October 2003 - NZNOG - lists.nznog.org

httpd traffic with ie 5.5
by Barry Murphy 27 Oct '03

27 Oct '03

Howdy, Anyone noticing a lot of traffic in the httpd-access logs? I have had the following unique hits to my catch domain: August: 5401 September: 10950 October: 18535 Can't see much in tcpdump but they all seem to be windows 98 IE 5.5. 65.95.18.179 - - [28/Oct/2003:11:11:33 +1300] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 3677 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98)" 82.37.50.69 - - [28/Oct/2003:11:11:45 +1300] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 3677 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98)" 24.125.71.52 - - [28/Oct/2003:11:11:52 +1300] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 3677 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98)" 24.85.14.211 - - [28/Oct/2003:11:12:03 +1300] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 3677 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98)" 24.207.23.172 - - [28/Oct/2003:11:12:22 +1300] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 3677 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98)" 68.117.32.241 - - [28/Oct/2003:11:12:30 +1300] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 3677 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98)" 68.114.179.170 - - [28/Oct/2003:11:12:37 +1300] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 3677 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98)" Cheers Barry

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Re: [nznog] Cloaked SPAM hosting service
by Richard Cox 27 Oct '03

27 Oct '03

On 25 Oct 2003 12:00:07 +1300 (NZDT) Simon Byrnand <simon(a)igrin.co.nz> asked NZ-NOG: > Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this idea just a reverse proxy farm? >From what investigators have seen there is more to this exploit than just a reverse-proxy. I'm reluctant to say too much, even here, since investigations are continuing. The previous well-reported exploit which was known as "Super-Zonda" simply packaged reverse-proxying with a set of custom DNS tricks designed so that only the designated proxies could get the IP address of the real source of the website. Two strains of virus - "Fizzer" and "Sobig" each deliver a payload that compromises the infected computer, and in many cases the compromise can survive normal "cleansing" operations. This leaves a suite of abusive tools on the victim's computer that can, without the owner's knowledge or permission, be used by the attacker. Fizzer is known to install a spam sender and Denial-of-Service module, both of which "phone home" and listen for remote instructions. This means they can lie dormant for days, even weeks, without being activated. When they are activated to spam, they will usually only send out a small quantity of messages at one time, and then become silent again; the whole point is that as there are so many of them available to the spammer, there is no need for any one infected machine to send any great quantity. This, in turn, means that it is unlikely to trigger any traffic-based alarms, and any spam reports which reach abuse desks - if they even get that far - will often be treated as either misdirected or ill-informed, because "if it really was a spam source there would inevitably be many more complaints" That is exactly what the malware-writer intended ISPs to think, so don't be caught by it! Some Abuse desks may even go as far as looking for any open ports, and finding none, will take the view that the machines are secure. Not so! As all the trojans "phone home" for their instructions, there will not be any need for open ports, and none to find. The trojan may open some ports when ordered to, but generally will appear to be completely locked down (well, as much as any Windows machine can be!). There is one thing I want to stress here, as many of you will have no doubt read about the various DDoS attacks on various targets - Cisco, and some of the anti-spam resources being the ones that got publicity. If you get (a small number of) reports of spamming from a customer IP and you are tempted to disbelieve or ignore those reports, please don't. Regardless of your views on spam, those reports may be the only warning you will get that you have a malware-attacked box on your netblock, and that box is then fully equipped and ready to take part in a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on a target at a moment's notice. | Sounds like the author of the article doesn't understand round robin | dns, expressing surprise that every time they checked the site the ip | address was different...(well duh :) Er, no. That's not the primary point of this exploit, even though Round Robin DNS is certainly used in it. Remember - we are talking about large quantities of boxes here, and a different zombie can be activated in seconds. The compromised machines are able to act as DNS servers as well as web servers - and they do. The key is that the DNS servers are in the .biz TLD and that registry offers its customers the ability to update their DNS in real time, rather than having to wait for a timed update as with the .com/.net environment. Thus as machines are booted, come online, and "phone home", some of them are put in the queue for their IPs to be sent to the root .biz servers. Anyone monitoring the zonefiles for the latest .biz domain that these spammers are using (they change domains regularly, of course ...) will see the IPs of both the nameservers and A records change on a regular basis, and the location of those IPs will tend to follow the sunrise - so at one time of day there will be some in Europe, a few hours later they will mostly be on the US East Coast, later the US West Coast, and some hours after that NZ, then Australia, then Japan, and so on. > In other words said spammers host the actual site on a real server > somewhere, use round robin dns with hundreds (?) of dns entries > pointing to different hijacked computers, that then forward the > requests to the real servers as a reverse proxy. If they did that, the operation could be closed down by terminating (or bogussing) all the DNS servers that hold the round-robin DNS list. As ordinary user machines (mainly broadband) are being used as these servers, they can change almost as often as the A records do, and so any that are disabled are immediately replaceable. While admittedly tempting, it is hardly practical to bogus out the entire .biz root! The contact details for the domains used in this exploit vary from "suspicious" to "proven fake" but you could say the same about rather a lot of domains at the moment. The ICANN promises of a clean-up have not materialised, and given ICANN's (lack of) authority in general, some would say that any clean-up can only be cosmetic until there is general international agreement to enforce new rules. What may be of interest is that quite a few of these domains we've looked into turned out to have been registered with "DomainDiscover" in San Diego, USA (http://www.domaindiscover.com/). Even if DomainDiscover closed down all those domains immediately, the spammers would just move across to another Registrar and carry on. The only effective way to stop THIS particular exploit would need the root .biz registry to be persuaded to withdraw the real-time DNS updating feature in .biz. You may well conjecture on the likelihood of that ever happening! The zombies installed by the SoBig series of viruses also install an FTP server (TFTP) on first infection, which is used to fetch the rest of the SoBig payload some days later, and that means that absolutely anything can be subsequently downloaded to those machines - so unless you actually remove the infection and compromise, a machine that scans as completely clean today may be a Webserver serving up kiddie-porn by this time tomorrow. Yes, Tikiri, this one *is* more alarming. -- Richard Cox Mandarin

