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Students Learn To Write Viruses
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Aug 06, 2008 07:37 PM
from the mischief-101 dept.
from the mischief-101 dept.
snocrossgjd writes "In a windowless underground computer lab in California, young men are busy cooking up viruses, spam and other plagues of the computer age. Grant Joy runs a program that surreptitiously records every keystroke on his machine, including user names, passwords, and credit-card numbers. Thomas Fynan floods a bulletin board with huge messages from fake users. Yet Joy and Fynan aren't hackers — they're students in a computer-security class at Sonoma State University. Their professor, George Ledin, has showed them how to penetrate even the best antivirus software."
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Penetrate even the best antivirus software? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why bother working to evade potentially sophisticated technological security when you can go after the very very weakest link... the user?
Re:Penetrate even the best antivirus software? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it is a computer class (probably part of a CompSci degree), not sociology/psychology. While targeting the user is a perfectly good way to go about breaking in to something, that topic area isn't very practical for computer science. I think the point of TFA is that the class teaches a lot more than "this is how to kill McAfee, now go run amok!" It is a good opportunity to think outside the box, and targeting the user is very much inside the box, and very low tech.
I'd be kind of pissed if I took a computer security class and it was all about social engineering.
Parent
Social Engineering VS Computer Sci (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be kind of pissed if I took a computer security class and it was all about social engineering.
but if it was a course on penetration and end user abuse, then it would be completely relevant.
I think teaching the tools of the black arts are useful - you never know when you need to hack into a satellite system and broadcast the evil that it does around the world.
Parent
Re:Social Engineering VS Computer Sci (Score:5, Funny)
I'd like to take a course on penetration. I might actually learn something.
Parent
Re:Social Engineering VS Computer Sci (Score:5, Funny)
I'd like to take a course on penetration. I might actually learn something.
Unlike college courses, those 'teachers' charge by the hour.
Though if you are in college, you could take it as an... extracurricular.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Do they provide "hands on" training as well?
I find I often can learn a lot more from "hands on" training.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, keep in mind it looks better on your resume than a fine arts degree.
They need BOTH! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are learning SECURITY then the first lesson is that the PEOPLE are the weakest link.
You need to design systems that minimize the human error portion. That means designing systems where it is possible to tell the "good" code from the "bad" code. Where the average user can run an app to identify the "good" code from the "bad" code.
Where the warnings are sufficiently rare that the average user is NOT trained to just click "accept" when one pops up.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I've proposed this:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/156693 [launchpad.net]
3rd party code should say what it is and what sandbox template it requires to run.
If the requested sandbox is in line with what the code claims to be, and "what it is" is what the user wants, then the user can decide to allow it.
The O/S then sandboxes the code according to those privileges.
Expecting users or software to identify good code from bad code is similar to expecting them to solve the "Halting Problem".
With my suggestion, it is a lot e
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This is an interesting idea, and is what Nokia does on ther Symbian platform in the newest releases.
The problem with Nokia is that they don't trust their customers to make the decision, so every app needs to be signed by Nokia before it will run.
This has the advantage that it will be difficult to create and spread malware, but the drawback that it is much more difficult to create your own applications.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
targeting the user is very much inside the box, and very low tech.
Well, yes and no. This is a computer class, so sure, let's just study what you can do at the keyboard, but if you are talking security, then the user is the weakest link. The hackers that have done the most damage and made the most money have all used social engineering at one point or another. And why does it work? It works precisely because it is outside the box - the computer box. Programmers and security experts can do all they can inside the box, but their systems are not secure if an idiot holds the k
Re:Penetrate even the best antivirus software? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd be kind of pissed if I took a computer security class and it was all about social engineering.
Unfortunately for all of us, a technical attack is usually fixable by the next version of security software or the OS, while a psychological attack will continue working effectively as long as computers are operated by people. If the objective is to benefit from an exploit, as opposed to obliterating a system, it is nearly always more profitable to deceive the victim into believing that they are still in control of their system as well. I believe that a good attack would incorporate a high level of technical expertise, coupled with a social engineering deception. There is after all a saying,
There is no patch for human stupidity.
I think anyone taking a computer science class that wants to disregard the human element of computing is not likely to be the most successful in the IT field.
Parent
Re:Penetrate even the best antivirus software? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the old days, the author of a high-speed worm would have wanted to avoid user interaction, because human beings slow things down. Slammer doubled the number of infections every 8.5 seconds when it took off: hard to do that when you have to wait for a user to figure out how to turn off their antivirus software.
