Group Enlists Honey Pots to Track IM, P2P Threats
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IMlogic Inc. on Tuesday announced plans to use honey pots to track malicious virus activity on instant messaging and peer-to-peer networks.
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By Shyla Sangaran  THE rising use of networks of compromised machines, or botnets, to send out spam is becoming a major security headache for enterprises across the globe, including Malaysia.
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A small group of IT security startups are hoping to cash in on the rise of the botnet scourge as businesses -- telecommunications carriers and Internet service providers, in particular -- seek new methods for stopping the attacks.While larger security software makers, including Symantec, McAfee, and Trend Micro, have built botnet-fighting functions into their existing products, and carrier security specialists such as Arbor Networks have added tools for detecting the threats in their network monitoring systems, a handful of smaller companies are attempting to market themselves as purists in the anti-botnet field.As carriers, ISPs, and large enterprises investigate techniques to keep computers on their networks, and those of their customers, from being recruited into the zombie armies of botnet-controlled devices, some experts say that there may be a market for stand-alone technologies that address the problem -- at least for the next several years."If you look at the change in the characteristics of malware attacks over the last year, and the public outrage over data breaches, private and government organizations have reached a point where the botnet issue is directly accessible," said Nick Selby, analyst at The 451 Group."Botnets are very relevant to data loss, and without question, customers are looking for in-the-cloud protection and clean pipes; the problem is too complex for any individual user to deal with alone, even large enterprise users," he said. "Anti-botnet vendors could see compliance and media-fueled growth because everyone understands the issue of data loss."Just as Webroot was able to build and maintain a business dedicated to fighting spyware -- even in the face of competition from larger rivals who built tools for warding off those attacks into their integrated security suites -- vendors staking a claim to the anti-botnet space contend that there will be plenty of demand for their specialized skills.Perhaps the two best-known providers making noise in the segment are FireEye, a Silicon Valley startup backed by funding from Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners, and Damballa, an Atlanta-based company with roots at Georgia Tech backed by Sigma Partners and Noro-Moseley Partners.Leaders with both companies maintain that their businesses are already taking off as botnets take over."These networks of infected PCs have become, in essence, the world's largest computing grids. They dwarf the world's supercomputers in terms of their power, so that tells you something about the severity of the overall threat," said Ashar Aziz, chief executive of FireEye, who maintains there are currently as many as 150 million botnet-infected computers worldwide."This is the actual infrastructure that connects all the malware, spam, and denial-of-service attacks," he said. "A feature built into an end-point client is not going to solve the problem on its own; large enterprises and carriers are looking for something today that is going to help them keep their assets from being victimized."In addition to the carrier crowd, Aziz said that a growing number of large enterprises are seeking to take things into their own hands to ensure that their networks aren't being exploited by botnet commanders.Not only are large companies fearful of having their assets used as proxies by all sorts of attackers, and any potential fines that such activity or related data loss could lead to, he said, they are also hoping to avoid the embarrassment of having machines inside their walls publicly revealed as spam and malware delivery stations.Throughout 2007, researchers at network security technology vendor Support Intelligence repeatedly detailed spam runs emanating from well-known businesses, including Bank of America, Intel, and Nationwide Insurance, that were thought to be driven by botnet-infected computers.At the core of the company's anti-botnet technology, delivered via its appliances, is its FireEye Analysis and Control Technology (FACT) engine, which looks for suspicious traffic, confirms attacks, and blocks access from infected devices to other machines on a network.Using the information being drawn from its customers, which already include a number of large North American carriers and Fortune 1,000 companies, according to the CEO, FireEye claims that it also has the ability to backtrack its way through the networks of infected machines to scope out the size of botnet operations and work with carriers to snuff out the infrastructure.Aziz contends that even if anti-botnet technologies become digested in broader suites by most companies or through carrier-provided services, FireEye -- whose virtualization-based technology was originally positioned for use in network access control (NAC) systems when it was founded in 2004 -- will be able to turn a profit by providing the intelligence needed by those systems to identify and track the attacks."The capability to build this intelligence about the botnets themselves is a sizable business opportunity. These companies offering services will need to constantly feed new data into their gateways," he said. "We feel this is a viable business model, finding the infrastructure that is out there and helping people understand where it lives and how it works."Damballa, which takes it name from the realm of voodoo spirits, is already marketing its capabilities to both enterprises and carriers in a number of different models.For instance, the company already offers three deployment options to enterprise customers: its Global Surveillance Network, a subscription service that alerts users if any of their machines are infected by known botnets; its Enterprise Protection package, which uses sensors placed on clients' networks to look for attacks; and its Extended Enterprise Protection offering, which utilizes sensors outside companies' firewalls to look for attempts by botnets to connect to users' computers.It markets comparable services for carriers and other security OEMs.Damballa leaders said that the key to earning a spot inside more companies' operations will be the continued evolution and maturation of the threats themselves, and the company's unique ability to chart botnet behavior."We definitely see a best-of-breed opportunity for fighting botnets. It depends on the customer, but most of the success we're finding is with organizations who already have a lot of security technologies in place but still find themselves dealing with this problem," said Tripp Cox, vice president of engineering at Damballa, which was founded in late 2006."These companies are getting green lights from other products telling them that everything is OK, but they are still finding out about compromises inside their networks," he said. "A lot of the larger security players will have to have something in their suite to address the problem, and there's definitely potential for consolidation at some point in this space, but if you look at a problem like spam, there's a history there of companies building a stand-alone business to solve problems like this."The 451 Group's Selby said that there will likely be growth of the anti-botnet segment before any industry consolidation takes place, despite a wide number of companies --ranging from anti-virus vendors to massive carriers with managed security services -- who want to take on a broader piece of the market."It would seem to make sense for these [anti-botnet] companies to cut deals with ISPs to have better visibility into their networks and botnet activity in general, as they already have," the analyst said. "This is a market that should see expansion as botnets continue to become a bigger problem for everyone."
