available for presentations on how to deal with this enormous threat.  Anyone wanting to protect themselves can send first class airfare, proof of prepaid hotel accommodation, and a bank draft for $15,000 deposit.  (US or Canadian dollars, whichever is higher at the time 

Apparently it’s all our fault. Again. Not only is anti-virus useless, but we’re responsible for the evolution and dramatic increased volume of malware. According to something I read today “If it wasn’t for the security industry the malware that was written back in the 90’s might still be working today.”

I guess that’s not as dumb as it sounds: we have forced the malware industry to evolve (and vice versa). But you could just as easily say:

“The medical profession is responsible for the evolution and propagation of disease. If it wasn’t for the pharmaceutical industry illnesses that killed people X years ago might still be killing people today.”

And to an extent, it would be true. Some conditions have all but disappeared, at any rate in regions where advanced medical technology is commonplace, but other harder-to-treat conditions have appeared, or at least have achieved recognition.

I can think of plenty of reasons for being less than enthusiastic about the static-signature/malcode-blacklisting approach to malware deterrence, though I get tired of pointing out that commercial AV has moved a long way on from that in the last couple of decades. Even so, if pharmaceutical companies had to generate vaccines at the rate that AV labs have to generate detections (even highly generic detections) we’d all have arms like pincushions.

However, there are clear differences between ‘people’ healthcare and PC therapeutics. Most of us can’t trust ourselves as computer users (or the companies that sell and maintain operating systems and applications) to maintain a sufficiently hygienic environment to eliminate the need to ‘vaccinate’. It’s not that we’re all equally vulnerable to every one of the tens or hundreds of thousands of malicious samples that are seen by AV labs every day. Rather, it’s the fact that a tailored assessment of which malware is a likely problem for each individual system, regardless of provenance, region, and the age of the malware, is just too difficult. It’s kind of like living at the North Pole and taking prophylactic measures in case of Dengue fever, trypanosomiasis and malaria.

Fortunately, new or variant diseases tend not to proliferate at the same rate that malware variants do, and vaccines are not the only way of improving health. In fact, lots of conditions are mitigated by better hygiene, a better standard of living, health-conscious lifestyles and all sorts of more-or-less generic factors. There’s probably a moral there: commonsense computing practices and vitamin supplements – I mean, patches and updates – do reduce exposure to malicious code. It’s worth remembering, though, that even if AV had never caught on, evolving OS and application technologies would probably have reduced our susceptibility to antique boot sector viruses, macro viruses, and DOS .EXE infectors. Is it really likely that they wouldn’t have been replaced by a whole load of alternative malicious technologies?

David Harley CITP FBCS CISSP
ESET Senior Research Fellow

So a friend of mine posts (on Twitter) a great shot of a clueless phishing spammer:

So I reply:
@crankypotato Were only all such phishing spammers so clueless. (Were only all users clueful enough to notice …)

So some other scammer tries it out on me:
Max Dubberly  @Maxt4dxsviida
@rslade http://t.co/(dangerous URL that I’m not going to include, obviously)

I don’t know exactly where that URL redirects, but when I tried it, in a safe browser, Avast immediately objected …

“The 2012 Norton Cybercrime Report, released Wednesday, says more than 46 per cent of Canadians have reported attempts by hackers to try to obtain personal data over the past 12 months,” according to the Vancouver Sun.

Well, since I see phishing every single day, and malware a few times times per week, what this survey is *really* saying is that 54% of Canadians don’t know what phishing and malware looks like.

(And you others don’t need to gloat: apparently the same figure holds globally …)

Kinda depressing …

SMS spam on Bell seems to have suddenly jumped.  On Tuesday, both Gloria and I got spam saying we had won something from Apple.  Today, we both got similar spam.

Today’s message came “from” 240-393-8527.  It asked us to visit hxxp://www.apple.com.ca.llhf.net [1]

Neither F-Secure nor VirusTotal had anything to say about it, but it is safe to assume that the site is dangerous.  Avast now blocks it.

