Actions against registry services abuse – Report April 2009

The above in figures review the recent actions of Directi, in conjunction with HostExploit independent advice, taken to track down and stop abusive domain names and registrants from abusing Directi’s services.

Registrar Abuse

• 8,506 domain names have been suspended that were either involved in abusive activity or registered by customers/registrants exhibiting persistent patterns of abuse.
• These domain names (and/or their registrants) were involved in various types of abuse, such as spamming, phishing/spoofing, malware perpetration, child pornography, financial frauds and falsified ‘Whois’ information.
• All other services utilized by any of these domain names have also been revoked.

Analysis

When suspending domain names on receiving complaints about their involvement in abuse, HostExploit is pleased to report that, Directi, while reviewing the complaints over the past few months, found certain trends:

• Domain names registered with the same/similar contact information (name, address patterns)
• Bulk registrations of domain names with a slight variation in the domain name e.g. 2008bases1.net, 2008bases2.net, 2008bases3.net, 2008bases4.net, 2008bases5.net …. by abusive registrants/customers
• Same blacklisted name servers being repeatedly utilized.
• Registrations in the same customer account involved in various forms of abuse
• Based on these, we reviewed all domain names, first in the customer's account, then in the reseller's account and then across the databases.

An active list of directly suspended domains is available for down load from HostExploit.com

Note: HostExploit and Directi’s agreement to maintain cooperative collaboration to clamp down on spam and other forms of abuse on the Internet has and is continuing to work. HostExploit confirms that they are pleased to work directly with the Directi abuse desk in helping Directi identify any miscreants that maybe using Directi's services. The partnership includes sharing investigative processes and intelligence data on an ongoing basis. With the view on net-neutrality all actions are based upon ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics

We welcome any concerns or reports related to the abuse of Directi’s registry services forward to abuse(at)directi.com or admin(at)hostexploit.com.

Together with the community we hope to continue taking steps to make the Internet a better and safer place.

Are you a Conficker Zombie?

With the advent of Conficker and to avoid becoming one of the estimated now 20 million or so zombie recruits of the botnet armies requires ongoing awareness. At least we need to be personally alert, to make it difficult for the cyber criminals. If you are reading this article on a MS widows based PC and you have not upgraded your XP or Vista operating system since October 2008, there is a reasonable chance you are a zombie, or rather your PC is.

Before we see the regular smirks and responses from Mac and Linux users, stressing how safe they are and it is all the fault of Microsoft. The now common place blended attacks, whose singular purpose is to add your PC to the zombie botnet armies, are designed to gain control regardless of operating system. MS Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPod, all have “Hosts files” which allow; you, webmasters, or network administrators to configure a direct link to a remote IP address. So if you can do this, guess who else could configure your host file, more about this below.

As a couple of examples of the sophistication of the latest blended attacks, and also acts as the latest clue for Conficker bounty hunters.

Fig 1 - Fig 1 - Conficker - (ref; Internetpol.fr)

Gone are the days when the simple diagnostic of an infected PC or Zombie was essentially the machine was overheating and a markedly drop in speed. The Conficker agents essentially check for the presence of the firewall and ask the firewall to open a backdoor to the Internet, once done it downloads the payload. Interestingly the early version checks if the target has a Ukrainian IP address also checked for a Ukraine keyboard and if either present stopped any infection. Once a PC is infected it will sleep solely to wake up every 3-4 hours to (quietly) call home for its latest instructions and IP addresses.

Another recent example which is called “Virux” (see PE_VIRUX variants - TrendMicro)

Fig 2 - Virux (TrendMicro)

Here Virux infects the PC via the browser and phones home via IRC (Internet Relay Chat) servers for botnet control instructions. Just to emphasize there is some dispute as to where Virux is another variant or from the same stable as Conficker, due to its similarity of attack vectors, or just an update of the older “Virut” exploit which gained fame back in November 2008 for utilizing a vulnerability in Adobe Reader . Either of these examples, both Conficker and Virux, block access to security websites and anti-virus downloads. Also using sophisticated Geo Location IP systems to gain further exploits for the appropriate location of the victim and more importantly this is for enhanced cyber criminal affiliate sales, for example resale and botnet rental of say just PCs on the US West Coast or Australia, etc.

Now for the good news, all the above should alarm the average reader, however most of this can and should be avoided. Either of these examples spreads through the use of; network sharing, weak passwords, and the bad guys making use of the autorun.inf files which are copied to USB drives and other removable media. Further if you have made use of the latest operating system updates, anti-virus, and upgraded to use Adobe Reader 9.0. Also why anyone whether and individual or company, would not use the free “OpenDNS” service which you can set to avoid phishing, adware, or many of these nuisances, is still surprising.

For a really simple check, how is your “Hosts file”? For more the wider details visit Tom Olzak’s excellent article here . For MS windows users it is really simple; using windows explorer go to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc open the hosts file in Notepad, if you see anything else beyond the standard “127.0.0.1 localhost” then ask yourself why, or more worryingly you are already a botnet zombie.

Conficker; A Bounty Hunter’s Guide

You know things are serious when Microsoft Corp. ponies up a $250,000 bounty. The software vendor is offering the cash in exchange for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the Conficker worm creator(s).