Someone who is targeting corporate systems today, for espionage or to recruit well-connected botnet hosts, is attacking an environment where the users may not be able to turn off their antivirus software.
A pure social engineering attack, with no code obfuscation, would have to work in two stages. The actual payload would have to be delivered after the antivirus got turned off, not before, so there would have to be a first stage containing the UI to persuade the user to disable anti-virus. Hardly impossible, but a nuisance.
Those are a few of the reasons, though your point stands unchallenged: humans are the weakest link, and security people who develop tunnel vision about technical protections and countermeasures are crippling themselves.
Parent
Oh Joy more spam (Score:4, Funny)
Not Hackers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not Hackers? (Score:5, Informative)
In ordinary English, a hacker is somebody who hacks into a computer system. That's not the way you and I use the word, but we're not most people. "Hacker" is one many words that means different things depending on who uses it and in one context. Language is not a map.
Hackers (in the senses of "improvisational programmer" or "ethical student of security technology") often don't grasp this, and insist that the common usage of "hacker" is "incorrect" — even though the people who use it that way are in the majority. They've tried to get people to say "cracker" instead, ignoring the very small role Nabisco plays in computer security issues.
Parent
Re:Not Hackers? (Score:4, Informative)
Hackers (in the senses of "improvisational programmer" or "ethical student of security technology") often don't grasp this.
Actually, most (if not all) of them do, and take a perverse, quixotic joy in fighting against the majority usage. It's probably an issue of pride ("I'm a HACKER, not some scummy script-kiddie!"). I view it as about as "useful" as OS-flamewars, or endless arguments over editors.
And while we're talking about editors, don't get me started about emacs. ;)
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
Need to work on your sarcasm skills. That one made no sense.
Re:Not Hackers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Learning how to write viruses is largely a waste of time in an information security course. Yesterday's techniques will be antiquated tomorrow, why learn them next week? I know of information security programs in the wild right now that have the students run the old "ping of death" attack that only works on unpatched 1998 vintage systems. I've always felt that in a security course, the students should study past successful attacks and try to learn what techniques could have foiled the attack that wouldn't have required any knowledge unavailable to the attackee before the attack. Concentrating on the specifics of the attack instead of the specifics of the defense is not productive.
Parent
What about martial arts.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Just because you can possibly use some skill to be evil doesn't mean you shouldn't learn it.
It's like a saying police shouldn't know any martial arts or learn to shoot a gun because they could use the skills to kill someone.
Parent
Re:What about martial arts.. (Score:4, Insightful)
What is the expected takeaway from this class? Are the students supposed to hand threat model all systems and test their defenses with home-made viruses? Any half-baked defense scheme will stand up to an attack crafted by the defender. Just look at Kryptonite bicycle locks -- years of research and development defeated by a BIC pen. The lesson is that nothing is even reasonably secure until it has been exposed to many thousands of attack attempts by many thousands of deviant minds. This class will only serve to delude some of the students into thinking they are penetration testing when they are actually just randomly poking at their defenses.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You're right when you say that the ploy used 3 months ago is worthless today. Teaching someone to abuse the LSASS or RPC exploit used by Sasser and Lovsan, respectively, is about as useful as knowing how to code with punchcards. It was highly useful in the ol' days of yore, but when you tell someone in the field with pride that you can do either, they'll at best snicker at you.
There are, though, techniques that are still useful because they cannot be patched. Mostly because they are working as intended. It
No great accomplishment (Score:5, Funny)
> Their professor, George Ledin, has showed them how to penetrate even the best antivirus
> software.
That and $.10 will get you a year's supply of fake Viagra.
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was under the impression that all security courses worth their salt taught skills that could potentially be used maliciously. How does one learn how to be a penetration tester? What makes this case different?
Polymorphism is at least an option in most Computer Science courses. Does one really need to sit down and be taught "how to write viruses" specifically? Or can a huge amount of people who write code use their initiative and learn how to write any kind of application?
What companies? Would they want to work there anyway?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What companies? Would they want to work there anyway?
Spot on! I mean, why work for a security company, when you can work for a government? Isn't that what this guy is going to do [bbc.co.uk] in new zealand?
... failing a government contract, why not just 'make' your own money using your newly found l33t haxx0r skillz from school?
and
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh... ethics?
I know a few people, amongst them me, who could come up with malware that no AV kit can easily defeat, mostly because we know how AV kits work. We write them.