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This article discusses the discovery of compromised machines in large enterprise environments, and offers some suggestions on correlating NIDS and HIPS logs to avoid false positives.
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UPDATE: Campaign grows from distributed denial-of-service attack to Digg bumps.
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A group of unknown hackers posted on message boards and security user groups claiming to sell Ciscoâs PIX Firewall software source code for sale.
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Reports of vulnerabilities found by some peer-to-peer file sharers prompt patch.
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A security researcher demonstrates a way to use cross site scripting to remotely spam an internal network printer.
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Web gateway filtering specialist Finjan is reporting a new toolkit that uses randomized JavaScript to stay hidden from virus crawlers and deliver its payload via compromised Web sites.Dubbed by Finjan's Malicious Code Research Center (MCRC) as the "Random JS Toolkit," the malware development package is allowing attackers to create threats that only attempt to victimize an individual computer in the same manner a single time to protect against discovery by anti-virus systems and researchers' automated "crawlers."By dynamically changing the JavaScript employed to deliver each variant of attack being created, and by using random file names that are only delivered to the same machine or IP address once, Finjan researchers said the malware authoring package is meant to avoid the programs used by AV researchers to find new threats emerging on the Web.Typically when automated crawler programs come across new attack samples, they return to the threats' source URLs to verify their names and characteristics and to create signature files that allow their products to block the programs -- or they enter the sites onto so-called blacklists of compromised domains.However, once a machine has been infected with an attack made using the Random JS Toolkit, the threat will recognize that the machine has already been targeted and won't attempt to download it again, thereby thwarting efforts to identify or track the exploits, Finjan experts contend.During the month of December 2007, Finjan estimates that more than 10,000 individual sites were compromised with attacks built using the Random JS Toolkit. Most of the URLs serving as distribution points for the attacks were legitimate sites that had been hijacked, the company said.Among the infected sites were some that would qualify as well-known, highly trusted domains, said Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer of Finjan.Ben-Itzhak said the toolkit serves as a prime example of the types of tactics he expects leading-edge malware authors to utilize more frequently in the coming year."We've found the initial 10,000 sites, but we're sure that there are many more that have already been infected. When we can find this number of exploits, it is clear that this must be a very significant attack that has affected a lot of people," he said. "Using the combination of techniques available in this toolkit, the threats that are being created can become very powerful and stay alive to infect people for longer periods of time."Among the types of malware infections being served up using the toolkit, Finjan has observed everything from Trojan viruses and keystroke loggers to botnet recruiting programs, he said.For its part, Finjan's real-time code inspection technology can defend against such threats because it eschews the use of traditional virus signatures or blacklists in favor of constant monitoring for any malware activity coming across a network armed with one of its devices, Ben-Itzhak maintains.Rival AV vendors, including Symantec, contend that features such as the market leader's recently developed "generic exploit prevention," based on behavioral cues, should also be able to isolate and defend against such emerging attacks.Unlike the widespread iFrame attacks that proliferated across the Web during 2007, threats created using the Random JS Toolkit will also be much harder for security researchers to track down because they do not lead back to central sites where the actual malware code itself is hosted, Finjan maintains.Since the involved malware code is loaded directly on a site, and it won't attempt infect the same computer or IP address twice, traditional URL blacklisting and signature-based techniques will likely prove futile against the attack, the company said.However, from what the security appliance vendor can deduce, Ben-Itzhak said the firm believes there is only one malware group currently using the toolkit."From what we can tell, all the information flowing back from the compromised sites is heading to the same server," he said. "This indicates that there is probably only one group controlling this malware code thus far, and that they are probably being very successful; this is just another step forward for the criminals involved to continue to improve their attack methods and remain undetected."Ben-Itzhak said that the involved server is not one that matches any of the company's lists of machines controlled by well-known malware authoring groups such as the Russian Business Network. The server the company is tracking was originally located in Europe, but has recently been moved to China -- and likely will continue to be moved around to avoid detection, according to the expert.Most of the data the security company has seen being sent to the server has been related to online banking username and password data, he said.As part of its investigation, Finjan discovered that one of the Web properties infected with the randomized JavaScript attacks was an online advertising network that serves up as many as 14 million online banner ads per week. The security device maker reported that unnamed company was informed and is currently working to clean out its systems.
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An innovative malware honeypot project backed by a leading consortium of IT security experts is preparing to re-launch its global sensor network after Jan. 1 in an effort to dupe more cyber-criminals into handing over information about their latest attack methods.
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bulk messages clogging instant-messaging accounts. AOL and its Anti-Spam Alliance partners -- EarthLink, Microsoft, and Yahoo
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IMlogic and several partners today unveiled a threat center network to provide a central place for detecting and analyzing IM and peer-to-peer threats, including IM-borne viruses, worms, spam over IM and malicious code.
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The tool was developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in response to requests from the FBI to provide detail on network activity based on a list of IP addresses related to possible security problems.
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IMlogic, a Waltham, Massachusetts-based firm, has partnered with McAfee, Sybari and AOL to establish an instant message and P2P threat center that will detect the spread of viruses, worms and other malware aimed at these online channels.
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This article discusses how a virus outbreak will produce a few unique opportunities to examine the health of an organization's network -- and learn ways to further harden the network from future automated attacks.
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Hole could allow remote attackers to access your local search results.
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Program developed by "ethical hacking" group takes advantage of cross-site scripting vulnerability to steal contacts, forward e-mail.