Comcast.net not Hacked, DNS Records Hijacked

Two days ago in a show off move, the Kryogenics team managed to change the DNS records of Comcast.net, and consequently, redirect traffic to third-party servers, which in this incident only served a defaced-looking like page, and denied email services to Comcast's millions of email users for a period of three hours.

The message they appear to have left at the first place, is actually hosted on third-party servers and reads :

"KRYOGENIKS EBK and DEFIANT RoXed COMCAST sHouTz To VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven"

Comcast's changed whois records looked like this, and were restored to their original state approximately three hours later :

Administrative Contact:
Domain Registrations,
Comcast kryogenicsdefiant@gmail.com
Defiant still raping 2k8 ebk 69 dick
tard lane dildo room
PHILADELPHIA, PA 19103
US 4206661870 fax: 6664200187

The hacked page was loading from the following locations :
freewebs.com/buttpussy69
freewebs.com/kryogeniks911
defiants.net/hacked.html

Comcast's comments :
"Last night users attempting to access Comcast.net were temporarily redirected to another site by an unauthorized person," he says. "While that issue has been resolved and customers have continued to have access to the Internet and email through services like Outlook, some customers are currently not able to access Comcast.net or Webmail." Douglas says that network engineers continue to work on the issue. "We believe that our registration information at the vendor that registers the Comcast.net domain address was altered, which redirected the site, and is the root cause of today's continued issues as well," he says. "We have alerted law enforcement authorities and are working in conjunction with them."

Network Solutions comments :
"Somebody was able to log into the account using the username and password. It was an unauthorized access," said spokeswoman Susan Wade. "It wasn't like somebody hacked into it. The Network Solutions account was not hacked. "They ping us and say this is my domain and say, 'I'd like to reset my password,'" Wade said. "It could have been compromised through e-mail. They could have gotten it if they acted as the customer. We're not clear."

"Pinging a domain registrar" has been around since the early days of the Internet, and it's obviously still possible to socially engineer one in 2008. A recently released ICANN advisory on the topic of registrar impersonation phishing attacks provides a decent overview of the threat, and in Comcast's case, I think someone impersonated Comcast in front of Network Solutions compared to the other way around, namely someone phished the person possessing the accounting data at Comcast, by making them think it's Network Solutions contacting them.

With Comcast.net now back to normal, the possibilities for abusing the redirected traffic given that the content was loading from web sites they controlled are pretty evident. And despite that there are speculations the hijack is courtesy of the BitTorrent supporters, in this case, the motivation behind this seem to have been to prove that it's possible.

UPDATE :
An interview with the hijackers including a screenshot of the control panel for over 200 Comcast operated domains is available.

Malware Attack Exploiting Flash Zero Day Vulnerability

It's been a while since we've last witnessed malware attacks using zero day vulnerabilities, and the latest one exploiting a zero day in Adobe's flash player is definitely worth assessing. The current malware attack has been traced back to Chinese blackhats, who are using a zero day to infect users with password stealers, moreover, one of the domains serving the Adobe zero day has been sharing the same IP with four of the malware domains in the recent waves of massive SQL injection attacks, indicating this incident and the previous ones are connected. According to Symantec :

"Preliminary investigation suggests that the DeepSight honeynet may also have captured this attack. We are looking into this further. Currently two Chinese sites are known to be hosting exploits for this flaw: wuqing17173.cn and woai117.cn. The sites appear to be exploiting the same flaw, but are using different payloads. At the moment these domains do not appear to be resolving, but they may come back in the future. Network administrators are advised to blacklist these domains to prevent clients from inadvertently being redirected to them. Avoid browsing to untrustworthy sites. Also, consider disabling Flash or use some sort of script-blocking mechanism, such as NoScript for Firefox, to explicitly allow SWFs to run only on trusted sites. "

The Internet Storm Center also made an announcement and assessed a malware domain that was using the exploits in this case play0nlnie.com (125.46.104.172), next to Adobe's Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) original announcement of the vulnerability. What about the original hosting sites for this exploits? Are they still active and serving it, what are the detection rates of the exploits and the malware served, and are there any other domains that should be blocked, also responding to the same IPs.