It's part of an unprecedented and coordinated response with ICANN and security researchers from Afilias, AOL LLC , Arbor Networks Inc. , CNNIC, F-Secure Corp. , Georgia Tech, Global Domains International Inc., Internet Storm Center (ISC) , M1D Global, NeuStar Inc. (NYSE: NSR), Public Internet Registry, Shadowserver Foundation, Support Intelligence, Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC), and VeriSign Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN) to disable the hosting and distribution of the worm.

Obviously no one's out to justify or encourage the "Wild West" ethics where this reward's concerned, and it's not the first time Microsoft has gone this route. In 2005, the vendor offered $250,000 for the identity of the creator of Netsky, a.k.a. the Sasser worm, leading to the unmasking of German student Sven Jaschan. But for the interested, the curious, and the bounty-minded, what follows is a starter guide and roadmap to help this latest industry-wide effort along.

What is Conficker?

First, do not get blindsided by the linguistics, and its plethora of names. Conficker.A is what CA Inc. (Nasdaq: CA) calls it, but it also goes by Conficker.worm (McAfee Inc. (NYSE: MFE)); Downadup (Symantec); and Kido and Net-Worm.win32.kido.bt (Kaspersky Lab ). They are all the same thing. It spreads through the use of network shares and weak passwords. Additionally, it uses Windows AutoRun functionality, wherein autorun.inf files are copied to USB drives and other removable media.


When Conficker takes control of the user’s PC


• Injects its code into the address space of one of the “svchost.exe” system processes.


• Disables system restore


• Blocks any addresses which contain the following strings:


indowsupdate / wilderssecurity / threatexpert / castlecops / Spamhaus / cpsecure / arcabit / emsisoft / sunbelt / securecomputing / rising / prevx / pctools / norman / k7computing / ikarus /hauri / hacksoft / gdata / fortinet / ewido / clamav / comodo / quickheal / avira / avast / esafe / ahnlab / centralcommand / drweb / grisoft / eset nod32 / f-prot / jotti / Kaspersky / f-secure / computerassociates / networkassociates / etrust /panda / Sophos / trendmicro / mcafee / Norton Symantec / Microsoft defender / rootkit / malware / spyware / virus



Each day, the worm generates a fresh list of about 250 random domain names such as abfhhibxci.cn. It then checks those domains for new instructions, verifying their cryptographic signature to ensure that they were created by Conficker's author. It should be stressed that this malware is infecting PCs but has not yet been switched on via command and control functions to act as a botnet.

From whence did Conficker spring?

Conficker was first reported to Microsoft as a remote code execution vulnerability in Windows 2000, 2003, 2008, XP, and Vista server service in October 2008; a security update was released on Oct. 23. Estimates vary as to the extent of infection: F-Secure reported on Jan. 16 that Conficker had infected 9 million PCs worldwide with 353,495 unique IP addresses; 10 days later, this was revised to 15 million infected PCs.

Where are the major infection centers?

Panda Security reported on Jan. 21 Conficker in 83 countries, and an estimated 6 percent of the entire world’s PCs were infected, say, 18 million. It further estimated the countries with the highest rates of virulence were the U.S., China, Spain, Taiwan, and Brazil. Press reports have circulated that American military systems were infected by USB drives, and that U.K. Royal Navy warship and submarine systems were infected and rendered unusable; French fighter planes were also reportedly being grounded. Symantec is monitoring 450,000 IP addresses (PCs) with the original infection, with another 1.7 million PCs infected per day.

Who created Conficker?

In this case, the $250,000 question could take a dozen pages of explanation. One simple form of analysis for the potential bounty hunter is to follow the rabbit. But you'll need some Russian language skills. If we examine Kaspersky’s Virus List of Jan. 2, the Conficker worm was originally downloading from trafficconverter.biz, so that's a good starting place. A little examination shows this domain was originally registered via the now defunct EstDomains in December 2008. Even better, some additional Googling gives us a clue to the origin: In Russian hacker forums, we can see earlier offerings from trafficconverter.biz providing excellent reseller margins of $30 a pop to hackers for ensuring downloads of infectious, rogue, anti-virus software.

Not resolving - trafficconverter. biz

Resolving – trafficconverter2.biz

Sister site – RX-Partners.biz

Given the limited space and time, see what conclusions you can draw. You should end up with a combination of hosts, each with a questionable, cybercriminal reputation: AS43816 Centralux (a.k.a. WebAlta, Russia); AS28753 NetDirect (Germany); and AS41867 Geonic (Ukraine). Whether this gets you any closer to Microsoft's reward will depend on which rabbit hole you go down. But safe to say that this sort of incentive will flush out Conficker's writer(s)... The only remaining question is just how long that will take.

Happy hunting!

Cloning Security

Coming to a PC near you very soon is an innovative and possibly deadly combination of well known exploitation techniques, emerging from the dark side of the Internet. What makes this new attack so innovative are the targets: Internet security information and research Web sites. Hackers in the last week have been creating exact clones of Internet security Websites using proxies, DNS (domain name server) spoofing or redirection, and dedicated denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

It should not surprise anyone to realize Internet security research, forums, and information Websites are attacked on a regular or even daily basis. Mostly it is nuisance spam, bogus log-in attempts, or hack attempts to gain entry to the administrator side, and in more intense cases, DDoS.


