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Security Software

WormRadar Node Volunteers Help Graph Attacks 159

zoombat writes "NTBugtraq has a post looking for volunteers to run WormRadar nodes. The nodes are essentially honeypots that watch for suspicious activity. Its purpose is to both measure the frequency of known, current worms and to alert us all when something new becomes active. A graph (updated every 30 minutes) shows what was detected. Currently it looks like only a Windows client is available, though."
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WormRadar Node Volunteers Help Graph Attacks

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  • Other platforms (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) * on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:40PM (#8956012) Homepage Journal
    Currently it looks like only a Windows client is available, though."

    Might it make more sense to have the client available on platforms which are not necessarily vulnerable to most of these infections? After all, many of the systems which are connected to the Internet full time (servers/workstations etc...) are not Windows machines.

    • by SatanicPuppy ( 611928 ) <Satanicpuppy.gmail@com> on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:45PM (#8956030) Journal
      Why would you need a worm activity detecting program on a Windows box? If there's a lot of worm activity that is close enough that the windows box could monitor it, you'll know.

      It's like the canary in the mineshaft...Works fine for detecting hazards, but a little rough on the bird.
      • by laugau ( 144794 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:17PM (#8956233)
        The REASON there is only a windows client is because the windows client does this:

        while (not_infected) {
        send ("Woo Hoo! I'm alive still") ;
        }

        And the server does this:

        listen (client_port) {
        while (get_alive_messages) {
        writeGraph (noWorm);
        }
        ohShit(clientMachineGotWorm);
        }

        Not a very good solution if the clients never die now, is it?
      • need to post something relevant to make up for my offtopic further down the page.

        If the sole purpose of the bird is to get the crap kicked out of it anyways, why not take it into the mine anyways? I'm looking for a suitable piece of junk hardware that I can throw questionable programs on and try to make them phone home... might as well toss this on while I'm at it.
      • Because (Score:3, Insightful)

        by autopr0n ( 534291 )
        A lot of the worms don't cause the machines to go down. Obviously, a lot of users are oblivious to the fact that their machines are not only spreading viruses around the 'net, but are infested with Spyware and probably being used as Spam zombies.

        It seems like windows was implemented with the "everyone is mostly nice" idea that the original internet, and certainly the original email system was. No one at MS anticipated that people would run programs that actively harmed them, and that their computers wo
        • That you CAN'T protect the user from programs, short of trusted computing architecture, because what you are REALLY saying is you want to protect the user from themselves. You want to make sure that the OS intervienes when they try and run software they shouldn't. Fair enough and yes, Linux does that. As a normal user, there is limited damage a person can do to a system.

          Problem: You can't not give people root/admin/whatever access to their own systems. They need the ability to install new programs, updates
          • Yes, you can (Score:3, Insightful)

            by autopr0n ( 534291 )
            If someone types "rm -rf /" at a terminal, you can be pretty sure they want it to be done.

            The problem is that programs these days do things that the user dosn't know about, dosn't want, can't control, and ultimately can't even stop when they find out. That's ridiculous.

            If I'm root, and I don't trust a program I'm running, I can su it, and run it as a regular user and lock it down to a single folder on the file system with no network access. You have to do it manually, and on windows you can only do it
    • Re:Other platforms (Score:2, Interesting)

      by dicepackage ( 526497 ) *
      If the site gets Slashdotted then there are in fact a lot of people on Slashdot using Windows. Of course the Linux people could allways try running the program in WINE.
      • Re:Other platforms (Score:4, Interesting)

        by bruthasj ( 175228 ) <bruthasj@@@yahoo...com> on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:33PM (#8956321) Homepage Journal
        It didn't work in WINE (CodeWeavers Wine):