In trying to contact Bell about this, I noted that Bell’s Website “contact” page lists a “Chat with us” function that simply does nothing if agents are busy, and no means of contacing Bell via email.  “How to escalate a complaint” returns the same page, with the same lack of response from the agent button.  When I finally did reach an agent, “he” was pretty clueless about the whole situation.  I strongly suspected “he” was a rather simplistic program.

Having Given the agent the information above, his response was to ask “Samuel: I understand. Have you registered under apple newsletter list?”  He then asked for my name and phone number (which I had previously given him at the beginning of the session), and then told me “Samuel: I unfortunately cannot unsubscribe that spam for you from here as I see in your account.”  He offered to cut the SMS/texting function on my account.

That’s it.  That’s the only solution.  Bell doesn’t have any spam filtering on SMS, even when the spam is as obvious, egregious, and malicious as this one.  (Yes, they do have a spam filtering option, if you want to pay them an extra $5 per month.  Given the quality of support, I think I’ll give that a miss.)

[1] Note that this isn’t apple.com, the trailing “domains” override that.  This domain is listed to:

Domain Name ………………… llhf.net
Name Server ………………… ns5.myhostadmin.net
ns6.myhostadmin.net
Registrant Name …………….. jun wang
Registrant Organization ……… wang jun
Registrant Address ………….. shang hai shi xu hui qu
Registrant City …………….. shang hai
Registrant Province/State ……. SH
Registrant Postal Code ………. 200087
Registrant Country Code ……… cn
Registrant Phone Number ……… 02178861511
Registrant Fax ……………… 02178861511
Registrant Email ……………. yaobing349@hotmail.com

http://www.sophos.com/en-us/security-news-trends/security-trends/threatsaurus.aspx

Concentrating on malware and phishing, this is a very decent guide for “average” computer users with little or no security background or knowledge.  Three sections in a kind of dictionary or encyclopedia format: malware and threats, protection technologies, and a (very brief but still useful) history of malware (1949-2012).

Available free for download, and (unlike a great many “free” downloads I could name) you don’t even have to register for endless spam from the company.

Recommended to pass around to family, friends, and your corporate security awareness department.

For some years I have been peripherally involved (hired to research prior art, etc.) in some of the submarine patent/patent troll cases in the AV world.

I’ve got plenty of prior art.  Programs demonstrating and using technologies that were granted patents years after those programs were available.  Email discussions showing that concepts were obvious and well-known years before patent applications were filed.

Of course, as the “expert” I’m not privy to the legal strategy.  Bt I can figure it out.  US patent office issues patent that never should have been granted.  Troll sues Big Firm for $100M.  BF’s lawyers go to IP law firm.  IP lawyers find me.  IP lawyers ask me for the weirdest (and generally weakest) evidence.  IP lawyers go back to BF’s lawyers.  BF’s lawyers go back to BF.  (At this point I’m not privy to the discussions, so I’m guessing.  But I suspect that …)  IP and BF lawyers advise that evidence available, but patent fight expensive.  BF offers troll $100K to go away.  Troll happy with $100K, which is all he wanted anyway.  BF lawyers happy with large (and now more secure) salaries.  IP lawyers happy with $1M fees.  BF happy to have “saved” $99M.  The only person not happy is me.

Well, Kaspersky got sued.  Kaspersky fought.  Kaspersky won.

So, today I’m happy.  (I just wish I’d been part of *this* fight …)

(By the way, patent trolls cost money …)

Today is Tuesday for me, but it’s not “second Tuesday,” so it shouldn’t be patch Tuesday.  But today my little netbook, which is set just to inform me when updates are available, informed me that it had updated, but I needed to reboot to complete the task, and, if I didn’t do anything in the next little while it was going to reboot anyway.

Yesterday, of course, wasn’t patch Tuesday, but all my machines set to “go ahead and update” all wanted to update on shutdown last night.

This is, of course, because of Flame (aka Flamer, aka sKyWIper) has an “infection” module that messes with Windows/Microsoft Update.  As I understand it, there is some weakness in the update process itself, but the major problem is that Flame “contains” and uses a fake Microsoft digital certificate.

You can get some, but not very much, information about this from Microsoft’s Security Response Center blog.  (Early mention.  Later.)

You can get more detailed information from F-Secure.

