Softpanorama

May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)
Home Switchboard Unix Administration Red Hat TCP/IP Networks Neoliberalism Toxic Managers
(slightly skeptical) Educational society promoting "Back to basics" movement against IT overcomplexity and  bastardization of classic Unix

Softpanorama Malware Protection Bulletin, 2001

Malware 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010
2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999

Top Visited
Switchboard
Latest
Past week
Past month

NEWS CONTENTS

Old News ;-)

[Aug 09, 2001] Internet Security: a difficult balance between hype and paranoia

August 02 @ 19:15:55 EDT

Security News Portal - A Different Kind of News

Adam Lawson, an analyst with www.Butlergroup.com says "The dangers of Code Red, which is costing businesses an estimated $1.2 billion so far, have been considerably overstated. The most intense waste of server capacity and resources seems to have been consumed in the passing of messages warning about a crisis that may never occur. The problem with this kind of media excitement is that when a more serious threat arises, complacency may creep in and the real menace may not be taken seriously...

Complacency is a key issue in why Code Red may have become a problem at all. As soon as a security patch becomes available, it should be implemented, irrespective of the severity of the problem being fixed. If this isn't done, then the company itself may not suffer any immediate problems but may be responsible for passing on problems to other Internet users......continued....

Internet Security: a difficult balance between hype and paranoia

Better safe or sorry? asks Adam Lawson

All Internet users should take the responsibility for minimising the spread of viruses, and if this was done then problems such as the massive DoS attacks early last year would be greatly reduced.

Security is, in fairness, a very difficult subject to tackle properly, and demands dedicated resources to be done effectively.

Not every company has this level of resource, nevertheless there should be at least one individual or department with the specific responsibility of ensuring that security remains current.

Solutions that offer 90 per cent protection today,may only offer 65 per cent tomorrow, and even less the day after that, as they require constant and expert attention.

Convincing management that security is an ongoing situation is tricky, as complacency seems to creep in very easily once a solution, for example a firewall, has been implemented.

Code Red itself, while posing a real problem, was never going to live up to the publicity it was given.

It lacks the payload to be genuinely destructive, rather than just very inconvenient.

If the anticlimax does not cause a false sense of security leading to complacence, the paranoia code-red generated could be useful in preventing the onslaught of a later virus, as long as people don't make the mistake of assuming that because this incident didn't get completely out of control, future problems will be equally easy to deal with.

The author is an analyst with www.Butlergroup.com

[Aug 08, 2001] SirCam worm still spreading documents - Tech News - CNET.com

Reuters reported that a Ukrainian Web site said Thursday it had received secret documents from the administration of President Leonid Kuchma, including an itinerary showing his whereabouts during the country's upcoming independence celebration.

SecurityFocus

The Sircam computer virus eluded Symantec Corp.'s corporate and consumer Norton Anti-Virus products, because the first software update Symantec created to combat Sircam failed to detect the virus through e-mail scanning at the gateway and desktop.

First noticed as an e-mail-borne virus July 17, Sircam can potentially wipe out files and cause other damage if a victim opens the infected attachment.

Although Symantec's first e-mail scanning defense for Sircam on July 17 didn't flag the virus appropriately, Symantec asserts that users weren't completely defenseless. That's because Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus has a kind of second-tier protection called "Auto-protect" which Symantec says was able to detect and warn against Sircam as the user sought to open the Sircam-infected attachment.

Anti-virus software typically needs to be updated every time a new virus is discovered so that the software can recognize the virus and flag it. Symantec this week began hearing from concerned customers that its first line of defense against Sircam wasn't working, and began to work on a second anti-Sircam patch that was finally made available at the Symantec Web site on July 24.

The episode was a source of chagrin for Symantec and anger for customers that said Symantec didn't do enough to publicize the failings of its first Sircam software update.

[Jul 28, 2001] MessageLabs - Virus Report - W32-SirCam latest statistics

[Jul 28, 2001] FAQ What you need to know about SirCam - Tech News - CNET.com -- nice FAQ. A lot of interesting information is also in SirCam worm built to last - Tech News - CNET.com

From the social-engineering point of view, the fact that it was using multiple messages--you couldn't just look for an 'I love you' header--helped keep this going," said Vincent Weafer, director of software maker Symantec's AntiVirus Research Center. "And in many cases the documents that are sent out have intriguing titles. People are going to be curious." Indeed, SirCam-infected documents sent to CNET News.com have included such hard-to-resist titles as "SIS--cocaine business," "Madame handing over note" and "Any man of mine.

