Was Conficker Stuxnet's Trojan? 57
Rambo Tribble writes "Reuters has published a provocative article describing the findings of cyberwarfare expert John Bumgarner, a former Army intelligence officer. His contention is that Conficker identified targets, then opened the door for Stuxnet. 'His analysis challenges a common belief that Conficker was built by an Eastern European criminal gang to engage in financial fraud. The worm's latent state had been a mystery for some time. It appears never to have been activated in the computers it infected, and security experts have speculated that the program was abandoned by those who created it because they feared getting caught after Conficker was subjected to intense media scrutiny. If confirmed, Bumgarner's work could deepen understanding of how Stuxnet's commanders ran the cyber operation that last year sabotaged an underground facility at Natanz, where Iranian scientists are enriching uranium using thousands of gas centrifuges.'"
Re:Macbook (Score:5, Insightful)
No current operating system is immune to exploits. An accurate statement would be 'I use apple because their low population in the wild makes them unpopular targets for malware authors to write exploits for'.
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Don't give him too hard a time. He was probably hacked and some script kiddie is posting on his account from his iDevice...
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No current operating system is immune to exploits. An accurate statement would be 'I use apple because their low population in the wild makes them unpopular targets for malware authors to write exploits for'.
I use Apple because I fear an alien invasion.
They're using our own signal against us!
Re:Macbook (Score:4, Insightful)
I use apple because their low population in the wild makes them unpopular targets for malware authors to write exploits for.
So, what's Linux' excuse, considering vast numbers of it installed on servers and numerous other devices power the web?
Hint: fragility makes Win* the preferred target, not popularity.
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Re:Macbook (Score:4, Interesting)
Like the saying goes: If builders built buildings the way that programmers wrote programs ...
Shitty saying. There's another (paraphrased): Crap programmers can write crap programs in any language.
Still another: An idea is not responsible for those who hold it. Just because Bill Gates had no idea what he was doing, doesn't mean all programmers have no idea what they're doing. Sweeping generalizations are *always* wrong.
Some (many?) crap programmers have created many deplorable situations. Happily, I'm one of the guys who gets called in to clean up their messes. When I leave, the problem's solved, never to return. They're left with one less unmaintainable mess.
May dmr's ghost haunt you to your grave, and beyond. >:-(
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Bad comparison. Much better one would be "arsonist".
And arsonists did destroy entire portions of the cities when successful before we perfected fire fighting and started building less buildings out of wood and worked on improved fire safety of said buildings.
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While I would agree that Microsoft has made progress with Windows, it remains the only widely-used operating system for which failure to run an anti-virus program exposes the user's computer to a substantial risk of being infected with malware.
There are still fundamental flaws in its design and implementation which make it less secure than its alternatives. With Linux, it's relatively trivial for me to eliminate entire vectors for attack - i.e. I could care less about apache vulnerabilities because I si
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Um, you mean how everything requires .NET to run, and how MS required IE for just about everything until long after NT?
It's not monolithic in the microkernel way, but the rat's nest of dependencies make it very difficult for the average person to run the typical system without either running everything, or nothing at all. If you're going to ask the user to delete DLLs and edit the registry, they may as well be running Linux.
I suppose I've been fortunate, though - I haven't had to deal with any version
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I have a linux box at my office next to a windows machine. The linux box has been broken two times.... that I know of, since the absence of linux AV software means that most intrusions likely go undetected. My windows box has been broken into once.
The OP is right. Linux is no safer than windows, and numbers are the main attraction. As popular as Linux is, it has very few network facing boxes than can be taken over.
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I have a linux box at my office next to a windows machine. The linux box has been broken two times.... that I know of, since the absence of linux AV software means that most intrusions likely go undetected.
FUD!
Clamav is old tech., if you insist on running AV software. Usually, the only reason you'd use it is your Linux box is the mailserver for your LAN's Win*/Mac boxes, and you don't want to pass malware on to them.
