Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Massive SQL Injection Attacks - the Chinese Way

From copycats and "localizers" of Russian web malware exploitation kits, to suppliers of original hacking tools, the Chinese IT underground has been closely following the emerging threats and the obvious insecurities on a large scale, and so is either filling the niches left open by other international communities, or coming up with tools setting new benchmarks for massive SQL injection attacks, like the case with this one :

"A professional web site vulnerability scanning, use of tools, SQL injection is a new generation of tools to help Web developers and site of the station quickly find vulnerabilities in order to be able to effectively prepare Security work. At the same time, the tool to Web developers to demonstrate the ways in which hackers are using these vulnerabilities, hackers, as well as through the loopholes to do things, can effectively raise the safety awareness of relevant personnel."

Nothing's wrong with the marketing pitch at the first place, but going through the features, the "massive SQL injections through search engine reconnaissance" and automatic page rank verification which you can see in the attached screenshots, ruin the "security auditing" marketing pitch. The tool not only allows easy integration of potentially vulnerable sites obtained through search engines reconnaissance, but also, is prioritizing the results based on the probability for successful injection, next to the page rank of the domains in question. A simple demonstration offered by the company is also, directly enticing its users to "localize" the search engine reconnaissance, by filtering the search results for a particupar country, in this case they used French sites for one of the demos. Here are some excerpts from its CHANGE log speaking for themselves :

"2008.7.15 release version 1.3
 

- New powerful "automatic machine cycle" feature 
- Automatic machine cycle is to provide assistance to the advanced user manual into the use of a very 
- powerful and flexible module, the main sites used for some special filtering into the hand, is almost a 
- universal tool, you can achieve the following:
 

1. In support of GET / POST / COOKIES in a variety of ways, such as the injection. 
2. Scan the key to the page (background, upload, WebShell, databases, backup files, etc.). 
3. According to the dictionary to violence landing back-guess solution WebShell password and password (required to verify that the code can not guess solution). 
4. Page language does not limit the types and databases (to provide specific statements into the database). 
5. At the same time, support for the circulation of the two variables and two dictionaries, fast running and violent content of the database solution to guess a password."

It gets even more interesting in terms of the massive SQL injection attacks mentality which is pretty evident on all fronts :

"- The use of the three search engine sites scans to invade the side to complete
- in scanning probe into the Web site ranking points
- added, "VBS upload to download", "upload directory Web site viewer," "FTP upload to download configuration file" function to make it more convenient for the sa rights to use the site.
- New "sequence document scanners"
- What is the sequence document scanners role? Upload to find loopholes, some of the procedures to upload the file after the upload will be renamed, rename the way the system is usually based on time or incremental increase in the number prefix code for the upload process, if not to return after the file name, Upload files to know the url is usually very difficult to sequence the use of paper scanner can be scanned out


- The best reverse domain name query engine, and quasi-wide
- in scanning the database of basic information, an increase of the database of information related to the process, the link has information on the database server user login (sa need permission)
- control of the interface had a big adjustment, the interface process easier to understand and operate.
- based on a significant site of the wrong mode of access to a comprehensive code optimization and more accurate access to the content, accuracy and access to show progress.
- added, "VBS upload to download", "upload directory Web site viewer," "FTP upload to download configuration file" function to make it more convenient for the sa rights to use the site. 


- point into the types of improved detection order to improve the efficiency of detection.
- improved automatic keyword detection, automatic keyword detection more accurate.
- probe into the points the way to improve and increase the use of automatic detection of the keyword detection.
- type of database to improve the detection, the use of the contents of the length of the failure to detect the type of database automatically switch to the probe through the keyword.
- automatically save and load solution has been to guess the tree structure of the database, guess Solutions has been the content and structure of the database will automatically save and open the next time the injection point will be automatically made available, the solutions do not have to guess again, the continuity of work Greatly increased. 


- solved from the database to read large amounts of data (on hundreds of thousands or millions of records), the half-way card program will die.
- increased significantly on the wrong model of ASP.NET and SQL Server2005 significant mode of dealing with mistakes, error messages can be extracted from a Web directory!
- significant amendments to the wrong mode, some of the injected one by one point in the field or access to the contents of the issue can not be successful (error code in hand); for increased access to specific points table and into the field. 


- amendments to the text of a significant error patterns to detect and correct use of loopholes in the system can be used more to expand. (Text significantly in the wrong mode in version 1.1 already supported, but in the version 1.2 upgrade in the process of scanning to improve the performance of the Gaodiao careless. -_-#)
- on a variety of encoded text can be significantly wrong in the right-compatible, able to correctly handle the ASP.NET page of the text marked wrong. Through custom error keyword, truly compatible with any language, any coding error message.
- crack anti-improvement and enhancement.
- An increase of auto-detection feature keywords. 