Let's assess the campaign using the Adobe Flash Player SWF File Unspecified Remote Code Execution Vulnerability. At count18.wuqing17173.cn/click.aspx.php (58.215.87.11) the end user is receiving a look looks like a 404 error message, however, within the 404 message there's a great deal of information exposing the exploits location and participation domains, which you can see attached in the screenshot above. In between several obfuscations we are finally able to locate the exploits serving host, as there are multiple exploits this particular campaign is taking advatange of, in between the Adobe Flash Player one :

0novel.com /real.js
0novel.com /rl.htm
0novel.com /lz.htm
0novel.com /bf.htm
0novel.com /xl.htm
0novel.com /flash.swf
0novel.com /flash1.swf

Let's get back to the second domain which is not returning a valid 403 error forbidden message, woai117.cn (221.206.20.145) which has also been sharing the same IP with kisswow.com.cn; qiqi111.cn; ririwow.cn; wowgm1.cn, among the domains used in the ongoing SQL injection attacks. Once the binary located at woai117.cn /bak.exe was obtained and sandboxed, it tried to download more malware by accessing woai117.cn /kiss.txt with the following binaries already obtained, analyzed and distributed among AV vendors :

117276.cn /1.exe
117276.cn /2.exe
117276.cn /3.exe
woai117.cn /bing.exe

Detection rates for the exploit, the obfuscations and the malware binaries obtained :

Sample obfuscation
Scanners result : 3/32 (9.38%)
F-Secure - Exploit.JS.Agent.oa
GData - Exploit.JS.Agent.oa
Kaspersky - Exploit.JS.Agent.oa
File size: 35767 bytes
MD5...: 11d2b82a35cd37560673680f25571bac
SHA1..: 687066c90bb44fee574f2763041ee80dfee4d5bf

A sample flash file with the exploit
Scanners result : 2/32 (6.25%)
eSafe - SWF.Exploit
Symantec - Downloader.Swif.C
File size: 846 bytes
MD5...: 1222bf4627894cb88142236481680d03
SHA1..: bbf59d9e6610e6f982a7ce7fc9e9878ffd3bfe70

The malware served
Scanners result : 18/32 (56.25%)
MemScan:Win32.Worm.Otwycal.T; a variant of Win32/AutoRun.NAD
File size: 25229 bytes
MD5...: 6be5a7b11601f8cb06ebba08c063aa09
SHA1..: 95d266e2e04e27a923467f483c23818c38ebe19e

The password stealers
Scanners result : 19/32 (59.38%)
Trojan.PWS.OnLineGames.WOM; Win32/TrojanDropper.Agent.NKK
File size: 42268 bytes
SHA1..: 7dfd51e96269f8d53354dd4c028d0c9481ebf4c8

Scanners result : 13/32 (40.63%)
W32/Heuristic-159!Eldorado; Suspicious:W32/Malware!Gemini
File size: 108172 bytes
MD5...: a0383dd1571af5e2f104e1f7d6df7a67
SHA1..: be5b9b00ce9e378e545fa4f1e67160f20ba82ad2

Consider blocking flash by using Flashblock for instance, until the issue is taken care of :

"Flashblock is an extension for the Mozilla, Firefox, and Netscape browsers that takes a pessimistic approach to dealing with Macromedia Flash content on a webpage and blocks ALL Flash content from loading. It then leaves placeholders on the webpage that allow you to click to download and then view the Flash content. "

It could have been worse, as "wasting a zero day exploit" affecting such ubiquitous player such as Adobe's flash player for infecting the end users with a rather average password stealer is better, than having had the exploit leaked to others who would have have introduced their latest rootkits and banker malware.