But this cloning approach emerged from investigation only in the last week. To begin with, there was the discovery purely by accident, of an exact clone of the HostExploit Website. After further investigation, it was discovered this was not an isolated case, with one server hosting clones of security sites like avertlabs.com (McAfee), isc.sans.org, milw0rm.com, nmap.org, packetstormsecurity.org, secunia.com, securiteam.com, securityfocus.com, securityreason.com, thedarkvisitor.com, www-935.ibm.com (IBM), and xforce.iss.net (IBM).

In itself this was a worrying discovery, if simply viewed from content theft, hijacked traffic, click through, SSL forgery, PayPal information, and RSS links etc., of relatively high-traffic security sites. However, in parallel to the emergence of these clones commencing on Friday and over the weekend, several of the real sites listed as clones and a few others -- Metasploit, Zone-H, and Kaspersky -- were under hacker or DDoS attack, and in some cases a mixture of the two. For a while a couple sites were completely unavailable for a day or so, and one or two are still under a continuous DDoS attack.

Working off limited data from server logs and network traffic, at least a couple of the attacks originated from Poland (AS5617 TPNET); Romania (AS 9050 Romtelecom, AS39650 VIANET); Russia (JSC servers funneled via RTcomm, and Rostelecom via AS9002 RETN); and Turkey (AS9121 TTNet, AS8386 KOCNET). Many of these servers appear regularly on lists of the worst European offenders for hosting spam and exploits, according to the German-based anti-spam service UCEprotect.

I must emphasize here that there's no proven link between the appearances of the clones and this weekend's attacks. This could be a simple coincidence, but as Edmund Burke said. "Better be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident security." It does leave the open question, if by hacking and DDoS, the real security Websites were offline the only source available could be the clones. It is by a simple step to include by DNS redirection, cookie plants, and other exploits, to ensure visitors went to and continued to visit the false, cloned sites.

Consider the mayhem that could be caused by providing bad file downloads and misinformation using these sorts of exploits, botnets, and spam, or even distorting the core news and advisories this sector, its enterprise customers and the press depend upon. Worst of all, even without any changes from the real sites, the data gathered from all those misdirected, security-minded visitors would be hugely valuable.

Obviously the intended outcome of the attacks and the clones is to damage reputations, create distrust, and ultimately make it easier for cyber-criminals to operate. The good news is thanks to swift action, these discovered clones and the hacker site serving them are offline. This is certainly not the last we will see of this approach.

Cyberwar – The Cyber Iron Curtain: Now Kyrgyzstan – Part 2

The Kyrgyzstan DDoS Attacks of January, 2009: Assessment and Analysis

Note: This post is a joint effort of HostExploit.com, Jeff Carr of IntelFusion and Greg Walton of InforWarMonitor.net. Further analysis may be forthcoming by individual contributors at their respective Web sites.

On January 18, 2009, a large scale DDoS attack began against Kyrgyzstan Internet service providers (ISPs). Key national Web server site Asiainfo.kg and the Kyrgyzstan official domain registration service Domain.kg have only been available intermittently from Jan 18^th 09.

Russian-based servers primarily known for cybercrime activity have been identified through IP analysis with the attacks on Kyrgyzstan.

Figure 1 shows the Internet routing during the later stages of the Kyrgyzstan DDoS attacks.

Figure 3 provides a BGP (Border Gate Protocol) Internet traffic routing for the period of the 15^thth of January 2009, with primary focus on highlighting the DDoS traffic against AS8511 Asiainfo of Kyrgyzstan.

Timeline of Political Events

January 17: Prominent opposition leader detained in Kyrgyzstan

January 17: Political confrontation intensifies. Opposition activists form new coalition UPM (United People’s Movement)

January 19: Two opposition leaders detained and charged

January 19: Russia presses Kyrgyzstan to close US base

January 20: Kyrgyzstan Opposition denied use of Parliament Press Center

January 21: Kyrgyzstan government targets opposition

January 22: Journalists ordered to file personal information

January 22: Kyrgyz Opposition Party denied registration

Analysis

The Kyrgyz cyber attacks during the week of January 18^th fall right in line with an escalating series of repressive political actions by the Bakiev government against this latest attempt to form an opposition political party – the United Peoples Movement (UPM). Bakiev should know, since it was the Tulip Revolution in 2005 (and the last time that DDoS attacks were utilized in Kyrgyzstan) which brought him to power.

Opposition leader Omurbek Tekebaev has pointed out the similarities between 2005 and 2009: “Both then and now, you could see people mistrusted those in power, who lacked moral authority. Both then and now, public opinion was completely controlled by the authorities, and there was persecution of journalists and dissidents, criminal persecution of political opponents,” he said.(IWPR article)

This appears to be a cyber operation for hire by the Bakiev government to control information access against its political opposition. The likely culprits are Russian hackers with moderate skill levels who regularly engage in cyber crime.

There is no evidence that the Russian government is directly involved, however Moscow has complete control over the servers owned by JSC and Golden Telecom. To date, no action has been taken by the RF to deny access to these servers by Russian hackers.

Related Links:

Cyberwar – The Cyber Iron Curtain: Now Kyrgyzstan – Part 1

Kyrgyz Websites subject to unexplained failure and hacking during the Parliamentary Elections (2005)

The Kyrgyzstan Cyber Attack That No One Is Talking About

The Cyber Iron Curtain

Cyberwar – The Cyber Iron Curtain: Now Kyrgyzstan – Part 1

Fig 1. The new Cyber Version of the Iron Curtain

Large scale DDos attacks have been underway against Kyrgyzstan Internet service providers (ISPs) for several days. This further establishes the emergence of the ‘Cyber Iron-Curtain’ as shown in the schematic diagram above. For examples, the key national web server site Asiainfo.kg and the Kyrgyzstan official domain registration service Domain.kg have only been available intermittently from Jan 18th 09. We are able to confirm the ‘usual suspects’ of well known organized cybercrime servers have been involved, (see Part 2 for details). Although upstream providers in Russia and Kazakhstan have ironically been stating they are refusing to pass traffic because of the scale of the attacks.