        0x65f00000-65fc0800 (PE) C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\OLE32.DLL
        0x70bd0000-70c34600 (PE) C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\SHLWAPI.DLL
        0x78000000-78040000 (PE) C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\MSVCRT.DLL
        Threads:
        process tid prio
        0000000a (D) Y:\updates\WormRadar.exe
        0000000b 0 <==
        WineDbg terminated on pid a
        • by Anonymous Coward
          Sorry, the important stuff is:
          Unhandled exception: 0eedfade in vm86 code (ffffffff:550e3ec0).
          In vm86 mode.
          Register dump:
          CS:ffff SS:3ec0 DS:0000 ES:0000 FS:0000 GS:0018
          IP:3ec0 SP:9258 BP:e255 FLAGS:d954( -N01O T Z-A-P- )
          AX:2ff4 BX:a25c CX:e231 DX:2ff4 SI:9380 DI:3ec0
          Stack dump:
          0x3ec0:0x9258: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
          0x3ec0:0x9268: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
          0x3ec0:0x9278: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
          0x3ec0:0x9288:
    • Re:Other platforms (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Raunch ( 191457 ) <http://sicklayouts.com> on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:17PM (#8956234) Homepage
      From The Jargon File [catb.org]

      honey pot: n.
      1. A box designed to attract crackers so that they can be observed in action. It is usually well isolated from the rest of the network, but has extensive logging (usually network layer, on a different machine). Different from an iron box in that its purpose is to attract, not merely observe. Sometimes, it is also a defensive network security tactic -- you set up an easy-to-crack box so that your real servers don't get messed with. The concept was presented in Cheswick & Bellovin's book Firewalls and Internet Security.
      2. A mail server that acts as an open relay when a single message is attempted to send through it, but discards or diverts for examination messages that are detected to be part of a spam run.

      With emphasis on the attract part. How are you going to monitor worms that propigate using windows with a linux box? You may be able to say, for instance, how many times a certain port was probed. You can't get a linux box to respond in the same way as a windows box without seriously getting into the kernel though.
      • Re:Other platforms (Score:2, Interesting)

        by schwaang ( 667808 )
        How are you going to monitor worms that propigate using windows with a linux box?
        The perl script I used to monitor incoming Code Red attacks on port 80 runs just as well on linux as windows. A scanner evaluating the idiosyncracies of the TCP/IP stack would not have been fooled, but the real worm certainly was.
      • Re:Other platforms (Score:5, Insightful)

        by 0racle ( 667029 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @10:06PM (#8956472)
        Better tell the people at honeyd [honeyd.org]. They seem to think you can emulate the TCP/IP stack of other OS's, and use scripts to fool the app or person on the other end to run an entire honeynet of composed of several different "OS's" on one system.On top of that, you do not need a vulnerable system, nor allow your box to become compromised in order to attract a worm that will attempt to propagate. If you wanna see how it tries to locally, you analyze the actual code, if you want to see how it affects the network, or detect that something odd is occurring, thats what the honeypot is for.
      • Re:Other platforms (Score:4, Interesting)

        by minas-beede ( 561803 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @10:18PM (#8956529)
        "You can't get a linux box to respond in the same way as a windows box without seriously getting into the kernel though."

        It's a blasted worm. Only if very sophisticated would a worm look for an authentic Windows environment. Why would they bother?

        I'm far more familiar with honey pot definition 2 - and I know how incredibly stupid spammers have long been when it comes to open relay honeypots. They are doing bulk abuse, not pinpoint abuse. Whatever the details they are looking for a vulnerability - and then exploit that vulnerability when they find it. They look for hundreds or thousands of vulnerable systems. They do that "quick and dirty" - that's all they've had to do (almost no complex countermeasures are employed against them.) That has worked for them. Why should they make it more complicated?

        It's not guaranteed that the woms are so primitive that they don't verify that a system is a Windows system - but it's not guaranteed the worms do. Wouldn't it be better to set up the Linux systems and see if they succeed or are discovered as fakes? That has some chance of success. Arm's-length philosophical discussions won't stop any abuse.

        My experience with open relay honeypots suggests that all the spammers do to check for those is attempt to relay. I can see reason for the abusers to be more careful and more clever - but rather than assume they are the better idea is to force them into being more careful and more clever. Burn up more of their time, confuse them about the rest of the internet (the part they abuse, as opposed to their own part.) There are many goals in fighting abuse - don't fixate on just one. If the abusers can be made thoroughly confused about the rest of the internet (i.e., can't tell what is and what isn't vulnerable to abuse) then they pretty much have to give up. That will never happen if all that is done is engage in discussions.

        OK, do fixate - it's you time - who am I to tell you what to do? But give some thought to how much better it is to make a broader attack, if you will, please.