UPDATE - 5/28/2008

Consider blocking the following domains currently serving the malicious flash files :

tongji123.org
bb.wudiliuliang.com
user1.12-26.net
user1.12-27.net
ageofconans.net
lkjrc.cn
psp1111.cn
zuoyouweinan.com
user1.isee080.net
guccime.net
woai117.cn
wuqing17173.cn
dota11.cn
play0nlnie.com
0novel.com

UPDATE - 5/29/2008

Zero day or no zero day? It appears that the exploit used in this campaign is an already known one, namely CVE-2007-0071, and this has since been verified by multiple parties who were assessing the incident. Some related comments :

Flaw Watch: Why Adobe Flash Attacks Matter
"Thursday, however, Symantec backtracked after Adobe released a statement denying that the matter concerned a new flaw. In a progress report posted to the official Adobe PSIRT blog, David Lenoe said the exploit "appears to be taking advantage of a known vulnerability, reported by Mark Dowd of the ISS X-Force and wushi of team509, that was resolved in Flash Player 9.0.124.0." In an update to that blog entry, he said Symantec had confirmed that all versions of Flash Player 9.0.124.0 are not vulnerable to the exploits. Symantec Senior Researcher Ben Greenbaum acknowledged the flaw was previously known and patched by Adobe April 8, though the Linux version of Adobe's stand-alone Flash Player version 9.0.124 was indeed vulnerable to the attack."

Potential Flash Player issue - update
"We've just gotten confirmation from Symantec that all versions of Flash Player 9.0.124.0 are not vulnerable to these exploits. Again, we strongly encourage everyone to download and install the latest Flash Player update, 9.0.124.0. To verify the Adobe Flash Player version number, access the About Flash Player page, or right-click on Flash content and select “About Adobe (or Macromedia) Flash Player” from the menu. Customers using multiple browsers are advised to perform the check for each browser installed on their system and update if necessary. Thanks to Symantec for working very closely with us over the last 2 days to confirm that this is not a zero-day issue, and to Mark Dowd and wushi for originally reporting this issue. "

More information on recent Flash Player exploit
"This is not a zero-day exploit. Despite various reports that have been circulating, the Flash Player Standalone 9.0.124.0 and Linux Player 9.0.124.0 are NOT vulnerable to the exploits discussed in conjunction with the previously disclosed vulnerability Symantec posted on 5/27/08. Symantec originally believed this to be a zero-day, unpatched vulnerability, but as their latest update on their Threatcon page indicates, they have now confirmed this issue does not affect any versions of Flash Player 9.0.124.0."

Followup to Flash/swf stories
"On closer examination, this does not appear to be a "0-day exploit". Symantec has updated their threatcon info, as well. We have yet to see one of these that succeeds against the current version (9.0.124.0), if you find one that does, please let us know via the contact page."

Why was the possibility of finding one that succeeds against the current version of Flash considered in ISC's post? Because with no samples distributed by Symantec verifying the zero day, the way the exploit serving flash files were generated at the malicious domains on a version basis (WIN%209,0,115,0ie.swf for instance), and with everyone trying to figure it out in order to obtain the malicious flash file for the latest version in order to verify its zero day state, this timeframe resulted in the delay of assessing the real situation.

Asprox Phishing Campaigns Dominated in April

According to the latest report from the Phishtank, a great resource for OSINT data, five IPs were hosting 6547 phishing campaigns in April, all of which are courtesy of the Asprox botnet, a botnet that despite being actively sending phishing emails for the last couple of months, received more publicity for its introduction of SQL injection capabilities, like the ones I've assessed in a previous post. The IPs in question :

212.174.25.241
62.233.145.45
218.92.205.246
85.105.182.6
212.0.85.6

Where's the connection? It's in the historical domains that used to respond to the IPs, in the Asprox case, a great deal of the original domain names used a couple of months ago are still in a fast-flux and further expose and connection between these IPs and Asprox. For instance, 62.233.145.45, is known to have been hosting xml52.com; www5.yahoo.american-greeting.ca.xml52.com; yahoo.americangreeting.ca.www05.net; bendigobank.com.au.tampost5.ws; among the domains used in some of the previous phishing domains. The rest of the IPs are also known to have participated in the fast-flux, and therefore, as long as they remain using some of their old domains, and fast-flux them in a way that can be compared to the data from previous months, monitoring the prevalence of Asprox phishing campaigns and making the connection between a phishing campaign and the botnet, would remain easy to do.