The reasons for the cyber attacks are sketchy, as the Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev is seen as pro Kremlin. However, as a coincidence which is similar to DDos of Lithuanian web sites last year, when the Lithuanian Prime Minister visited the US. President Bakiyev is to visit Moscow on February 3, to discuss the extension of Russian investment in the Kyrgyz energy sector and Russia are pressurizing Kyrgyzstan to close the US military air base used to support operations in Afghanistan. (Sydney Morning Herald - news link)



Another view is to effectively neutralize the recently unified opposition United People’s Movement (UPM). In its founding charter, the coalition seeks a new political system for Kyrgyz and the removal of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev from office. Complaining of widespread corruption, increasing human rights abuse, and the deterioration of living standards, the UPM is planning a series of protests for February and March.



The Kyrgyz state general prosecutor has launched criminal investigations involving at least four opposition leaders in recent weeks. This past weekend, opposition leader Omurbek Tekebayev, chairperson of the Ata Meken Party, was arrested on vague weapons charges as he headed for a meeting in the northwestern Talas region of Kyrgyz. He has since been released.



The cyberwar attacks on Kyrgyzstan have also by confirmed on IntelFusion and Information Warfare Monitor describing three out of the four Kyrgyz ISPs having been taken down, e.g. AS8511 ASIAINFO Autonomous System Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and the Kyrgyzstan official domain registration service AS8511 ASIAINFO Autonomous System Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan



Hence from a ‘Cyber Iron-Curtain’ perspective there is now provided a ‘control at will’ by Russia of communication and increasing cyber influence over its former Soviet satellites, a modern parallel to Winston Churchill’s post second world war description of the Soviet sphere of influence. Separately, the blocking of these major websites in Kyrgyzstan suggests that we should probably move this country up the relative scale of importance for the monitoring cyberwar around the world.



Click here for the RSS feed for Part 2 and further reports.

Majority of Top 100 Websites Host Malicious Content

A majority of the top 100 websites hosted either malicious content or masked redirects according to a Websense report.

Summarizing its significant findings during the six-month period ending in December 2008.


The highlights are:




Web Security

• 77 percent of Web sites with malicious code are legitimate sites that have been compromised.The number of malicious Web sites identified by Websense Security Labs from January first, 2008 through January first, 2009 has increased by 46 percent.
• 70 percent of the top 100 sites either hosted malicious content or contained a masked redirect to lure unsuspecting victims from legitimate sites to malicious sites.
• This represents a 16 percent increase over the last six-month period.

Messaging Security

• 84.5 percent of email messages were spam. This represents a 3 percent decrease over the last six months.
• 90.4 percent of all unwanted emails in circulation during this period contained links to spam sites or malicious Web sites. This represents almost a 6 percent increase in emails containing malicious links to compromised sites.
• Shopping remained the leading topic of spam (22 percent), followed closely by cosmetics (15 percent) and medical (14.5 percent). This remained consistent over the last six months.

• Pornography-related spam increased sharply by 94 percent, but still only represented 9 percent of all email spam. 6 percent of spam messages were phishing attacks, representing a 33 percent decrease over the last six months.
• This represents a change in tactics as spammers concentrated on data-stealing Trojan horses and DNS poisoning tactics to lure victims to malicious sites.

Data Security

• 39 percent of malicious Web attacks included data-stealing code.
• 57 percent of data-stealing attacks are conducted over the Web.
• This represents a 24 percent increase over the six-month period.

The full report is here (PDF)

Cyberwar - The Battle for Gaza (part 2)

Cyberwar as a word or term, does appear to be inflammatory for many and a cause of considerable debate. Quite simply it is reasonably defined as asynchronous warfare via the web, i.e. the occurrence of two or more processes at different times, and war in its self does not need to have governments fighting each other. As examples, most would agree The American War of Independence was a war, but fought by a section of the populace against a government, or ruling entity.

Propaganda, which can reasonably be considered as an element of cyber warfare, has always been seen as a crucial weapon or of war from the now classical literature of Thomas Paine’s pamphlet “Common Sense”, to the current website hacks or running battles within the social networks.

In the follow up to the earlier blog article, here we can initially consider the battle within the social networks. Within Facebook there has been considerable activity, The Jewish Internet Defense Force, a group that claims to have 5,000 members worldwide are reported to regularly attack the Facebook wall of the group “Support the Fight Against Cancer with Just a Click!”, which currently has 1,350,137 members and describes itself as a “cancer truth group” that appears to blame the “Zionist Jewish Mafia” for the disease. While on Facebook we also see as examples; “Israel is not a country!” with 8,878 members, in counterbalance we have "Palestine is not a country Delist it from Facebook as one!" with 3,649 members, and “End the siege on Gaza now….” with 45,806 members.