        P.S. Open relay honeypots still work today, April 23, 2004. Open proxy honeypots may be even more powerful.
    • nevermind servers and workstations, I think it'd make a hell of a lot more sense to run this thing on a router. I have no intention of leaving anything other than that fully exposed to the public internet, but I wouldn't think it would be too hard to rig up snort to work similar to this worm detector and report back to the server with anything suspicious. And since my firewall (ipcop) is already running snort...

  • so go (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jacquesm ( 154384 ) <j AT ww DOT com> on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:41PM (#8956013) Homepage
    and sign up ! these people are doing good things.

    distributed attacks against hackers doing distributed attacks :)
    • Re:so go (Score:3, Insightful)

      Do you really want to fight Microsoft's war for them for free? they won't give you any money to plug their security holes you know...

      Besides, the way I see it, the more viruses and worms floating around the better: it helps people realize how shitty Windows is as a platform, and how Microsoft just treats their customer like crap by selling them mediocre products at outrageous prices. I certainly don't to help Microsoft look better.
  • Obvious joke (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chris_Jefferson ( 581445 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:43PM (#8956025) Homepage
    Let me be the first to get the obvious joke out of the way.

    Why is there only a windows client? Because all the worms only effect windows machines, what would be the point of a client on anything else? :)

    Although of course, the more serious answer is "A client on something other than windows would be sensible, because if a new worm comes out and hits a 0-day windows hole then your machine could be infected and dead before it gets the chance to report that it is being attacked. (Just why is it that all these worms people write nowadays just seem so.. nice? I remember the days when 90% of viruses would at the very least format your hard disc.. now they just sit there. It's almost a shame, because one good formating worm might finally make people take them more seriously.. it's only a matter of time)
    • Re:Obvious joke (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Ironica ( 124657 ) <pixel&boondock,org> on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:04PM (#8956145) Journal
      Just why is it that all these worms people write nowadays just seem so.. nice? I remember the days when 90% of viruses would at the very least format your hard disc.. now they just sit there.

      Why is smallpox darn near extinct, but the common cold thrives?

      If a worm formats your hard disk, it can't keep scanning for and infecting new machines. For one thing, now you know something is wrong, and are more inclined to fix it.

      It's almost a shame, because one good formating worm might finally make people take them more seriously.

      And there, you answer your own query. If worms did "real" damage (i.e. obviously interfered with the working of the computer), people would be much more cautious about contracting and spreading them. But how many of you freak out and quarantine yourself if you come in contact with a carrier of the common cold? Same thing...
      • Re:Obvious joke (Score:3, Informative)

        by DoraLives ( 622001 )
        Why is smallpox darn near extinct, but the common cold thrives?

        'Cause we KILLED smallpox! (well...excepting what's so far noncontagiously tucked away in cryo storage here and there)

        It has nothing to do with the virulence of smallpox as opposed to the common cold. Hell, as far as that goes, the great sweaty mass of humanity is a fat ripe target just waiting for something that will sweep through and slay the many, but I drift OT.

        Worms that can do "real" damage may well yet spring up from out of the ground an

        • It was a point, son, you missed it.

          Smallpox was more dangerous, so we killed it.

          The common cold does kill people, but mostly just old people.

          Admittedly it doesn't seem possible to cure the common cold because you'd have to cure it everywhere all at once which is presumably impossible, and we don't even really necessarily know where they come from in the first place.

          • It was a point, son, you missed it.

            Good catch. Thank you. ;-) [signed: original poster]

            Admittedly it doesn't seem possible to cure the common cold because you'd have to cure it everywhere all at once which is presumably impossible, and we don't even really necessarily know where they come from in the first place.

            Well, if the common cold were thought to be a major threat, the first thing we'd do is start being less casual about spreading it around. We'd quarantine people who come down with the sni
    • Re:Obvious joke (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tunabomber ( 259585 )
      Just why is it that all these worms people write nowadays just seem so.. nice? I remember the days when 90% of viruses would at the very least format your hard disc.. now they just sit there.

      It's evolution. A pathogen that kills its host too fast is a failure unless it can spread extremely fast to compensate. While the old viruses and worms were the equivalent of ebola, wreaking as much havoc to the host as possible, the new ones are more the software equivalent of lampreys or tapeworms- slowly but sure
      • Do you think we will ever reach the stage where worms are actually good for the host computer.