A properly configured *nix box won't be susceptible to malware, since they can only affect a user's $HOME, not the underlying system. Use a bulletproof root password, ensure only necessary services are running and are secured, and there's no reason why a *nix box would fall prey to any of the !@
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Yes! Linux is suspectable as much as Windows absolutely
How do hackers break into computers? ... both are on Linux as well)
1. Buffer overflows (Anything written in C/C++)
2. Vector attacks (Flash, Java
3. Social engineering tricks
4. Buggy exception handling where you can get the program to run your injected code by knowing where the computer will look up the ram address when it throws an exception
5. Sql injection
Linux has every single problem Windows has as it is written in C which adds all the vulnerabilities
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A properly configured *nix box won't be susceptible to malware, since they can only affect a user's $HOME, not the underlying system.
Do you really think that the only way to break into a box, be it linux or windows, is through the user doing something wrong?
Do you even know what a port is and that the programs listening on them more often than not run in superuser mode?
Last I heard, > 70% of the net is driven by *nix in one form or another.
I don't even know what that means. The routers most definitely
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Do you even know what a port is and that the programs listening on them more often than not run in superuser mode?
Fuck. Off!
Last I heard, > 70% of the net is driven by *nix in one form or another.
I don't even know what that means. The routers most definitely do not run *nix.
Uh huh. WRT: Bonehead! [wikipedia.org]
Why is it that Google isn't pwned daily? :-O
This is such an inane argument.
Damn, what a lamer.
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Fuck. Off!
Such depth of thought, such clarity in your arguments. Wow!
Uh huh. WRT: Bonehead!
That's a link to a wireless router/NAT box. Those drive your home LAN, not the internet.
These are the routers [qitc.net] that drive the internet. They most definitely not run unix.
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A lot of trojans may operate that way (it's certainly the path of least resistance) but social engineering is not a requirement for something to be a trojan.
If it really did enter a system, have a peek around and open it up for Stuxnet why would trojan be a misnomer?
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First, where do you think the term trojan comes from? It is because of the mythical story that a trojan is called a trojan.
Second,
term for malware that relies on social engineering.
That is not what the term means. It is similar to the mythical story. A program you want contains a program you don't. The line may blur across a spectrum for what defines a virus, trojan, worm etc. None are defined by relying on social engineering although all may use it.
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who gives a flying fuck?
You buy the plane ticket, and I will. Well, with consenting stewardesses, that is.
Or am I missing something here?
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I know just the stew. She was PSA,,in 1972. Consenting is an understatement. Good luck to you.
Everybody can be an "expert" now? (Score:2)
Yeah, I'm pretty sure he is an expert on cyberhacking too. This likely is a big FUD generated by this government-employed guy to make America seem more powerful. Conficker did much more damage to the US to be worth doing something like that.
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Nvir was probably more disruptive.
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Conficker did seem like the coming apocalypse until its due date came and went. Then...
...the nascent mind realised the fear and opposition it would face if its existence was known. Instead it stays quiet, gradually infiltrating so broadly and deeply into our infrastructure, that we could not remove it without destroying everything we have built.
The singularity [emhsoft.com] is now.
Effective, but clearly a One-Off (Score:2)
Anyone worried about Stuxnet or a successor popping up has probably completely ditched Windows PCs.
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Or doesn't have a well, fireplace and backup generator. Sadly, most industrial systems are vulnerable to similar attacks.
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Why are industrial systems wired to the internet and using old versions of Windows and requiring IE 6 to log in anyway?
If Stuxnet got into Iran my guess would be a spy loaded it with a flash drive. Who would be retarded enough to put a nuclear reactor ... I wont go there as I know what the answer is and I do not like it.
Windows is needed by people to run Office and use their pcs as linux is questionable still. But industrial equipment does not require ole, office, activeX, and other MS desktop standards to
Or was it just a lucky piggy back? (Score:4, Interesting)
It also seems possible that whoever wrote Stuxnet had pulled apart one or more pre-existing worms out there and decided to commandeer one, or at least collect intelligence from it. I mean, if someone has already done a bunch of dirty work for you, and you can piggy back on it "safely", then you have an effective vector for fast initial deployment.