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New and unacknowledged Exchange / Win2k SMTP vulnerability?
by Geoff Williams 27 Oct '03

27 Oct '03

Hi All I have exactly the same open-relay problem, including the sending servers and addresses, and have been struggling to diagnose for a few weeks. I had a hunch that the hack may involve the SystemMailbox account (which of course is disabled), but this was based on checking security logs and seeing who was logged in at the same time as the spam was dumped into the queue. I have got around it for the moment (I hope) by loading the ORF relay and spam tool but I would really like to know how this hack is being perpetrated as I have a whole stack of other Exchange servers to look after and I really don't want this to get out of control... So if anyone has made any progress I would really appreciated you sharing your experience. Thanks ______________ Geoffrey Williams KAT International T: 02 9904 3137 F: 02 9904 0232 M: 0417 281 905 This email is confidential and intended for the recipient only. If you receive it in error please delete it immediately.

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Cisco ISDN config
by Michael Hallager 26 Oct '03

26 Oct '03

Hi all. I am after configurations for running a point-to-point link using two Cisco ISDN routers. At one end will be 192.168.1.0/24 and the other end will be 192.168.2.0/24 Tested configs only please. Thanks. Michael Hallager Managing Director Networkstuff Limited URL: http://www.networkstuff.co.nz Networkstuff, NZ's leading supplier of high quality used networking equipment. E-Mail: michael @ networkstuff.co.nz Member of the NZ Open Source Society. Member of the Auckland VHF Group. Amateur radio callsign: ZL1VMH.

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The fraudsters used email forwarding and routing via a New Zealand-based service provider to cover their tracks.
by Andy Gardner 25 Oct '03

25 Oct '03

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/33582.html NatWest customers targeted in 'phishing' scam "At the time of writing, the site, which seems to have been run off the servers of Hotbox hosting in Russia, has been replaced by a holding page. The fraudsters used email forwarding and routing via a New Zealand-based service provider to cover their tracks." Who was that, then?