But there is a reason why you don't hear about AV writers making malware (despite the rumors. Let me put something straight: WE DO NOT NEED TO WRITE IT! Why bother doing something for your job security if it's done for you?). The AV biz is a very geeky one. I don't know a single person who's in it because of the money (well, we of course don't hate the money, but you could make a shitload more by switching sides...). We're here because we like what we do. We like the 'net. And despite not really liking the idiots who click on every crap they get sent, we want to protect. No, not them. The net FROM them.
More and more malware is actually an attack on the 'net in general rather than a specific person. And as stated above, we like our net clean. If you, as a researcher, become known as someone who actually writes the crap, you're done for. Nobody will talk with you anymore. Worse, the whole industry will want your head. You piss in our pool, you better get out before we give you the wedgy of doom.
This is mostly why nobody with the skills writes malware. That it's illegal to distribute a malicious program in most countries is just a minor annoyance compared with that.
Parent
Re:And that seems extremely stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
If I am an anti-virus company looking for developers, why would I possibly turn away programmers who took a course on virus development? It was a sanctioned computer course at a college or university, it would seem to me that these would be *exactly* the people you want. They should have a better understanding of how a virus developer thinks and thus have a head start on combating future viruses. Yes, it may be that some took that course because they were interested in writing malware, but many will have taken it because they want to know how to fight it. I think only a moronic close-minded company would turn these people away just because they took a course.
Its like the Dept of Justice not hiring people who took a course on criminology because they might cause a crime.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Case in point for the sake of argument:
A buffer overrun is a common vector for malicious code. Knowing what types of code causes a buffer overrun is required to protect against them. Practicing writing assembly code to insert into the buffer to actually exploit something is not. Teaching exploitation is not necessarily the same as teaching protection.
Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
So..? The ability to "hack software" is the ability to find exploits. An exploit that only you know is far more dangerous than one that circulates widely enough to reach the attention of a college lecturer.
There are public lists of unpacthced exploits [milw0rm.com]. It's easy to become part of an underground community that pools their exploits.
My point being, this knowledge is incredibly easy to obtain by anyone. I'm inclined to believe that college students receiving tuition from an ethical hacker who presumably intend to gain legal employment are less of a risk to society than people who decide to Google for the latest exploits so they can exact revenge on an employer (for example) or those with truly nefarious intentions and are talented enough not to need outside tuition.
Parent
Old News (Score:5, Interesting)
Virus writing was part of my assembly & architecture class circa 1990.
Re:Old News (Score:5, Interesting)
Back when the Morris worm hit in '88, I was teaching assembly language. We'd spent the whole day on the worm (making sure it hadn't planted or destroyed any files on our machines) and I didn't have a lecture prepared by class time. So I told them I'd explain the worm instead but that they could leave if they wanted since it wouldn't be on the exam. Our topic the week before was how the stack was changed during function calls so they already had the background. No one left and I got the pleasure of watching faces light up around the room as it dawned on people where my explanation was going. Ah, those were the days...
Devon
Parent
"We've Changed this Game" (Score:4, Insightful)
Normally if something is going to succeed, it evolves to overcome natural or manmade barriers to its existence.
In a way, the fact that the malware and viruses evolve within days of AV updates says that the AV companies are nothing but an annoyance to the writers of the malware.
Re:"We've Changed this Game" (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to write viruses. Evading anti-virus software was sort of like the testing//tweaking phase of software development -- "oops, mcafee flagged it as suspicious, let me modify this line of code here, this one here... ahah, fixed".
The truth is, anti-virus technology hasn't significantly changed since the DOS days. It's all about heuristics, pattern-matching, and behavior-preventing. It's trivial to evade these technologies.
Parent
Re:"We've Changed this Game" (Score:5, Insightful)
You become better, we become better. It's a race, nothing more, nothing less. And I think both sides know that neither side will eventually win.
The question today isn't whether AV kits can catch every virus out there. The question today is, can we make development of malware so expensive that it doesn't pay anymore? Malware development isn't the pastime of some pimple-faced teen with too much time and no girlfriend on his hands. Malware is, simply and plainly, a business. And like every business, it aims at profit.
The goal of AV kits today is just to minimize that profit the malware distributors can gain. We know that we can't find every virus some teen hacks out to prove that we can't find his trojan. Ok, we can't. Mission accomplished. But your trojan doesn't bother us or anyone, unless it becomes the next Sasser. You are no threat. What does your trojan do? Hijack your friend's WoW password? Get offa my lawn and come back when you've become more than an annoyance.
Today, malware has to be "important" to be hunted by AV companies. I.e. it has to cost more than a handful of people money. It has to spread wide, has to hijack EBay and PayPal accounts (and bank accounts if possible), be a spambot or something else that actually has some impact. And those packages are invariably developed and employed by organisations who aim at making money.