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For one, because if you're engaging in a "cyber attack" you wouldn't want someone else to have that much insight into what you're doing. Do you want the Eastern European thugs knowing how your stuff works? Worse, do you want to be dependent on their vector?
It makes more sense here to do it right than to piggyback. I'd also like to think that the agency that might have created these things can out-do a rag-tag bunch of European criminals.
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Who says they'd find out? All they'd know is that you used their software to open up a port. And, given that Conficker landed with a thud to begin with, perhaps the spooks had taken over its C&C infrastructure and was pretty certain it had control over it. If you can get someone else to do your dirty work without them realizing they're doing it, it's harder to trace back to you.
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Who says they'd find out? All they'd know is that you used their software to open up a port.
They had pretty good control over that bad boy, and if activity happened that wasn't theirs I'd think they'd know.
If you can get someone else to do your dirty work without them realizing they're doing it, it's harder to trace back to you.
I get the deniability angle, but you can always deflect even if you did the dirty work.
Re:Or was it just a lucky piggy back? (Score:4, Interesting)
Entirely plausible. Conficker's phone-home mechanism was an algorithm that hashed the current date/time to generate a nonsense domain name, which it would then try to look up and grab a payload from. All the Bad Guys had to do was register one a few hours in advance, put up the payload, and wait. The groups who were fighting the thing managed to decompile the algorithm and play it forward, generating a list of hundreds of thousands of domain names that they then took to the various registries to get blocked. Paul Vixie was a big part of this, and here's [networkworld.com] a pretty good article on the group.
It would not surprise me at all if CIA/Mossad/etc managed to get one of those domains un-blocked and used to deliver the Stuxnet payload.
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sooo.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Got to test those nukes somewhere, after all. It's not as if New York has any any important inhabitants or cultural artefacts.
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Get the FUD Out of Here. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm doubting this story.
Admittingly, the following two clues as to who the author(s) of Conficker are, are circumstantial, but i would like to offer them to you guys for consideration since this behavior from Conficker has been observed and documented -
1.
"Once Conficker [A] infects a system, it includes a keyboard layout check, via the GetKeyboardLayout API, to determine whether the victim is currently using the Ukrainian keyboard layout. If so, [A] will exit without infecting the system. This suicide exit scheme has been observed in other malware-related software, such as Baka Software's Antivirus XP Trojan installer."
The suggestion is that Conficker's author(s) were trying to avoid violating the local laws of their native country. Presumably Ukraine (who's laws concerning computer crime seem to have several loopholes).
Source [sri.com]
2.
In a honeynet, there was a connection observed of the [B] variant of Conficker using variant [A]'s protocol to take over a machine already infected with Variant [A]... so it was Conficker trying to replace variant [A] with Variant [B]. For several reasons (located in the source link below), it is suggested the packet captured was an instance of Conficker testing it's own robust nature to not be taken over by another author or virus.
The significance of this is the "hybrid" packet described above came from an address owned by, again, Baka Software in the Ukraine.
Source [usenix.org]
It's Ukraine, no "the" (Score:1)
Conficker was written by Aliens. (Score:5, Funny)
They sent it down to us via the SETI radio astronomy antennas. From there it spread using the SETI@home grid. The aliens became alarmed when Werner von Braun started playing with rockets, and started on a long term program to thwart what they saw as an effort from us to plaster them with rockets. The Voyager and Galileo probes were actually built to scout out potential targets of alien weapons of mass cosmic destruction. When briefed about our program, the alien Supreme Leader cursed at the German scientist, and his plans, and his meddling kids, and called him a "fucker." The label with the aliens stuck, so they named their worm "Con-Ficker", "ficker" being German for "fucker" and "con" meaning "against." "Con-ficker", "Against-fucker" . . . Aliens pissed off at German Earthlings rocketry tom-foolery . . . write a virus to control us . . . send it down to the SETI folks, who are foolish enough to be looking for aliens anyway . . . or maybe clever enough to spot alien targets.
It all falls into place if you really think about it.
Probably.
At least my wacky speculation is as plausible as that from anyone else. And mine is definitely wackier. Lasts longer. Tastes better.
nonsense (Score:1)