- Mssql database specifically for significant points into the wrong mode of detection and the use of up and down the hard work, and many other software can not detect the point of injection can also be used.
- Automatic save and load access to the database, to allow manual known to add tables and fields for solutions to guess.
- Can be used to amend the degree of accuracy; optimize the code to reduce memory footprint; enhance the stability of multi-threading.
- Significant amendments to the wrong mode solution guess the contents of the database must be checked first field defects.
"

The public version of the tool has been in the while for over an year, with a VIP version available to customers only.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Real-Time OSINT vs Historical OSINT in Russia/Georgia Cyberattacks

The original real-time OSINT analysis of the Russian cyberattacks against Georgia conducted on the 11th of August, not only closed the Russia vs Georgia cyberwar case for me personally, but also, once again proved that real-time OSINT is invaluable compared to historical OSINT using a commercial social network visualization/data mining tool which cannot and will never be able to access the Dark Web, accessible only through real-time CYBERINT practices.

The value of real-time OSINT in such people's information warfare cyberattacks -- with Chinese hacktivists perfectly aware of the meaning of the phrase -- relies on the relatively lower operational security (OPSEC) the initiators of a particular campaign apply at the beginning, so that it would scale faster and attract more participants. What the Russian government was doing is fueling the (cyber) fire - literally, since all it takes for a collectivist socienty's cyber militia to organize, is a "call for action" which was taking place at the majority of forums, with the posters of these messages apparently using a spamming application to achieve better efficiency.

The results from 56 days of Project Grey Goose in action got published last week, a project I discussed back in August, point out to the bottom of the food chain in the entire campaign - stopgeorgia.ru :

"Furthermore, coming up with Social Network analysis of the cyberattacks would produce nothing more but a few fancy graphs of over enthusiastic Russian netizen's distributing the static list of the targets. The real conversations, as always, are happening in the "Dark Web" limiting the possibilities for open source intelligence using a data mining software. Things changed, OPSEC is slowly emerging as a concept among malicious parties, whenever some of the "calls for action" in the DDoS attacks were posted at mainstream forums, they were immediately removed so that they don't show up in such academic initiatives"

So what's the bottom line? Nothing that I haven't already pointed out back in August : "Report: Russian Hacker Forums Fueled Georgia Cyber Attacks" :

"But experts say evidence suggests that Russian officials did little to discourage the online assault, which was coordinated through a Russian online forum that appeared to have been prepped with target lists and details about Georgian Web site vulnerabilities well before the two countries engaged in a brief but deadly ground, sea and air war."

Some more comments :

"Just because there was no smoking gun doesn't mean there's no connection," said Jeff Carr, the principal investigator of Project Grey Goose, a group of around 15 computer security, technology and intelligence experts that investigated the August attacks against Georgia. "I can't imagine that this came together sporadically," he said. "I don't think that a disorganized group can coalesce in 24 hours with its own processes in place. That just doesn't make sense."

It wouldn't make sense if this was the first time Russian hacktivists are maintaining the same rhythm as real-life events - which of course isn't.

Moreover, exactly what would have constituted a "smoking gun" proving that the Russian government was involved in the campaign, remains unknown -- I'm still sticking to my comment regarding the web site defacement creative. If they truly wanted to compromise themselves, they would have cut Georgia off the Internet, at least from the perspective offered by this graph courtesy of the Packet Clearing House speaking for their dependability on Russian ISPs.

As for the script kiddies at stopgeorgia.ru, they were informed enough to feature my research into their "negative public comments section". To sum up - the "DoS battle stations operational in the name of the "Please, input your cause" mentality is always going to be there.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

A Diverse Portfolio of Fake Security Software - Part Nine

Among the most recently spotted rogue security software applications and fake system maintenance tools are :

pcvirusremover2008 .com (78.157.142.47; 92.62.101.67)
registrydoctorpro2008 .com
powerfulvirusremover2008 .com
registrydoctor2008 .com
topregistrydoctor2008 .com
securefileshredder2009 .com
securefilesshred .com
registrydoctor2008-scan .com
registrydoctor2008-pro .com
prosecureexpertcleanerpro .com
supersecurefileshredder .com
hypersecurefileshredder .com
securefilesshredder .com
secureexpertcleaner .com
winsecureexpertcleaner .com
prosecureexpertcleaner .com
yoursecureexpertcleaner .com
bestsecureexpertcleaner .com
mysecureexpertcleaner .com
energysavecenter .com
virusremover2008plus .com

malwarecrashpro .com (195.5.117.248)
antimalwareguard .com
malwarecrash .com
antimalwareguardpro .com   
antimalwaremasterpro .com

xp-antispyware-2009 .com (206.161.120.21)
xp-antispyware2009 .com (206.161.120.20)
xp-as-2009 .com (206.161.120.24)
xpantispyware-2009 .com (206.161.120.22)
xpas2009 .com (206.161.120.23)

killwinpc .com (200.63.45.20)
registryupdate .org (216.122.218.11)
antivirus-2009-pro .net (217.20.175.44)

a-a-v-2008 .com (92.241.163.27)
aav2008 .com
adv-a-v .com

ietoolsupdate .com (208.72.168.84)
iexplorerfile .com

Registrants of notice for cross-checking purposes :
Sagent Group  (adminsagent@gmail.com)
Billy A. Schmitt  (admiragroup@yahoo.com)
Shestakov Yuriy (alexvasiliev1987@cocainmail.com)
Andrej Kazanski (akazanski@europe.com)