So the goal today has changed, from protecting you to stifling their income (which also serves to protect you, in a way). Yes, we're trying to keep back the ocean that comes with a tsunami with a broom. Our back is against the wall. The best we can do today is to limit their income in an attempt to show them it's more profitable to go back to good ol' burglary.
When you, as a private person, write some malware and release it into the world, you'll eventually be detected, too. But you're not important. The damage you do, the footprint you leave on the international detection grid, is so insignificant that, sorry if I'm so blunt, you don't count.
Parent
Viruses in a WINDOWsless environment ? (Score:5, Funny)
Cyber-Terrorism (Score:3, Funny)
The SAS could take out any one of these training camps.
Kill everybody there, and be gone before the echo fades.
we have that in vienna for years... (Score:5, Informative)
as a two-semester course.
It is held at the technical university in vienna and is called "InetSec"
http://www.iseclab.org/InetSec/ [iseclab.org]
The course has a very high quality and includes practical exercises like sql exploits, writing buffer overflows, trojans and the like.
You even get your own automatically generated "1337 handle" upon subscription to the course, and you can advance from "script kiddy" (not homework assignments aka challenges turned in) to "master guru" (turned in everything + extra work + participated in a CTF) - so actually participating in the course is more fun and play than work ;)
I wonder why that article is news, since there is a CTF (http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~vigna/CTF/) held every year, where a lot of universities and colleges from everywhere participate - i doubt they don't have similar courses.
Then again, since the viennese guys kick ass at these contests... ;)
Should be mandatory (Score:3, Interesting)
Make it interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
This is misguided. Students should be taught how to write viruses that infect other viruses [slashdot.org].
Re:Re:Good (Score:3, Informative)
So, police training should involve mugging practice and fire-fighter training should involve learning how to set fires.
Well, yes.
Police here (Australia) are forced to undergo being shot by stun guns before they're allowed to carry them on duty. And fire fighters often learn how to set fires as well as putting them out, especially when they start moving into forensics to investigate suspicious fires.
Re:zomg zomg first prost! (Score:5, Funny)
Smells like... victory.
Parent
Re:Sounds pretty cool (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:How long before Ledin is visited by DHS? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe he is working for the DHS, you insensitive clod!
Interesting point nonetheless. There is a difference between classroom and reality. In a psychology, medicine, chemistry, biology, criminology ... whatever class at any level you are taught some pretty dangerous stuff. 99.99999% of students are sane, normal human beings that wont use the info. Its that small %age of students who will do something that are the concern. I don't think taking the class in-and-of itself is the catalyst to being a cyberterrorist. I would at least question the intentions of students that *already* know a few too many things in the class or get an A+ effortlessly for the course.
Parent
Re:Hostile Authorities (Score:5, Interesting)
You can get cracking techniques from loads of places, this guy's teachings is old news.
Parent
Re:Weak sauce. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because breaking into things and creating stealthy shit is the greatest problem solving skill you will ever find.
By nature, to break into a computer, you have to force it to do something it (software, sometimes hardware i.e. Intel errata) was specifically not designed to do. Usually this amounts to something not obvious to 100% of the rest of the world for some strange reason being obvious to you. The more experience you have warping completely tame and working interfaces in perverse ways due to minor quirks, the easier this becomes.
Load modules and shared objects aren't designed to be altered like that; and in this case you have a system designed specifically to catch and prevent you from doing what you're doing. This is, again, forcing something into a position it's not designed to operate in to achieve a predictable result.
Carmack's Reverse, Duff's Device, and even Edison's light bulb worked from these same principles; remember, by its very nature you cannot have light without fire.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree that learning these skills is important if computer security if what you plan to do legitimately for a living. As much as I would have loved to take a class like that in college, I don't believe ethically I could have participated. By having students practice these skills in the real world they are just adding to the already enormous problem. I believe a well built simulation environment could serve the purpose just as well without causing problems for other users. So is there a line these students have crossed by practising their skills in the wild? Should a policeman learn to solve crime by committing it for example?
Think of it as a locksmith learning how to open locked cars or houses, not so much policemen causing crimes to learn to solve them, as by definition as long as you aren't breaking the law, you're not a criminal.
Re:speaking of penetration... (Score:5, Funny)
Thomas Fynan floods a bulletin board with huge messages from fake users.
Ah-hah! Got ya!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, no, no... Not more. This is /. after all. I actually read all of it and I did enjoy reading it with all of its insanities but I really don't think that qualifies as a quality post.