Worms Could Dodge Net traps

Danse writes "ZDNet reports that future worms could evade a network of early-warning sensors hidden across the Internet unless countermeasures are taken. According to papers presented at the Usenix Security Symposium, just as surveillance cameras are sometimes hidden the locations of the Internet sensors are kept secret. From the article: 'If the set of sensors is known, a malicious attacker could avoid the sensors entirely or could overwhelm the sensors with errant data.' A team of computer scientists from the University of Wisconsin wrote up the background in their award-winning paper titled 'Mapping Internet Sensors with Probe Response Attacks.'"

Conclusion = obvious

[rritterson]

Duh! Of course you can slowly figure out how a security system works, and then work around it. See any famous and/or talented thief for such an example. The real threat, I suppose, is that these worms can do it automatically and on a larger scale.

Solution: Don't open holes and then fill them with trip wires. Just fill up the hole (via patch or otherwise) in the first place.

But...

[TheOtherAgentM]

This still doesn't protect the users that are spreading the worms in the first place. So you make an announcement about a worm on the loose? They don't even know what the updates do, and don't patch themselves. The early warning has protected itself.

I wonder how long before...

[Biomechanical]

...We have roving Intrusion Countermeasures (Or IC) inside our system. Not just passive measures, but semi-autonomous active measures.

We already have a form of White IC - simple detection, non-aggressive measures. How long before we have more active Grey IC - Tar Babies (similar to today's honey pots), Tar Pits, Blaster - and ultimately, Black IC - seeking out the source of the intrusion and in turn, destroying the origin of attack?

Would a big, multi-national corporation get punished for "accidentally" frying the computer of someone who was thought to be intruding into the corporation's computers? I seriously doubt it.

wow

[eight and a quarter]

a really good read. i knew it would be a matter of time before something like this can be thwarted, basically attacks are slowly evolving. would it be easy for them to change to different unused IP addresses?

i know an easy fix.. i see in the paper "bandwidth for the fractional T3 attacker and the OC6 attacker could be achieved by using around 250 and 2,500 cable modems".. i wish more cable ISPs were responsive to abuse complaints, or would notice certain bot-like activity like many DDoS attacks coming from their network. hell i've read my sshd logs and was amazed at the amount of US cable/dsl scans. you know that's a bot at work.

That is to be expected

[jurt1235]

A biological virus adapts to its environment too, a worm too, so why would the digital variant not adapt. And since the main platform clearly suffers from an immune deficiency syndrom, just kept alive by their doctors and creators by means which are always to late to stop the newest infection but just on time to save most patients, it is pretty easy for the virusses to stay alive, and adapt to a point where the immune system will completely fail.

Solution: Needs more sensors.

[Geeselegs]

Solution: Needs more sensors.

If the number of sensors is brought to the point where it becomes impractical to map them, voila no more sensor evasion.

This obviously would be harder to impliment than spoken. Maybe if a sensor implimentation came as an optional standard with server software.

Heh, I can speculate.

Or alternatively

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Could certain software companies start spewing out secure software, so worms don't have much of a chance to exist in the first place?

The number of companies getting fat over those needless insecurities is just gross...

Re:Conclusion = obvious

[aussie_a]

You obviously seem to have all the answers, why don't you go and code these magic patches for them?

Security isn't easy, and fixing holes with patches isn't easy. It takes time, skill and money. Placing a trip wire as a stop-gap measure is helpful, especially if the hole takes years to fix (without creating more holes).

If you can do better, then by all means do so. But the security war will never be won by those securing the systems.

You would like them to be that advanced

[pe1chl]

For a long time I have forwarded all 419 scams to abuse addresses at all their involved mailbox hosters.
In some cases (not always, unfortunately) this causes them to lose their account and thus their way to get replies and possible revenue.

What I would have liked is that they detected "when we send mail to this address we lose our account" and put that address on some blacklist to send no more scams.

But, this has not happened. So, I don't think there is any cleverness behind it, they just scatterbomb and hope the don't hit a whistleblower.