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Current Jetstream 'Deal'...
by Dan Clark 24 Oct '03

24 Oct '03

OK, we've all seen the $99.00 install fee for JetStream waived before but currently it would seem Telecom are only offering the free install if you connect via XTRA? http://www.telecom.co.nz/chm/0,5123,203191-202534,00.html I think if I was a consumer, I would find it a little hard to use another ISP's JetStream service via Telecom's website, it seems a bit anti-competitive. Fair enough it's Telecom's network but basicly forcing the consumer to use XTRA as an ISP? Regards Dan Clark Network Manager Scarfies.Net Ltd

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Slasdot update: AT&T Blocking All Incoming Mail
by Jeff Williams 24 Oct '03

24 Oct '03

All, >From slashdot, See: http://www.sosdg.org/attmail.txt Regards, -- Jeffrey A. Williams Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 134k members/stakeholders strong!) "Be precise in the use of words and expect precision from others" - Pierre Abelard =============================================================== CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng. SR. Eng. Network data security Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC. E-Mail jwkckid1(a)ix.netcom.com Contact Number: 214-244-4827 or 214-244-3801

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Re: [nznog] Current Jetstream 'Deal'...
by Richard Parkinson 24 Oct '03

24 Oct '03

I fail to see how raising a simple and valid question of possibly "biased" operators in this list has anything to do with my integrity. Frankly, you just raised a BIG question about your own "Integrity" in simply responding with a public attack on mine, when I have a valid point, being that other issues in this list go unnoticed and unchallenged for days, unless they are matters relating to Telecom's monopolistic way of doing business, in which case we are told to discontinue the thread. In my opinion, this thread had some valid content, perhaps some not, but the request for it to be stopped came far too quickly, Telecom staff member or not. I agree with Tikiri, it's time Telecom explained a few things like why no static IP's for jetstart instead of the " because it's a residential service " routine which simply reminds me of the childish answer you get from angry parents " ....because I said so ". I also agree that there is probably no point in saying much more in here, as it would be a better waste of time to put it all in a letter to someone at the appropriate government department. -----Original Message----- From: mark.harris(a)ssc.govt.nz [mailto:mark.harris(a)ssc.govt.nz] Sent: Friday, 24 October 2003 1:19 p.m. To: nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: RE: [nznog] (no subject) Richard Parkinson wrote: > > I agree with Donald, this thread doesn't seem entirely appropriate, > however I have seen less appropriate threads go on longer, and can't > help but notice the @telecom.co.nz after Donald's address. :). > I realise there's a smiley on the end of that, but sugar-coating an question to Donald's integrity says more about your own than I suspect you realise. Regards Mark Harris Moderator *.govt.nz State Services Commission PO Box 329, Wellington, NZ Tel: 64 4 495 2844 Email: moderator(a)ssc.govt.nz _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

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(no subject)
by Richard Parkinson 24 Oct '03

24 Oct '03

I agree with Donald, this thread doesn't seem entirely appropriate, however I have seen less appropriate threads go on longer, and can't help but notice the @telecom.co.nz after Donald's address. :). >From a technical stand point, I would like to know the technical reasons as to why Telecom cannot provide other ISP's with the same level of national connectivity that Xtra have been getting, but then this probably isn't a technical issue. More like anti-competitive and predatory market tactics. -----Original Message----- From: Juha Saarinen [mailto:juha(a)saarinen.org] Sent: Friday, 24 October 2003 12:20 p.m. To: Donald Neal Cc: nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: Re: [nznog] Current Jetstream 'Deal'... Donald.Neal(a)telecom.co.nz wrote: > People, > > As you may recall, our AUP requires that > > 1. Discussion will focus on Internet operational and technical > issues. > > This thread should, in my view, either acquire some operational or > technical content or go away. > > - Donald Neal Doesn't ISPs discussing operational issues surrounding the provision of DSL to customers count? -- Juha _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

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Research paper on the effects of spam
by Simon Byrnand 24 Oct '03

24 Oct '03

Interesting reading.... http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=102 (Click "summary of findings", whose link is too big to post in email without wrapping :) Regards, Simon

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