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