        After all if they are using that machines resources it would make sense for the worm to make any modifications to the set up to enable it to run more efficiently and defend it's self against other worms taking over it's host and kicking it out.
    • by value_added ( 719364 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:07PM (#8956166)
      "worms only effect windows machines"

      "Infect" refers to passing along a nasty.
      "Effect" means "make happen" or "bring about" as in "Make it so."
      "Affect" can be understood in terms of a combination the above.

      I think you meant to say "worms only affect windows machines".

      Affectionately speaking, of course.
    • Morris would disagree with that.
    • Just why is it that all these worms people write nowadays just seem so.. nice? I remember the days when 90% of viruses would at the very least format your hard disc.. now they just sit there.

      So they can use the infected machines as spam zombies. Or at least as DDoS networks in their IRC wars...
    • ust why is it that all these worms people write nowadays just seem so.. nice? I remember the days when 90% of viruses would at the very least format your hard disc.. now they just sit there.

      Well, a virus/worm that kills it's host too easily won't spread too far, will it? It's the same in the biological world. Ebola is very effective at killing it's host quickly, and that's what limits it's spread.

      And generally these newer viruses/worms aren't just sitting there, they're figuring out how to spead to all
      • Well, a virus/worm that kills it's host too easily won't spread too far, will it?

        What about the Witty worm [caida.org]? To quote from that link, Witty was the first widely propagated Internet worm to carry a destructive payload. The authors of the referenced study think that the Witty Worm infected the entire vulnerable population before it self-destructed by scragging hard disks.

        If you invoke the "too" in "kills it's host too easily", then I'll just wave you off as tautological: there's no way to disprove what you

  • by Comatose51 ( 687974 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:44PM (#8956029) Homepage
    Is this thing open source? It doesn't seem like it. For all we know we could be downloading the world's next biggest trojan horse/worm. Considering the only people who would download this would be techies with big pipes, this could get interesting. Just a theory and a reminder to the author that people usually feel safer downloading something they can examine.
    • by jacquesm ( 154384 ) <j AT ww DOT com> on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:55PM (#8956083) Homepage
      Looks genuine enough though, unless this is false information:

      Roger Thompson
      Roger Thompson
      1650 Emerald Ridge
      Marietta, GA 30062
      US
      Phone: 6785608027
      Fax..: 6785609109
      Email: rogert@mindspring.com

      If not that would be the first time that a trojan writer puts his real world address out for all to see.

      In the windows world people don't even expect to be able to see the source code.

    • Is this thing open source? It doesn't seem like it. For all we know we could be downloading the world's next biggest trojan horse/worm.

      This could be said about any small, proprietary software utility that you see on download.com or tucows. Only time will tell if it's a trojan or not, but if it is, the techies who make up its target audience will find out fast. And they'll spread the word fast. And after receiving the word, they will take it seriously. Techies have other traits besides access to lots o
  • by eddy ( 18759 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:46PM (#8956040) Homepage Journal

    Yeah, that's going to happen.

    Someone run it through IDA? :-P

    • by Anonymous Coward
      It's Aspacked. Looks like they have something to hide.
    • by eddy ( 18759 )

      And oh, "they" use JPEG for the graph! Look at it -- it's horrible!

      Okay, you DON'T download and run executables from people who can't even pick the right image format for an image like that one (hint: it's PNG). What's the odds of these people knowing anything about researching worms if they can't even get a fscking image right? Close to zero.

      I honestly don't understand how come so many have a problem with this. Just look at that "JPEG patents"-story. Scary. I thought this was a place for nerds?

      Here'

      • by modecx ( 130548 )
        Actually, the image looks okay.

        They used the size variables in HTML to resize it (which of course makes it look terrible). Image size is 446x668, They resize it to 560x839. Makes no sense.

        Still makes their operation look pretty bad.
    • i tested it and i have a few complaints:
      it connects to some time sync server and sets the system clock very accurately to some foreign local time :D

      the GUI for the app really sucks and is severly broken in its behaviour. (buttons disappear, etc)

      dont bother using this software, the underlying worm detection code is probably as broken as the rest.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:48PM (#8956043)
    The website is scarce on details, but from the looks of it, it would appear to not be very sophisticated. It detects very few actual worms and exploits, and would seem to be just like http://isc.incidents.org/ (Internet Storm Centre), except without nearly so much data.