Related posts:
Fast-Fluxing SQL injection attacks executed from the Asprox botnet
Inside a Botnet's Phishing Activities
Fake Yahoo Greetings Malware Campaign Circulating
Phishing Emails Generating Botnet Scaling

Yet Another Massive SQL Injection Spotted in the Wild

Another SQL injection attack was spotted in the wild during the last couple of hours, and while it continues remaining active, surprisingly, the malicious domain is not in a fast-flux. As I've already pointed out, the upcoming SQL injection attacks for the next couple of months, will be primarily executed by copycats, where among the few differentiation factors left is increasing the survivability of the domain.

In the particular attack, the injected domain chliyi.com /reg.js loads an iFrame to chliyi.com /img/info.htm where a VBS script attempts to execute by exploiting MDAC ActiveX code execution (CVE-2006-0003), whose detection rate is 1/32 (3.13%) and is detected as Mal/Psyme-A. Approximately, 8,900 sites have been affected.

Web 2.0 Privacy and Security Workshop - Papers Released

Last week, the 2008's W2Sp workshop held in Oakland, California and sponsored by the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, made available all the papers from the workshop, including catchy titles such as :

- input type="password" must die!
- Web Authentication by Email Address
- Beware of Finer-Grained Origins
- On the Design of a Web Browser: Lessons learned from Operating Systems
- Analysis of Hypertext Markup Isolation Techniques for XSS Prevention
- Privacy Protection for Social Networking Platforms
- (Under) mining Privacy in Social Networks
- Building Secure Mashups
- Web-key: Mashing with Permission
- Private Use of Untrusted Web Servers via Opportunistic Encryption
- Evidence-Based Access Control for Ubiquitous Web Services
- Privacy Preserving History Mining for Web Browsers
- Towards Privacy Propagation in the Social Web

Information is not free, it just wants to be free.

A Review of Hakin9 IT Security Magazine

A new issue of the Hakin9 - Hard Core IT Security Magazine is "in the wild", and since the editorial staff has been kind enough to provide me with issues of the magazine for a while now, in this post I'll review the latest issue with the idea that constructive confrontation leads to the best output achievable.

There are many different ways to review a magazine, however, I'm always sticking to the following critical success factors for a quality magazine :

- The presence of a vision
While a vision is often taken for granted, or even worse, a mission gets misunderstood for a vision, in Hakin9's case the vision could be perhaps best rephrased as "Spoiling the geeks who beg for a nerdy talk to them".

- Content quality

The magazine truly delivers what it promises, namely, hardcode content in sections such as tools review, basics, attack, defense, book reviews, consumers test, and interviews. And whereas the key topic in this issue is LDAP cracking, I really enjoyed the Javascript obfuscation article, with the practical examples provided. A bit ironic, the issue is also reviewing a commercial source code obfuscator, which just like legitimate anti-piracy tools used by malware authors to make their binaries harder to analyze, can also be abused for malicious purposes.

- Relevance of information
The information provided in the articles is highly relevant, and timely, lacking any retrospective approaches and focusing on current and emerging threats only. The same goes for the extensive external resources provided, emphasizing on the importance of self-education.

- Layout

Very well structured, and so far I haven't come across an article where the images weren't syndicated the way they should be, for instance the figures mentioned on a certain page, are the same figures available at that page. Three differentiation points make a very good impression, the level of difficulty for the article, what you should know before reading it in order to understand it, and what you will know after reading it, which you can find at the end of every article.

- Visual materials
The surplus of visual materials is perhaps what won me as a reader from the first moment. In fact, the issues are so rich on visual material illustrating the topic covered in such details, that you can actually take entire sniffing, and javascript obfuscation sessions offline with you, and never ever have to picture the output of a certain process in your mind again.

- Ads

Highly targeted, and primary security related, and best of all, very well spread across the magazine, so you're exposed to more content than ads.

Overall, the magazine successfully delivers what it promises to deliver - hardcode technical content from the geeks, for the geeks. Informative reading!