It’s easy to see that Microsoft is extremely concerned about this situation.  Not necessarily because of Flame: Flame uses pretty old technology, only targets a select subset of systems, and doesn’t even run on Win7 64-bit.  But the fake cert could be a major issue.  Once that cert is out in the open it can be used not only for Windows Update, but for “validating” all kinds of malware.  And, even though Flame only targets certain systems, and seems to be limited in geographic extent, I have pretty much no confidence at all that the blackhat community hasn’t already got copies of it.  (The cert doesn’t necessarily have to be contained in the Flame codebase, but the structure of the attack seems to imply that it is.)  So, the only safe bet is that the cert is “in the wild,” and can be used at any time.

(Just before I go on with this, I might say that the authors of Flame, whoever they may be, did no particularly bad thing in packaging up a bunch of old trojans into one massive kit.  But putting that fake cert out there was simply asking for trouble, and it’s kind of amazing that it hasn’t been used in an attack beofre now.)

The first thing Microsoft is doing is patching MS software so that it doesn’t trust that particular cert.  They aren’t giving away a lot of detail, but I imagine that much midnight oil is being burned in Redmond redoing the validation process so that a fake cert is harder to use.  Stay tuned to your Windows Update channel for further developments.

However, in all of this, one has to wonder where the fake cert came from.  It is, of course, always possible to simply brute force a digital signature, particularly if you have a ton of validated MS software, and a supercomputer (or a huge botnet), and mount a birthday (collision) attack.  (And everyone is assuming that the authors of Flame have access to the resources of a nation-state.  Or two …)  Now the easier way is simply to walk into the cert authority and ask for a couple of Microsoft certs.  (Which someone did one time.  And got away with it.)

But then, I was thinking.  In the not too distant past, we had a whole bunch of APT attacks (APT being an acronym standing for “we were lazy about our security, but it really isn’t our fault because these attackers didn’t play fair!”) on cert authorities.  And the attacks got away with a bunch of valid certs.

OK, we think Flame is possibly as much a five years in the wild, and almost certainly two years.  But it is also likely that there were updates during the period in the wild, so it’s hard to say, right off the top, which parts of it were out there for how long.

And I just kind of wonder …

I have been reading about the new Flame (aka Flamer, aka sKyWIper) “supervirus.”

[AAaaaarrrrrrggggghhhh!!!!!!!!  Sorry.  I will try and keep the screaming, in my "outside voice," to a minimum.]

From the Telegraph:

This “virus” [1] is “20 times more powerful” than any other!  [Why?  Because it has 20 times more code?  Because it is running on 20 times more computers?  (It isn't.  If you aren't a sysadmin in the Middle East you basically don't have to worry.)  Because the computers it is running on are 20 times more powerful?  This claim is pointless and ridiculous.]

[I had it right the first time.  The file that is being examined is 20 megabytes.  Sorry, I'm from the old days.  Anybody who needs 20 megs to build a piece of malware isn't a genius.  Tight code is *much* more impressive.  This is just sloppy.]

It “could only have been created by a state.”  [What have you got against those of us who live in provinces?]

“Flame can gather data files, remotely change settings on computers, turn on computer microphones to record conversations, take screen shots and copy instant messaging chats.”  [So?  We had RATs that could do that at least a decade ago.]

“… a Russian security firm that specialises in targeting malicious computer code … made the 20 megabyte virus available to other researchers yesterday claiming it did not fully understand its scope and said its code was 100 times the size of the most malicious software.”  [I rather doubt they made the claim that they didn't understand it.  It would take time to plow through 20 megs of code, so it makes sense to send it around the AV community.  But I still say these "size of code" and "most malicious" statements are useless, to say the least.]

It was “released five years ago and had infected machines in Iran, Israel, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.”  [Five years?  Good grief!  This thing is a pretty wimpy virus!  (Or self-limiting in some way.)  Even in the days of BSIs and sneakernet you could spread something around the world in half a year at most.]

“If Flame went on undiscovered for five years, the only logical conclusion is that there are other operations ongoing that we don’t know about.”  [Yeah.  Like "not reproducing."]