    Leusent _AT_ Link-net.org
    • Wrong, this is an honey-pot, easy to use in your system tray and without the hassle. You can use it in the DMZ, in VMware or in any other way. You can also chose not to use it.

      It's great software, and it proved itself.

      The distributed option of sharing data is a plus.
  • IINAL (Score:3, Interesting)

    by z0ink ( 572154 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:49PM (#8956051)
    I thought honeypotting is being considerd as not-so-legal. Hopefully this could be something positive in the case for using hoeypots affectively.
    • Re:IINAL (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:58PM (#8956102)
      I thought honeypotting is being considerd as not-so-legal.

      Why would you say that? It certainly isn't entrapment. If you leave your house windows open, it doesn't give thieves permission to steal.

      And a burglar can't complain that you have video cameras all over the house recording them while you call the cops.

      In Texas & many other states, you could blow them away with a shotgun and get cheers in the local paper.
      • Re:IINAL (Score:5, Interesting)

        by chadjg ( 615827 ) <chadgessele2000.yahoo@com> on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:02PM (#8956134) Journal
        Think unlawful interception of communications, not entrapment. I know, it's stupid, but that's the legal theory. IANAL and all that...
        • Its not interception, the worm was randomly scanning for vulnerable systems, one was provided.

          If this thing was used a man in the middle approach, that would be interception, but a writer of a worm is going to have a hard time defending it.
        • Quite hard to claim it is unlawful to intercept something directed at you. That's like saying I unlawfully intercepted the letter you addressed and mailed to me. No I didn't, you SENT it to me, there was no interception.

          There's also nothing saying that what run on a port needs to be what conventionally runs on that port. Yes, 21 is conventionally FTP, but that's convention not a legal mandidate. You can run other services (like this) on 21, or run FTP on a different port.
      • While it doesn't give thieves permission to steal, your home owners theft insurance can be rendered void if you do not take adequate measures to secure your home when you are not there.

        Of course, you'd have to be mad to admit that you left the windows wide open when the insurance guy asks if you secured your home before leaving as part of their claim handling process.

    • Re:IINAL (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tomstdenis ( 446163 )
      Um whoever modded that as interesting is a fucking moron.

      A honeypot is just a pseudo-server meant to trap, delay and/or observe a client. Useful for wasting spammers time/bandwidth, looking for spiders or in this case looking for active worm traffic.

      You have to connect to the honeypot for it to be active so in absolutely no way can this be "illegal".

      Tom
  • by PetoskeyGuy ( 648788 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:50PM (#8956055)
    Pass, Too Easy.
  • by Dark Lord Seth ( 584963 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:50PM (#8956056) Journal

    And, as it says in the article, u137unk is aimed at port 137 using UDP. NetBIOS request en masse. Over the internet? Why does this not make sense? Maybe all those exploits are Messenger spams? However, iirc, Messenger spam uses a different port and TCP. So if this is not Messenger spam... Then what?

  • by digitalgimpus ( 468277 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:52PM (#8956068) Homepage
    Each time I launched the app, norton fires up because an email is being sent.

    no mention of what anywhere.

    Sorry, perhaps I'm paranoid... but that's not very cool with me.
  • by alefbet ( 518838 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:52PM (#8956069) Homepage
    Wow, I think this is a serious contender for hardest headline ever to parse.

    WormRadar Node Volunteers Help Graph Attacks

    Did a node spontaneously provide some "help graph" attacks? Did node volunteers assist in attacking a graph or several graphs? Did the help given by volunteers end up graphing an attack? Or did it perform a little known "graph attack" on something?

    • No, it is poor WormRadar node volunteers, who need some help. Because the insidous Graph is attacking them. We were attacked by the graph couple of months ago, it was horrible....
    • I second that. Took me a good 10 seconds to derive any meaning out of that grammatical traffic accident. Of the six words in the headline, 4 of them could be verbs in a different context. If there's anything I hate more than dry, subtle humor, it's got to be repetitive use of certain types of words. I'm infuriated! It's time to get on up out of here.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:53PM (#8956072)
    Works great, and the author promised to try and port the software to Linux, although he said it may take some time as he is very busy with his real job, as well as working on developing WR and solving all the small bugs.

    The program is under constant development, surprising us with new features. The author is also very quick on responding to bug reports.

