Malware Defense History

by Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov.

Copyright: Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov 1994-2013. Unpublished notes. Version 0.80.October, 2013

Contents : Foreword : Ch01 : Ch02 : Ch03  : Ch04 : Ch05 : Ch06 : Ch07 : Ch08 : Ch09 : Ch10 : Ch11 : Ch12 : Ch13

Chapter 11: Data Stealing Trojans

Win32 Alureon

Win32/Alureon is a multi-component family of Trojans that is involved in a broad range of subversive activities online that generate revenue from various sources for its controllers. Contain a rootkit to hide their activities.Win32/Alureon is mostly associated with moderating affected user activities online to the attacker's benefit.  As such, the various components of this malware family have been used to:

• Modify affected user search results (also known as search hijacking).
• Redirect affected user browsing to sites of the attacker's choice (also known as browser hijacking).
• Change DNS settings to redirect users to sites of the attacker's choice without affected user knowledge.
• Download and execute arbitrary files, including additional components and other malware.
• Serve illegitimate advertising.
• Install rogue security software.
• Perform banner clicking (for pay-per-click advertising)

Win32/Alureon has been actively developed, aggressively deployed, and professionally managed by its authors for many years. The pervasiveness of its components in the wild, which other malware families often use, and its use of stealth, makes this malware family a notable threat.

Alureon has used several methods to hide its processes and other system changes, including the following:

• Installing malicious device drivers that enable Alureon to hook the System Service Dispatch Table (SSDT) and Windows APIs in order to intercept file system requests that allow it to hide and prevent access to files, registry entries, and processes with names that contain a particular string.
•  Infecting existing system device drivers with malicious code that enables Alureon to insert itself into the part of the kernel that handles disk operations to hide files and disk

Encyclopedia entry Win32-Alureon - Learn more about malware - Microsoft Malware Protection Center

Updated: Apr 16, 2012 | Published: Mar 02, 2007

Aliases

• TR/Dldr.DNSChanger (Avira)
• Win32/Alureon (CA)
• Trojan.DnsChange (Dr.Web)
• Trojan.Zlob (Ikarus)
• Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Zlob (Kaspersky)
• DNSChanger (McAfee)
• Troj/Zlob (Sophos)
• Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Femad (Sunbelt Software)
• Trojan.Zlob (Symantec)
• TROJ_DNSCHAN (Trend Micro)

Alert Level (?)
High

Antimalware protection details
Microsoft recommends that you download the latest definitions to get protected.

Win32/Alureon is a family of data-stealing trojans. These trojans allow an attacker to intercept incoming and outgoing Internet traffic in order to gather confidential information such as user names, passwords, and credit card data. It may also allow an attacker to transmit malicious data to the infected computer. The trojan may modify DNS settings on the host computer to enable the attacker to perform these tasks. As a result, it may be necessary to reconfigure DNS settings after disinfection. 

Instances of the Win32/Alureon trojan may contain various malicious components. The following are three examples of these components:

One component of the Win32/Alureon family specifies the DNS servers to be used by the host computer. To do so, this component sets DNS server addresses for each network adapter on the host computer by modifying values in certain registry subkeys associated with the adapters. For example, the trojan component may:

• Modify registry value: "DhcpNameServer"
  under subkey: HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters
• Modify registry values:
  "NameServer"
  "DhcpNameServer"
  under certain subkeys of the subkey:
  HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces

The same component may also set the fields "IpDnsAddress" and "IpDns2Address" to specific DNS servers in the Windows dial-up configuration file that is for the All Users profile. The trojan sets these fields if the configuration file already contains data. The dial-up configuration file location for the All Users Profile for Windows XP, Server 2003, and Vista is:

• %allusersprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Network\Connections\Pbk\rasphone.pbk

To allow these new DNS settings to take immediate effect, the Win32/Alureon trojan runs the following commands:

ipconfig.exe /flushdns
ipconfig.exe /registerdns
ipconfig.exe /dnsflush
ipconfig.exe /renew
ipconfig.exe /renew_all 

A second Win32/Alureon component may perform the following operations:

• Create a randomly named copy of itself under the Windows system folder.
  Note - <system folder> refers to a variable location that is determined by the malware by querying the Operating System. The default installation location for the System folder for Windows 2000 and NT is C:\Winnt\System32; and for XP, Vista, and 7 is C:\Windows\System32.
• Inject threads into local processes to delete itself and perform other tasks.
• Create registry entries under the key HKCR.
• Create registry subkeys such as: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ruins

A third Win32/Alureon component may perform the following operations:

• Gather URLs from the user's Web-browsing history.
• Create a new registry value in subkey
  HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
  and place random data in that value.
• Create a randomly named copy of itself under the Windows system folder
• Modify the registry to cause the trojan copy to run automatically each time Windows starts:

Adds value: <name of trojan copy>
With data: <path to trojan copy>
In subkey: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

• Delete the following registry entries under subkey HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run:
  • The registry value whose name matches the name of the trojan file that is currently running.
  • The registry subkey whose name matches the name of the trojan file that is currently running.
• Run Internet Explorer or the default Web browser and inject code into the corresponding new process. The injected code may take various actions, including changing DNS server settings on the host computer and downloading and running files from certain Web sites.
• Run a new instance of explorer.exe and inject code into the corresponding new process. The injected code may take various actions, including deleting the trojan file that is running.

Recent variants of Win32/Alureon may be capable of infecting the miniport driver associated with the hard disk of the operating system, causing the driver file to become corrupted and unusable. For the most common system configuration, that is, for computers using ATA hard disk drives, the ATA miniport driver "atapi.sys" is the target driver file. However, other files may also be targeted.

The top ten most commonly-targeted driver files are the following:

1. atapi.sys
2. iastor.sys
3. iastorv.sys
4. idechndr.sys
5. nvata.sys
6. nvatabus.sys
7. nvgts.sys
8. nvstor.sys
9. nvstor32.sys
10. sisraid.sys  

Some Win32/Alureon components may disable or clear the existing Internet Explorer proxy settings.

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 quotes :  Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce :  Bernard 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 DOS :  Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development :  Scripting 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-Month :  How 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

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Last modified: March, 12, 2019