Within Wikipedia there are similar battles with TheJDIF’s own article being regularly defaced with swastikas or jihadist slogans. However at the same time they have produced a well researched blacklist of what they consider as “Heavily Biased Anti-Israel Wikipedia Editors”. The Wikipedia article on Hamas is being revised by one side of the argument or the other hourly, if we look at the article’s revision history.



The more conventional web site hacking reported earlier has shown a marked increase in activity not only against Israeli websites but to wider international targets. Notable targets from the many of the pro-Palestinian effort, have been; the United States Army's Military District of Washington website, NATO Parliamentary Assembly website in Brussels, the UNICEF website in Italy, Government websites in Colombia, and many international academic websites, for example University of Applied Sciences in Switzerland. Commercial websites continue to be targeted increasingly in USA, UK, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Australia, and a notable example of Google’s web site in Egypt.



The most reported hacker recently in this conflict recently is “Agd_Scorp / Peace Crew”, actually these are better known in hackers’ circles as the Turkish group “1923turk”of which 6,319 hacks and defacements can be attributed to over the last week. Other hacker groups of note in quantitative terms over the last week are “Cold z3ro”, “DNS Team”, and “FesH4ck3rs Team”. To complete this small effort on quantification, for webmasters it may be interesting that according to Zone-H.org an organization that has tracked hackers and hacking for many years, 70% of the attacks have been against web sites using Linux based servers. However this may more reflect the larger use of Linux over MS Windows for web serving operating systems.




For one final word of warning, from the world of the cyber criminals who take advantage of this and similar situation and has nothing to do with Gaza protests, thanks to Gary Warner of University of Alabama . Be cautious about fake CNN, other news reports, and UNICEF appeals relating to the Gaza conflict, appearing in your email box. These are actually virus laden that lead to the download of malware. From further analysis the hosting of which is by AS46475
Limestone Networks, Inc., Dallas Texas. This is the same IP hosting as Classmates.com recent malware and blacklisted by Spamhaus SBL71257

CyberWar - The Battle for Gaza

Whatever your personal perspective of the rights and wrongs of the current Arab-Israeli war in Gaza, there is a second front being fought on the Internet. This form of warfare is a battle of words and often vivid imagery engaged by hackers from either side of the divide. The image shown here is a highly graphic example from a defaced Israeli commercial website, hacked by “DNS Team” today.

Many are familiar with the explosive form of botnet based DDos (direct denial of service) style of cyberwarfare carried out and widely reported, against governmental web sites in Estonia in 2007 or Georgia in August 2008. In fact this particular cyberwar in the Middle East has been ongoing since at least 2001. As the Internet mirrors the real world, this cyberwar waxes and wanes as the ground warfare fans the flames on the Internet at times such as this.

Of considerable interest to Internet security in general are the tactics utilized. As these reflect the application of many sophisticated cybercrime hacking techniques better known for commercial means, and is important to any commercial or governmental network operation.

Although at first sight it would seem this is only of consequence to Israeli or Arab web sites this is not the case. For example many US, French, Spanish, UK, and Danish web sites are currently being defaced by hacking at the current rate of hundreds per hour. Many such defaced hacks are merely an inconvenience for the webmaster, however many appearing over the last two days is also containing malware links. Many are also provided with redirects or flash links to Jihadist forums or blogs, caused by SQL attacks.

A few days ago the “Team Evil” Islamic group used a DNS attack on DomainTheNet's registration system server which redirected many well known Israeli web sites such as ynetnews.com, weather Forecast website, public utilities, and Bank Discount, and rerouting users to a page featuring anti-Israel messages. DomainTheNet is a multinational registration service provider (RSP), which offers registration and site-hosting services. The of the names used in the hacking; Team Evil, DNS Team, Tw!$3r, KaSPeRs HaCKeR CreW, PaLiSeNiaN HaCK, MoRoCcAn HaCkErZ, et. al., apparently emanate and have been reported as coming from Morocco.

In fact by tracking back to the associated routings and linked forums these activities are originating from Saudi Arabia and Turkey. As three embarrassing examples of the enemy within; Jihadist communication sites and forums; Anashed Net is registered in Saudi Arabia but hosted by Layered Tech and Raslny com is also registered in Saudi Arabia but hosted by SoftLayer, both hosts based in Plano Texas, USA. As Internet-Haganah (an Israeli website that tracks Jihadist sites) reports, Thabaat net which distributes Al Qaida propaganda is registered in Belgium and hosted in Denmark, ironically a key target for Jihadists due to the Islamic cartoon incident.

The Associated Press reported in 2006 that Team-Evil had begun hacking and vandalizing US government websites as early as 2004. In 2002, an Israeli hacker named Ehud Tannenbaum, known as "The Analyzer", was sentenced to 18 months in jail for breaking into the NASA, Pentagon, and Defense Ministry computer systems, among other virtual locations.

By way of even handedness it would be naïve to think this cyberwar is one sided, no Hamas or related web site is openly available as these were effectively taken down and have been kept offline from mid 2008 by the pro Israeli hackers “Fanat al-Radical”. A fascinating approach over the last few days is being made by an Israeli website ‘Help Israel Win’ which provides a download so your PC can become part of a worldwide pro-Israeli botnet. So far 7,786 have joined in, already a fairly powerful global computing force to, as they describe “Disrupt our Enemy’s Efforts”.

A final word of warning the download has been analyzed as ‘Win32/Injector.K’ a well known PC hijacking trojan used in cyber crime. As is the case in cyber warfare, who is who and whether the hacking is being directed by governmental intelligence forces, criminal groups, or hacktivists is always a question.