    WR allows for emulation of IIS, sub7 and other useful applications/Trojan horses, as well as specifying your own ports to listen on.

    It's a great program and a project worth supporting.

    Important note: the .CAP (capture) files are encrypted using a simple XOR, the .UNX files are the actual captures.

    There is some way yet to go until this program hits 'legacy', but as I said it is under constant development, really useful .. and it *is* free.
  • by ashitaka ( 27544 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:54PM (#8956075) Homepage
    Is the number of SQL-Slammer-infected systems still out there:

    Date: 04/23 01:24:30 Name: ICMP PING CyberKit 2.2 Windows
    Priority: 3 Type: Misc activity
    IP info: 216.18.121.12:n/a -> x.x.x.x:n/a
    References: none found SID: 483

    Date: 04/23 02:10:26 Name: MS-SQL Worm propagation attempt
    Priority: 2 Type: Misc Attack
    IP info: 152.66.211.244:3280 -> x.x.x.x:1434
    References: none found SID: 2003

    Date: 04/23 02:10:59 Name: MS-SQL Worm propagation attempt
    Priority: 2 Type: Misc Attack
    IP info: 210.13.22.79:1171 -> x.x.x.x:1434
    References: none found SID: 2003

    Date: 04/23 02:32:46 Name: SCAN Squid Proxy attempt
    Priority: 2 Type: Attempted Information Leak
    IP info: 69.158.81.79:4380 -> x.x.x.x:3128
    References: none found SID: 618

    Date: 04/23 02:32:49 Name: SCAN Squid Proxy attempt
    Priority: 2 Type: Attempted Information Leak
    IP info: 69.158.81.79:4380 -> x.x.x.x:3128
    References: none found SID: 618

    Date: 04/23 02:32:54 Name: SCAN SOCKS Proxy attempt
    Priority: 2 Type: Attempted Information Leak
    IP info: 69.158.81.79:4514 -> x.x.x.x:1080
    References: none found SID: 615

    Date: 04/23 02:32:57 Name: SCAN SOCKS Proxy attempt
    Priority: 2 Type: Attempted Information Leak
    IP info: 69.158.81.79:4514 -> x.x.x.x:1080
    References: none found SID: 615

    Date: 04/23 02:59:50 Name: ICMP PING CyberKit 2.2 Windows
    Priority: 3 Type: Misc activity
    IP info: 216.18.121.12:n/a -> x.x.x.x:n/a
    References: none found SID: 483

    Date: 04/23 03:22:04 Name: MS-SQL Worm propagation attempt
    Priority: 2 Type: Misc Attack
    IP info: 67.163.239.113:1209 -> x.x.x.x:1434
    References: none found SID: 2003

  • by Anonymous Coward
    Just plug and play baby. You can do more than watch worms as well, you can experiance the worm. Take that, Linux.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Oh, joy. That sounds like a swell idea. I'd rather have something that works with my firewall to report the hits.
    • by Anonymous Coward
      I am sure that as a good geek you can come up with a solution to run it with a firewall, unless that is what you want.

      DMZ? NAT? personal firewall allowing this program only?

      All allowing you to log, so what's the problem?
  • Excellent! (Score:5, Funny)

    by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:01PM (#8956132) Homepage
    "NTBugtraq has a post looking for volunteers to run WormRadar nodes.

    I volunteer enthusiastically. Wormradar will complement nicely my Gaydar, Chickdar, and of course, flamedar.

  • by Gadi Evron ( 238989 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:01PM (#8956133)
    The author of WR is Roger Thompson, a well respected AV professional since the very first days in the late 80's/early 90's.

    He is also a CARO member, which is a very respectable organization for old-timer AV researchers.

    I know him personally and vouch for him, much like pretty much any other AV researcher in the world. Everybody knows Roger.
  • reporting for ISPs (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:06PM (#8956160)

    How about reporting for ISPs? Say, daily reports grouped by netblock owner in an easily parsed format? Set it up so ISPs can sign up for them. ISP doesn't sign up? Shucks, they must be supporting viruses and whatnot.

    While backbone providers love 'em because they get paid for every byte...worms are the scourge of DSL/cablemodem companies, because they don't get paid by the byte, and worms eat into their margins. So you'd think they would have a vested interest in taking care of the problem.