SirCam also takes its time. Instead of sending a barrage of messages all at once, as most mass-mailing viruses do, SirCam picks just one address each time it's activated, leaving fewer telltale signs of an e-mail attack.

By doing e-mail addresses one at a time, it creates a lot of confusion about where the virus is coming from," Sunner said. "It makes this one much more surreptitious.

[Jun 27, 2001] Powered by ZDNet SirCam hits FBI cyber-protection unit By Ted Bridis The Wall Street Journal Online July 25, 2001 5:16 AM PT -- that 's really funny...

WASHINGTON--A researcher in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's cyber-protection unit unleashed a fast-spreading Internet virus that e-mailed private FBI documents to outsiders--all on the eve of a Senate hearing into troubles at the unit.

Although the Sircam virus didn't spread to other computers at the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center, it did send at least eight documents to a number of outsiders. One, about the investigation into an unrelated virus, was marked "official use only." The Sircam virus has infected thousands of computers since its discovery last week.

FBI spokeswoman Deb Weierman said that no sensitive or classified information about continuing investigations was disclosed Tuesday. The "official use" designation protects documents from disclosure under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

[Jul 22, 2001] Users of Win32 systems beware ! It is by far the most prolific virus that is currently spreading. Pretty nasty and dangerous worm. Here is my pretty superficial analysis (I am no longer in this business ;-):

It looks like this worm was written by a decent programmer and is at least semi debugged. Can do some nasty damage to reputation of unsuspecting users ;-(. See pretty decent descriptions at Symantec, F-prot and Kaspersky (links are in sircam_coverage_comparision.shtml)

Who can be infected?
Any PC running Windows 9x and Windows Me. If can also infect Windows NT and 2000 but due to a flaw in the worm code SirCam cannot replicate itself those OSes.

For Windows 9x users this looks like a really dangerous thing, especially for those who use Outlook or just have MAPI configured correctly on Win32 (including Windows NT and Windows 2000) -- the worm does not need Outlook for functioning -- it has it's own built-in SMTP client

The most nasty thing is that this worm seems send certain files from C:\My Documents or C:\WINNT\Profiles\userid\Personal folder to addresses collected both from address book (if any) and IE temp files folder. For regular users of Internet that means hundreds of addresses are usually available for distributing some of My Document or Personal folder files even if the user has no addresses stored in the Outlook.

I would recommend to check My documents/Personal folders just in case ;-)

If case of infection SCam32.exe can be found in System32 folder and RECYCLED folder.

All descriptions seems missed the fact that SMTP settings need to be correct for the worm to work. Fortunately this is the case for many of NT 4 users (but not all).

If the user uses just Netscape and does not have IE or Outlook installed, then MAPI setting are often were not properly configured unless user have some other application that requires them.

One detail for Windows NT and 2000 -- the worm is written in Delphi and seems to have a memory leak --- virtual memory on the system soon is exhausted and Windows complains. This might serve as an early warning system ;-)

Recommended Links

Google matched content

Softpanorama Recommended

...



Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotesSomerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose BierceBernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOSProgramming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC developmentScripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-MonthHow to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D


Copyright © 1996-2021 by Softpanorama Society. www.softpanorama.org was initially created as a service to the (now defunct) UN Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) without any remuneration. This document is an industrial compilation designed and created exclusively for educational use and is distributed under the Softpanorama Content License. Original materials copyright belong to respective owners. Quotes are made for educational purposes only in compliance with the fair use doctrine.

FAIR USE NOTICE This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to advance understanding of computer science, IT technology, economic, scientific, and social issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided by section 107 of the US Copyright Law according to which such material can be distributed without profit exclusively for research and educational purposes.

This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free) site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Grammar and spelling errors should be expected. The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree...

You can use PayPal to to buy a cup of coffee for authors of this site

Disclaimer:

The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.

Last modified: March, 12, 2019