Good grief!

=18.Mar.2008= [Tue] at [11:27] · Filed under Author: Shane Macaulay, Digital Security, Exploits, Misceallaneous, Philosophy, Reverse Engineering, Software Assurance ·Tagged boston, china, diff, malware, signature, sophistication, source, virii, vmware

Having just caught up on some of the conference “Source Boston”, I can’t help but call out some of the musings of Andrew Jaquith. Something of a more technical abstract can be read at the code project’s article by Jeffrey Walton (pay special attention to Robin Hood and Friar Tuck). If anybody doubt’s the current trend of sophistication in malware, I’m sure it is somebody who is currently penetrated. I’ve had the opportunity to devote specific analysis on occasion over the years to MAL code and its impact on the enterprise. I know FOR SURE the level of sophistication is on the rise. One thing I had to deal with recently, the extent of capability afforded by most desktop OS’s being so advanced, the majority of functionality desired by MAL code is pre-deployed. Unfortunately paving the way for configuration viruses and their ability to remain undetected in that all they are is an elaborate set of configuration settings. You can imagine, a configuration virus has the entire ability of your OS at its disposal, any VPN/IPSEC, self-(UN) healing, remote administration, etc… The issue is then, how do you determine if that configuration is of MAL intent, it’s surely there for a reason and valid in many deployments. The harm is only when connected to a larger entity/botnet that harm begins to affect a host. Some random points to add hard learned through experience;

• Use a native execution environment
  • VMWare, prevents the load or typical operation of many MAL code variants
    • I guess VM vendors have a big win here for a while, until the majority of targets are VM hosts.
• Have an easily duplicated disk strategy
  • MAC systems are great for forensics, target disk mode and ubiquitous fire-wire allows for live memory dumps and ease of off-line disk analysis (without a drive carrier).
  • I’m planning a hash-tree based system to provision arbitrarily sized block checksums of clean/good files, useful of diff’ing out the noise for arbitrary medium (memory, disk, flash).
• Install a Chinese translator locally
  • As you browse Chinese hack sites, (I think all Russian site’s are so quiet these days due to the fact that they are financially driven, while Chinese are currently motivated by nationalistic motivators), you need to translate locally. Using a .com translation service is detected and false content is rendered, translate locally to avoid that problem.
    • Also, keep notes on lingo.. there are no translation-hack dictionaries yet. (I guess code pigeon is referring to a homing pigeon, naturally horse/wood code is a Trojan).

Unfortunately part of the attacker advantage is the relatively un-coordinated fashion defenders operate, not being able to trust or vet your allies to compare notes can be a real pain. One interesting aspect of a MAL system recently analyzed was the fact that that it had no persistent signature. It’s net force mobility so complete, that the totality of its functionality could shift boot-to-boot, so long as it compromised a boot-up driver it would rise again. The exalted C. Brown put it best, “Good grief!” http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cpp/VirusProtect.aspx http://www.sourceboston.com/blog/?p=25

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