    Of course, if they were competent, they'd be running IDS systems that would examine a portion of traffic looking for worm activity, automatically shutting off any systems...

  • by Gadi Evron ( 238989 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:07PM (#8956170)
    Hi Russ,

    I am looking for some more folks who would be interested in running
    WormRadar. ( http://wormradar.com). The web site is still rudimentary, but
    the graph is generated every 30 minutes, and is interesting to watch, and
    WormRadar.exe is available for download from there.

    It is essentially a distributed Windows honeypot that listens on known
    wormy ports (or ports that are likely to become wormy), and crcs, or scans,
    anything that comes along. Its purpose is to both measure the frequency of
    known, current worms and to alert us all when something new becomes active.
    It is free provided you allow it to report to the central site.

    If you allow it, WormRadar will synchronize your pc to network time, and
    all events are recorded to the millisecond utc. Events are reported by both
    email and udp... email because it makes it convenient to attach a capture
    if it is something new, and udp because while unreliable, it is fast.

    A summarized graph of activity is refreshed every 30 minutes to the
    website, and is refreshed every 15 minutes on the WorldView tab within
    WorldRadar itself. The WorldView tab also has notification options which
    allow you to be alerted by a variety of means if something new appears,
    such as email to a pager or by playing a wav file. In the fullness of time,
    I'll add more views and graphs. The summary graph is interpreted like this...

    (1) Green bars are recognized things
    (2) Red bars are new (and should be watched)
    (3) If I didn't get any data, I generate a name based on whether it was tcp
    or udp, plus the port number, plus '0 bytes'.E.g. "t17300 0 bytes" means it
    was TCP port 17300 and was 0 bytes long.
    (4) If I got some data, but couldn't recognize it, I generate a similar
    filename, but the suffix is 'unk', for unknown.
    (5) I call it a 'summary', because if a single sourceip hits a single
    targetip 200 times on the same port (such as a sql dictionary attack on
    1433), it is really only one incident, and that is how I summarize it.

    It emulates some common servers, such as web and ftp, and some common
    backdoors, such as sub7 and kuang, and there are a bunch of tcp and udp
    ports that can be set to whatever you like.

    To install it, simply make a directory, copy it in, run it, configure it a
    bit if you want, and tell it to listen. You can set it to cc yourself, and
    you will receive a copy of the email sent to wormradar.com. The UDP
    messages are content-identical to the email, although without email-y
    things like headers, and I don't UDP the attachment if there is one.

    It runs on about any Windows platform but runs best on Win ME, W2k or
    WinXP. Win ME is a good platform, because there are fewer services to turn
    off to allow WormRadar to listen on those ports. It runs nicely behind
    firewalls like ZoneAlarm, and runs nicely in Virtual PC or VMWare. It
    doesn't need much hardware... 200 or 300 mhz is fine. In the unlikely event
    that you want to install it on more than one computer, please don't install
    them on side by side IP addresses... this just skews the data. What we
    really want is a nice, random, widespread distribution.

    Thanks

    Roger
  • by Gadi Evron ( 238989 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:11PM (#8956190)
    As Roger wrote on NTBUGTRAQ:

    If you allow it, WormRadar will synchronize your pc to network time, and
    all events are recorded to the millisecond utc. Events are reported by both
    email and udp... email because it makes it convenient to attach a capture
    if it is something new, and udp because while unreliable, it is fast.

    A summarized graph of activity is refreshed every 30 minutes to the
    website, and is refreshed every 15 minutes on the WorldView tab within
    WorldRadar itself. The WorldView tab also has notification options which
    allow you to be alerted by a variety of means if something new appears,
    such as email to a pager or by playing a wav file. In the fullness of time,
    I'll add more views and graphs. The summary graph is interpreted like this...
  • by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:12PM (#8956206)
    Back when we discussed the Witty worm [slashdot.org] the article & discussion noted that UCSD Network Telescope mentioned here [caida.org] has 1/256 of the entire IPv4 address space. They seem well suited to track anomolous behavior.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    ...I think I'll keep my tinfoil hat on. If we all would just start declining the honor of installing and running everything we can't be certain of being 100% safe, worms might just cease to be a problem.
  • OK so this guy has a good idea but he is a busy programmer and this is not open source software so we can't trust it.