Related posts:
Violating OPSEC for Increasing the Probability of Malware Infection
A Diverse Portfolio of Fake Security Software - Part Eight
A Diverse Portfolio of Fake Security Software - Part Seven
A Diverse Portfolio of Fake Security Software - Part Six
A Diverse Portfolio of Fake Security Software - Part Five
A Diverse Portfolio of Fake Security Software - Part Four
A Diverse Portfolio of Fake Security Software - Part Three
A Diverse Portfolio of Fake Security Software - Part Two
Diverse Portfolio of Fake Security Software 

TorrentReactor Compromised, 1.2M Users Database In the Wild

It appears that TorrentReactor.net, a highly popular torrent tracker, got compromised in September, with it's users database concisting of 1.2M users and TorrentReactor's source code stolen.

Despite that the attacker claiming responsibility is citing reputation enhancement as the reason for the attack, sooner or later the personal details will be sold and resold to spammers, with the possibilitity for spear phishing attacks left wide open.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

DDoS Attack Graphs from Russia vs Georgia's Cyberattacks

Part of Georgia's information warfare campaign aiming to minimize the bandwidth impact on its de-facto media platforms such as the web site of  their Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I've just received a report part of Georgia's "Russian Invasion of Georgia" series entitled "Russian Cyberwar on Georgia", which is quoting me on page 4 in regard to the "too good to be courtesy of Russia's cyber militia" creative that appeared on the defaced Georgian President's web site. The report also includes DDoS attack graphs and related details worth going through :

"The last large cyberattack took place on 27 August. After that, there have been no serious attacks on Georgian cyberspace. By that is meant that minor attacks are still continuing but these are indistinguishable from regular traffic and can certainly be attributed to regular civilians. On 27 August, at approximately 16:18 (GMT +3) a DDoS attack against the Georgian websites was launched. The main target was the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The attacks peaked at approx 0,5 million network packets per second, and up to 200–250 Mbits per second in bandwidth (see attached graphs). The graphs represent a 5-minute average: actual peaks were higher.

The attacks mainly consisted of HTTP queries to the http://mfa.gov.ge website. These were requests for the main page script with randomly generated parameters. These requests were generated to overload the web server in a way where every single request would need significant CPU time. The initial wave of the attack disrupted services for some Georgian websites. The services became slow and unresponsive. This was due to the load on the servers by these requests. As you see from the graphs above the attacks started to wind down after most of the attackers were successfully blocked. The latest attack may have been initiated as a response to the media coverage on the Russian cyber attacks."

In case you're interested in more factual evidence about what was happening at the particular moment in time, go through the following assessment - "Coordinated Russia vs Georgia cyber attack in progress", as well as through the following posts - "The Russia vs Georgia Cyber Attack"; "Who's Behind the Georgia Cyber Attacks?"; "Georgia President’s web site under DDoS attack from Russian hackers".

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

The Cost of Anonymizing a Cybercriminal's Internet Activities

What would the perfect traffic anonymity service provider targeting cybercriminals consist of? A service operating in Russia that is on purposely not logging any of its user's activities, next to allowing direct spamming from the socks servers, automatic rotation of the VPN servers which they operate in a RBN style hosting provider, or a service using actual malware infected hosts as VPN tunnels not only securing the cybercrime traffic, but also, forwarding the responsibility for the malicious activities to the end user?

Long gone are the days of socks chaining, the practice of automatically connecting to multiple malware infected hosts in order to use them as stepping stones, in between the rest of the malicious activities going on their behalf.

The possibilities for building point-to-point or server-to-multiclient encrypted tunnels between malware infected hosts by using already available Socks5 functions has always been there. As of August, the coders behind a relatively popular web based malware originally started as a DDoS kit, but later on started introducing new features on a "module basis", they have started offering a BETA module for building a VPN network of malware infected hosts, including an admin panel for reselling access to these hosts in order to better monetize their botnet.

This VPN-owning of malware infected hosts is not only resulting in improved anonymity for botnet masters and anyone else having access to the network, but is also contributing to the growth of VPN services designed specifically to be accessed by cybercriminals created on the foundatiosn of such admin panels offering easier reselling of access to the network.

So, what's the cost of anonymizing a cybercriminal's Internet activities? Starting from $40 and going to $300 for a quarter of access, with the price increasing based on the level of anonymity added.