“The file, which infects Microsoft Windows computers, has five encryption algorithms,”  [Gosh!  The best we could do before was a couple of dozen!]  “exotic data storage formats”  [Like "not plain text."]  “and the ability to steal documents, spy on computer users and more.”  [Yawn.]

“Components enable those behind it, who use a network of rapidly-shifting “command and control” servers to direct the virus …”  [Gee!  You mean like a botnet or something?]

Sorry.  Yes, I do know that this is supposed to be (and probably is) state-sponsored, and purposefully written to attack specific targets and evade detection.  I get it.  It will be (marginally) interesting to see what they pull out of the code over the next few years.  It’s even kind of impressive that someone built a RAT that went undetected for that long, even though it was specifically built to hide and move slowly.

But all this “supervirus” nonsense is giving me pains.

[1] First off, everybody is calling it a “virus.”  But many reports say they don’t know how it got where it was found.  Duh!  If it’s a virus, that’s kind of the first issue, isn’t it?

I’ve used Ad-Aware in the past, and had it installed on my machine.  Today it popped up and told me it was out of date.  So, at their suggestion, I updated to the free version, which is now, apparently, called Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+.  It provides for real-time scanning, Web browsing protection, download protection, email protection, and other functions.  Including “superfast” antivirus scanning.  I installed it.

And almost immediately removed it from the machine.

First off, my machine bogged down to an unusable state.  The keyboard and mouse froze frequently, and many programs (including Ad-Aware) were unresponsive for much of the time.  Web browsing became ludicrous.

There are some settings in the application.  For my purposes (as a malware researcher) they were inadequate.  There is an “ignore” list, but I was completely unable to get the program to “ignore” my malware zoo, even after repeated efforts.  (The interface for that function is also bizarrely complex.)  However, I’m kind of a non-typical user.  However, the other options would be of little use to anyone.  For the most part they were of the “on or off” level, and provide almost no granularity.  That makes them simple to use, but useless.

I’ve never used Ad-Aware much, but it’s disappointing to see yet another relatively decent tool “improved” into non-utility.

BKDRKMKT.RVW 20120201

“Dark Market: CyberThieves, CyberCops, and You”, Misha Glenny, 2011,
978-0-88784-239-9, C$29.95
%A   Misha Glenny
%C   Suite 801, 110 Spadina Ave, Toronto, ON Canada  M5V 2K4
%D   2011
%G   978-0-88784-239-9 0-88784-239-9
%I   House of Anansi Press Ltd.
%O   C$29.95 416-363-4343 fax 416-363-1017 www.anansi.ca
%O  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0887842399/robsladesinterne
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0887842399/robsladesinte-21
%O   http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0887842399/robsladesin03-20
%O   Audience n Tech 1 Writing 2 (see revfaq.htm for explanation)
%P   296 p.
%T   “Dark Market: CyberThieves, CyberCops, and You”

There is no particular purpose stated for this book, other than the vague promise of the subtitle that this has something to do with bad guys and good guys in cyberspace.  In the prologue, Glenny admits that his “attempts to assess when an interviewee was lying, embellishing or fantasising and when an interviewee was earnestly telling the truth were only partially successful.”  Bear in mind that all good little blackhats know that, if you really want to get in, the easiest thing to attack is the person.  Social engineering (which is simply a fancy way of saying “lying”) is always the most effective tactic.

It’s hard to have confidence in the author’s assessment of security on the Internet when he knows so little of the technology.  A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is said to be a system whereby a group of computers share a single address.  That’s not a VPN (which is a system of network management, and possibly encryption): it’s a description of NAT (Network Address Translation).  True, a VPN can, and fairly often does, use NAT in its operations, but the carelessness is concerning.

This may seem to be pedantic, but it leads to other errors.  For example, Glenny asserts that running a VPN is very difficult, but that encryption is easy, since encryption software is available on the Internet.  While it is true that the software is available, that availability is only part of the battle.  As I keep pointing out to my students, for effective protection with encryption you need to agree on what key to use, and doing that negotiation is a non-trivial task.  Yes, there is asymmetric encryption, but that requires a public key infrastructure (PKI) which is an enormously difficult proposition to get right.  Of the two, I’d rather run a VPN any day.