    I'm all for a new open source project where we could take all our old AT computers running linux (you know you've got a bunch of them) and put a new and improved open source honeypot/worm tracking and graphing distributed network software on them. It will be open source so we can trust it. We might have more volunteers to help write and test this if it is open source too so it will get d
    • by Gadi Evron ( 238989 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:39PM (#8956352)
      I thought the idea of open source was to work together and help out? Not double and compet when there is no real need to?

      Email the author and offer your help, he is a great guy and I am sure he will take any help he can get.

      I trust him, the question is if he can trust everyone who offers to help with a project such as this? Ask him and you'll find out.

      Constructive vs....
      • Yes fair enough. You are right. This is a good idea that he has I think. Working together is the way for sure.... I think I will email him.

        So.... question,
        In the best possible universe, do you believe that a project like this should be closed source or open source?
        • In answer to your questions.. I believe the author has the right to decide if his software is open source or not.

          You as a user have the right to decide whether or not you'd use it.

          The author is respectable and a very old timer in the AV and security field. He chose to make it freeware, that's something I am going to thank him for (already did, actually).
      • I think secruity is the best argument for open sourcing the client or at least making it available for peer review. It is intended to be used on the open internet and it will become a target for the writers of various malware, any buffer overflows or other subtle errors that can be exploited probably will be.

        Even if the author has a great reputation, we all make mistakes at times.

  • DShield and myNatwatchMan do pretty much the same thing, only for all ports instead of just worms. Gives a much better lay-of-the-land for administrators.
  • Try Google:
    http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/Heari ngs/11192 003hearing1133/Thompson1799.htm
  • by pavera ( 320634 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @09:57PM (#8956436) Homepage Journal
    Currently it looks like only a Windows client is available, though. Why would you need to monitor worm activity on a Linux box?
  • The guy asked for volunteers, people who are willing to help - on NTBUGTRAQ.

    The program is still being developed and there isn't much of a web page, it is an as-is service, and the program does a great job.

    The guy runs a new project, which is still very much under development. I suppose you don't have to download and/or run the software if you don't want to.

    It is good software, and it worked great, but I don't see any reason to shoot the guy for admitting to needing help with running nodes, while he furt
  • It works! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Wormsign to the northwest! Usul has called a big one. SUMMON THE FREMEN!
  • Port 2000 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by toupsie ( 88295 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @10:28PM (#8956582) Homepage
    I have my Linksys cable/dsl router pointing the DMZ to an old notebook running redhat 8 and portsentry. One thing I have noticed is that a majority of the hits I record are for port 2000. These are coming from all over the world and I have no clue what is hitting it. Does anyone know what would be probing port 2000? I was disappointed that it didn't show up on the graph at the WormRadar site. I figured if I was being probed for the port it would be universal.
  • Did anyone else read the headline as:

    WormRadar Nude Volunteers Help Graph Attacks


    • > Did anyone else read the headline as: WormRadar Nude Volunteers Help Graph Attacks

      At first I read it as "That hot babe you saw at the store this afternoon is trying to track you down for a weekend of hot sex", but I rubbed my eyes and it went away.

  • And released the source code.

    Then anyone with a java compiler could participate, no matter what hardware they have.

    (Also, the chance of this being a trojan would be rendered nonexistent)

    Say what you will about java performance, but when it comes to writing networking software, java's pretty damn sweet!

  • ..until I realised it said node volunteers. Node with an 'o', not a 'u'.

    Damn.

  • dshield (Score:3, Informative)

    by sir_cello ( 634395 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @03:58AM (#8957712)

    Try dshield [slashdot.org], I've had my OpenBSD pf firewall generate and submit logs on a daily basis for near a year now. There are a numerous dshield clients and adapter scripts. You will also get daily reports from dshield, there's a tonne of online statistics, and they use your data to submit reports to abuse owners at domain names.

    Here's the current statistics:
    Records Added:
    Last Month - 286,455,729
    Last Week - 112,352,882
    Today - 591,719

  • Doesn't run under WINE :(
  • If your using Mozilla, right click on that image and 'View Image'. For some bizarre reason they rescale the image in the HTML and it really kills the fonts.

    Unless your browser has smooth scaling! Wasn't Mozilla suppost to have added that a while back?
  • "Currently it looks like only a Windows client is necessary, though."

    *Now* I get it!

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