Enemy Within

When considering our preparedness (or lack of it) for cyber warfare or fighting cyber criminals, an old African quotation comes to mind: "When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you."

At first thought, the concept of an enemy within might call to mind the Federal Trade Commission halting the scareware schemes, in which e-marketeers falsely claimed their scans had detected viruses, spyware, and illegal pornography on consumers’ computers. The FTC estimated more than 1 million consumers were duped into buying needless products such as WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner, ErrorSafe, and XP Antivirus, at $40 per install. Yes, a cool $40 million from such a scam based on ineffective products.

The enemy within, though, is actually more insidious than that. According to an alarming annual security report from Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), there was a 90 percent growth rate in threats originating from legitimate domains, nearly double what the company saw in 2007.

In addition, vulnerabilities in virtualization products nearly tripled to 103 in 2008 from 35 in 2007, as more organizations embraced virtualization to save money and increase productivity. The technology basically lets one computer do the job of many, by sharing the resources of a single computer across multiple environments. More importantly, you can further establish virtual environments for Web serving and data transit.

HostExploit was able to determine the problem with McColo by penetrating its virtual environment and exposing it for the business it actually was. This evil network was run from Moscow by cyber criminals; however, it was fully maintained within a data center in Southern California. In similar fashion, recent attacks on Georgia were launched from Plano, Texas, controlled by a Russian group apparently based in London.

The enemy within we should all be most concerned with are these collocation centers. Most would be surprised to learn one particular Russian network operator has three virtual hubs in the U.S.: Ashburn, Va.; New York; and Los Angeles. This may sound worse than it is -- U.S. operators have hubs and nodes in Moscow; this is just the way of the Web Wide World, and allows us to speed the flow or maintain virtualized Web-serving across the globe.

What is disturbing is this particular Russian network operator is RETN, also formerly known as Eltel, a very dirty Russian network infamous for hosting spammers and malware. RETN/Eltel will be reactivating the McColo IPs anytime now, allowing the botnets to contact their masters and the spam to flow again, according to Spamhaus.

In this virtual network operator jigsaw puzzle, consider the potential enemy within. In this unregulated and open market, anyone with a credit card (like RETN) can rent rack space or even simply dispatch a server, right next to equipment from Global Crossing, Level 3, Hurricane Electric, and many others, foreign and domestic. And that's all that's needed to launch a botnet-controlled attack for cyber warfare or cyber criminal purposes from St. Petersburg, Beijing, or Islamabad. Except that it's happening within U.S. cyber space.

Within a very short period, these virtual thugs can send billions of spam messages, distribute malware, or, as the hackers did earlier this year, access White House emails. Add to this the ability to use anonymous proxy networks via botnet C&C (command and controls), and they can make themselves look las if they're from the U.S., China, or whatever virtual destination they choose.

If there was ever a serious case for necessary government regulation and watchfulness, this is it, before anyone jumps up to call this infringing on Internet freedom or net neutrality. These are commercial, criminal concerns operating strategically important communication data and collocation centers; tighter controls would have no effect on individual Net surfing or Web hosting. What more oversight and control would do is create a less welcoming place to harbor the enemy within.

Internet Evolution

EstDomains Active Domain List and Registrar Abuse

Estdomains Active Domain List

as of December 1st 2008 as now maintained by Directi is now available in a search able form on HostExploit.com .

The total: 272,488 active domains is provided as a community service, any research or abuse comments on these domains are welcomed to abuse(at)directi.com or estlist (at)hostexploit.com. Any of suspected illegal or child pornography content should be reported directly to IWF here




The images shown continue the review of the actions that Directi, in conjunction with HostExploit, have recently taken to track down and stop abusive domain names and registrants from abusing Directi’s services.

Registrar Abuse

• This provides for a total of 180,745 domains suspended from August 2008 and 527,000 domains with removal of domain registrant anonymity (Privacy Protect).

• Over 50,000 domain names have been suspended that were either involved in abusive activity or registered by customers/registrants exhibiting persistent patterns of abuse.

• These domain names (and/or their registrants) were involved in various types of abuse, such as rogue pharma, spamming, phishing/spoofing, malware perpetration, child pornography, financial frauds and falsified ‘Whois’ information.

• All other services utilized by any of these domain names have also been revoked.

• Of particular note is the suspension of a further 103 domains purveying child pornography the majority of which were apparently registered via Regname org and Buy-Cheap-Domain info (see notes below).

• Over the past three months, certain resellers have been identified who have been the destination of choice for bad actors; among these are Vivids Media GMBH, Klikdomains, MyNick.name, and Webst.ru. Approximately 125,000 domain names registered through these resellers have been suspended so far.


Discussion

One advantage of this exercise has been the development of active communication channels between us and the community. We've been able to refresh contacts with organizations e.g. Knujon, CastleCops, Spamhaus, McAfee, and Artists Against 419, among others, sharing intelligence on abuse activity.

In scouring for more such cases however, every emphasis is made on avoiding any false positives. All domains suspended were following abuse complaints and exhaustive analysis. With this is mind and with the view on net-neutrality all actions are based upon ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) e.g. 1.2 Avoid harm to others.