It is, therefore, not particularly surprising that the author finds that the best way to describe the capabilities of one group of carders was to compare them to the fictional “hacking” crew from “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”  The activities in the novel are not impossible, but the ability to perform them on demand is highly
unlikely.

This lack of background colours his ability to ascertain what is possible or not (in the technical areas), and what is likely (out of what he has been told).  Sticking strictly with media reports and indictment documents, Glenny does a good job, and those parts of the book are interesting and enjoyable.  The author does let his taste for mystery get the better of him: even the straight reportage parts of the book are often confusing in terms of who did what, and who actually is what.

Like Dan Verton (cf BKHCKDRY.RVW) and Suelette Dreyfus (cf. BKNDRGND.RVW) before him, Glenny is trying to give us the “inside story” of the blackhat community.  He should have read Taylor’s “Hackers” (cf BKHAKERS.RVW) first, to get a better idea of the territory.  He does a somewhat better job than Dreyfus and Verton did, since he is wise enough to seek out law enforcement accounts (possibly after reading Stiennon’s “Surviving Cyberwar,” cf. BKSRCYWR.RVW).

Overall, this work is a fairly reasonable updating of Levy’s “Hackers” (cf. BKHACKRS.RVW) of almost three decades ago.  The rise of the financial motivation and the specialization of modern fraudulent blackhat activity are well presented.  There is something of a holdover in still portraying these crooks as evil genii, but, in the main, it is a decent picture of reality, although it provides nothing new.

copyright, Robert M. Slade   2012    BKDRKMKT.RVW 20120201

LTE.  Even the name is complex: Long-Term Evolution of Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network

All LTE phones (UE, User Equipment) are running servers.  Multiple servers.  (And almost all are unsecured at the moment.)

Because of the proliferation of protocols (GSM, GPRS, CDMA, additional 3 and 4G, and now LTE), the overall complexity of the mobile/cell cloud is growing.

LTE itself is fairly complex.  The Protocol Reference Model contains at least the GERAN User Plane, UTRAN User Plane, and E-UTRAN User Plane (all with multiple components) as well as the control plane.  A simplified model of a connection request involves at least nine messages involving six entities, with two more sitting on the sides.  The transport layer, SCTP, has a four-way, rather than two-way, handshake.  (Hence the need for all those servers.)  Basically, though, LTE is IP, but a fairly complex set of additional protocols, as opposed to the old PSTN.  The old public telephone network was a walled garden which few understood.  Just about all the active blackhats today understand IP, and it’s open.  It’s protected by Diameter, but even the Diameter implementation was loopholes.  It has a tunnelling protocol, GTP (GPRS Tunnelling Protocol), but, like very many tunnelling protocols, GTP does not provide confidentiality or integrity protection.

Everybody wants to the extra speed, functions, interconnection abilities, and apps.  But all the functionality means a much larger attack surface.  The total infrastructure involved in LTE is more complex.  Maybe nobody can know it all.  But they can know enough to start messing with it.  From a simple DoS to DDoS, false billing, disclosure of data, malware, botnets of the UEs, spam, SMS trojans, even run down batteries, you name it.

As with VoIP before it, we are rolling our known data vulnerabilities, and known voice/telco/PBX vulnerabilities, into one big insecurity.

OK, having now had this conversation twice, I’ve gone back to the true source of all wisdom on all things viral, “Viruses Revealed.”  I got it off my shelf, of course, but some helpful vxer (who probably thought he was going to harm our sales) posted it on the net, and saved David and I the bother.  (Remember, this guy is a vxer, so that page may not be entirely safe.)

Michelangelo is covered between pages 357 and 361, which is slightly over halfway through the book.  However, since I guess he’s missed out the index and stuff, it turns out to be at about the 3/4 mark on the page he’s created.

Anyway, Michelangelo checks the date via Interrupt 1Ah.  many people did not understand the difference between the MS-DOS clock and the system clock read by Interrupt 1Ah. The MS-DOS DATE command did not always alter the system clock. Network-connected machines often have “time server” functions so that the date is reset to conform to the network. The year 1992 was a leap year, and many clocks did not deal with it properly. Thus, for many computers, 6th March came on Thursday, not Friday.