An active list of directly suspended domains is available for down load from HostExploit.com.
We welcome any concerns or reports related to the abuse of Directi’s registry services forward to abuse(at)directi.com or admin(at)hostexploit.com

Child Pornography - Researchers note:

We at HostExploit encourage community awareness, investigation and exposure of cyber crime. It is important to stress in virtually all jurisdictions, US, UK, and internationally, it is against the law to download content, possess, or in some cases to attempt to visit websites containing child pornography. This can only be carried out by law enforcement or under the direct authorization of law enforcement. No actual visits have been made to any such website by researchers associated with this report or HostExploit. In determining whether a website within this category is via law enforcement or governmentally authorized child protection agencies. Any reader or researchers, who believe they have knowledge of such a website or online service, should contact your local agency. For community purpose, HostExploit has an informational area for “Reporting Cyber Crime’ and in this case for reporting ‘Illegal Content’ .

Child Pornography on the Internet, Background:

US -Since its establishment in March 1998, the CyberTipline of the US based National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) has received more than 628,680 reports involving the possession, manufacture, and distribution of child pornography, the online enticement of children for sex acts, child prostitution, child sex-tourism, child molestation (not in the family), unsolicited obscene material sent to a child, and misleading domain names.


UK - IWF is the UK’s internet ‘Hotline’ for the public and IT professionals to report potentially illegal online content within our remit. IWF work in partnership with the online industry, law enforcement, government, the education sector, charities, international partners and the public to minimize the availability of this content, specifically, child sexual abuse content hosted anywhere in the world and criminally obscene and incitement to racial hatred content hosted in the UK.


Worldwide - INHOPE is the International Association of Internet Hotlines and was founded in 1999 under the EC Safer Internet Action Plan http://www.europa.eu.int/iap . INHOPE represents Internet Hotlines all over the world, supporting them in their aim to respond to reports of illegal content to make the Internet safer. Click here to find out more about INHOPE

Actions against registry services abuse – Report Oct 2008 - HostExploit and Directi

Jart Armin of HostExploit.com & Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of Directi are pleased to jointly report on the outcome of community actions against abuse of Directi’s domain registry and PrivacyProtect.

The above in figures review of the actions that Directi, in conjunction with HostExploit, have recently taken to track down and stop abusive domain names and registrants from abusing Directi’s services.
Registrar Abuse

• Over 50,000 domain names have been suspended that were either involved in abusive activity or registered by customers/registrants exhibiting persistent patterns of abuse.
• These domain names (and/or their registrants) were involved in various types of abuse, such as spamming, phishing/spoofing, malware perpetration, suspected pedopornography, financial frauds and falsified ‘Whois’ information.
• All other services utilized by any of these domain names have also been revoked.
• Over the past three months, certain resellers have been identified who have been the destination of choice for bad actors; among these are Vivids Media GMBH, Klikdomains, MyNick.name, and Webst.ru. Approximately 125,000 domain names registered through these resellers have been suspended so far.

PrivacyProtect

• A large incentive for bad actors to use Directi’s services has been PrivacyProtect.org. This service has been disabled for over 27,000 abusive domain names.
• The service had been permanently disabled for all existing and new registrations through resellers/registrars that have seen high volumes of abusive registrations - notable being the ones mentioned above and Estdomains. This has amounted to approximately 500,000 domain names which had privacy protection canceled.

Analysis

When suspending domain names on receiving complaints about their involvement in abuse, HostExploit is pleased to report that, Directi, while reviewing the complaints over the past few months, even before the ‘Atrivo-Cyber Crime USA’ report, found certain trends:

• Domain names registered with the same/similar contact information (name, address patterns)
• Bulk registrations of domain names with a slight variation in the domain name e.g. 018xyz.com, 018xyza.com, 018xyzb.com, 018xyzc.com …. by abusive registrants/customers
• Same blacklisted name servers being repeatedly utilized.
• Registrations in the same customer account involved in various forms of abuse
• Based on these, we reviewed all domain names, first in the customer's account, then in the reseller's account and then across the databases. Based on these similarities, 35,000 domain names were identified and have been labeled as co-network.

Discussion

Directi’s strengthened abuse team continues to review complaints and revoke privacy protection for abusive domain names, while also forwarding the complaint to the Registrars for whom Directi provide software and other services for them to take action. Where reports of abuse emerge from security community blogs or forums, Directi are now proactively making searches for such comments and investigating any issue that may involve Directi or a reseller.

One advantage of this exercise has been the development of active communication channels between us and the community. We've been able to refresh contacts with organizations e.g. StopBadware, Knujon, CastleCops, Spamhaus, and Artists Against 419, among others, sharing intelligence on abuse activity.

In scouring for more such cases however, every emphasis is made on avoiding any false positives. With this is mind and with the view on net-neutrality all actions are based upon ACM (Association of Computing Machinery)http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics e.g.

1.2 Avoid harm to others.

"Harm" means injury or negative consequences, such as undesirable loss of information, loss of property, property damage, or unwanted environmental impacts. This principle prohibits use of computing technology in ways that result in harm to any of the following: Internet users, and the general public.

An active list of directly suspended domains is available for down load from HostExploit.com

HostExploit and Directi have agreed to maintain their cooperative collaboration to clamp down spam and other forms of abuse on the Internet as rapidly as possible. HostExploit confirms that they are pleased to work directly with the Directi abuse desk in helping Directi identify any miscreants that maybe using Directi's services. The partnership includes sharing investigative processes and intelligence data on an ongoing basis.

We welcome any concerns or reports related to the abuse of Directi’s registry services forward to abuse(at)directi.com or admin(at)hostexploit.com

Together with the community we hope to continue taking steps to make the Internet a better and safer place.

Joint statement from Directi, HostExploit and Kunujon

In light of recent developments, Jart Armin of HostExploit.com Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of Directi and Garth Bruen of Knujon have had an open dialogue and mutually agreed to release this joint statement clearing any previous misconceptions and reaffirming their common goal to combat abuse on the Internet. Here are few of the points they would like to jointly make -

* Directi, HostExploit, Knujon recognize and confirm that they share the common goal of continuing to combat spam and abuse on the Internet through cooperation, collaboration and proactive action. In conversation yesterday, Directi, HostExploit and Knujon agreed to publish this statement to clarify any misconceptions and affirm their mutual commitment to work closely to combat abuse.

* Directi clarified to HostExploit that, LogicBoxes (a Directi business) is not hosting any of Atrivo's websites. Atrivo runs its web infrastructure under the name of Hostfresh.com which is not affiliated with Directi in any manner.

* Directi also confirmed that ESTDomains is not a Directi company, and Directi does not control the actions or clients of ESTDomains, a fact that HostExploit was already aware of.

* HostExploit confirms that its report was not meant to allege that LogicBoxes is directly sponsoring Internet abuse, rather its report was meant, in good faith, only to provide relevant parties with all information and data which can be used to clean up websites that were violating principles of ethical behavior. HostExploit hopes that other Internet news sites which may have taken the data in the HostExploit report out of context in assuming that LogicBoxes is directly affiliated with Atrivo rectify this misconception. Directi confirms that LogicBoxes is simply a software provider to various ICANN Accredited Registrars, and its only role was providing software for domain registration and DNS management.

* HostExploit and Knujon did share with Directi a separate list of additional web sites known for badware that belong to Atrivo, enabling Directi's abuse team to swiftly suspend them. Directi HostExploit and Knujon intend to continue this information exchange to speedily resolve abuse issues, and to further demonstrate transparency the community can contact either Directi or / and HostExploit to ensure action is taken.

* Directi has clarified that privacyprotect.org is merely a privacy protection service used by many of Directi's legitimate clients, not unlike the privacy protection services offered by other Registrars. Directi further confirmed that privacy protection had already been disabled on a large percentage of Atrivo's domain names over a month ago. Since Directi offers privacy protection free of cost, there are miscreants who use it to cloak their malicious activities. However Directi reaffirmed that its abuse team will suspend privacy protection on any domain for which they receive a genuine complaint in less than 24 hours. In fact a few months ago, based on reports and data obtained from the antispam community, Directi ceased to offer its privacy protection services to all customers of ESTDomains and to tens of thousands of other domains obtained through the community. Currently over half a million genuine customers of Directi use privacy protection services to prevent their whois data from being harvested.

* Directi affirms they are in no way supporting illicit online pharmacies. KnujOn has sent a list of newly populated fake pharmacy domains that Directi suspended. Directi and KnujOn now jointly call on the Internet community, private industry, and government to help develop policy and methods to put a stop to the fake pharmacy menace since Registrars cannot do this alone.

* Knujon acknowledges that the 48 Registrars that it thought were phantom are actually in existence as Delaware incorporated legitimate companies with a valid ICANN Accreditation and accurate contact information. Knujon's confusion stemmed from the fact that ICANN does not require these companies to publically report their incorporation details.

* Directi and HostExploit have discussed further ways to enhance their cooperative collaboration to clamp down spam and other forms of abuse on the Internet as rapidly as possible. Directi acknowledges and applauds HostExploit continuous efforts in tracking down miscreants. HostExploit and Knujon confirms that they are pleased to work directly with the Directi abuse desk in helping Directi identify any miscreants that maybe using Directi's services. The partnership includes sharing investigative processes and intelligence data on an ongoing basis.

Together with the community we hope to continue taking steps to make the Internet a better and safer place.

ATRIVO – Cyber Crime USA Report - Update 090608 a

We demonstrated a limited number of examples of badware websites with Directi providing some form of Internet connectivity with data confirmation on Sept 04 08, and historical third party sources. Below we show the welcome results of actions taken by Directi as of Saturday 090608. - Click on the graphics to enlarge.

xpantivirussecurity.com – rogue anti-virus – was with connectivity by Atrivo and Directi (OpticalJungle), registrar Directi (PublicDomainRegistry), registrant, obviously false data March 08 courtesy Sunbelt Software

Graphics of internet connectivity 9/4/08

Graphics of Internet connectivity Sat 9/6/08

Loads.cc – botnet and DDos for hire service – was with connectivity by Directi (OpticalJungle), registrar Directi (PublicDomainRegistry) registrant, obviously false data Cited Nov 2007

Graphics of internet connectivity 9/4/08

Graphics of Internet connectivity Sat 9/6/08

No Internet Connectivity!

Comment:


“That's one small step for Directi, one giant leap for a safer Internet”.

On behalf of the online community we thank Bhavin Turakhia, CEO and Directi, for their prompt actions, to our findings. These examples are perhaps only a small in comparison to the overall problem we face, but are still significant victories in the fight against cyber crime and the head on approach of HostExploit's 'Atrivo - Cyber Crime USA' report.

We all hope this leads to even greater actions and security focus by the Hosting and Registrar community?





Jart Armin

HostExploit.com