Turning Attackers' Tools Against Them 75
Tasha26 writes "The BBC has an interesting Web security snippet from the SyScan 2010 security conference in Singapore. In a presentation, security researcher Laurent Oudot released details of bugs found in commonly used attack kits such as Neon, Eleonore, and Sniper. These loopholes could be exploited to get more information about the attackers, perhaps identifying them, stealing their tools and methods, or even following the trail back to their own computer."
Following the trail back to their own computer (Score:3, Insightful)
..or to the person they are setting up to go to jail...
Ka! Crooks' food-chain (Score:2, Insightful)
Low hanging fruit (Score:5, Insightful)
No Honor Among Thieves (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really think that the creators of these "tools" aren't going to leave SOME way of getting back into them? To prevent them from being used against their own systems?
"Did you really think you could use my own spell against me , Potter?" -Severus Snape "HP: THBP"
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
In other news, researchers learn that script kiddies tend not to be very good software developers.
Surely the very definition of a script kiddie is someone who doesn't write hacking software, but uses software built by others.
I think this shows that the hacking community can be a bit arrogant, and they think that hackers won't go after one of their own.
Re:walled garden version for the rest of us? (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft would gladly make a walled garden OS for EVERYONE to use if they thought they could get away with it.
Re:Following the trail back to their own computer (Score:2, Insightful)
..or to the person they are setting up to go to jail...
Yes, and the police shouldn't bother following up on physical evidence either since it usually leads to someone who's being set up to go to jail.
Re:Low hanging fruit (Score:4, Insightful)
Thae fact that there are errors and vulnerabilities in web based tools just means that they were written by programmers who largely don't have peer code review
The fact that there are errors in these attack suites in particular is probably more because their purpose is to attack others with no expectation that counter-attacks are likely to happen, at least against these tools themselves.
I workd for a company that used a stripped down, harmless version of the sub7 trojan to deploy software
Funny you bring that up. Older versions used to have a hard coded master password that could be used to steal Sub7 systems, W32/Leaves took over systems that way.
Re:Time for hacker bounty hunter! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Illegal in many jurisdiction (Score:2, Insightful)
Not so. Try a "self defense" defense.
If an attacker originates an attack on you,
you are welcome to use ENOUGH force to stop it.
I think a requisite measure of restraint would be
proven, and any subsequent culpability waived.
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Eh, I'm not sure I agree.
It's one thing to have the ability to find a exploit and take advantage of it. It's an entirely different thing to personally go through all of the code running on your machine and remove all exploits.
drug dealers can't report theft of drugs (Score:4, Insightful)
likewise, what hacker is going to report that someone reverse engineered his hack?
Re:walled garden version for the rest of us? (Score:5, Insightful)
Haven't they already taken the first step with compulsory driver signing in their 64-bit OSes? I hear there's a registry hack to disable it... for now. But MS would -love- it to be mandatory, they've been laying the foundations since the original "Trusted Computing Platform Alliance" days haven't they? I don't keep up to date on all this stuff so maybe it's not so true anymore.
Re:Illegal in many jurisdiction (Score:1, Insightful)
Not so. Try a "self defense" defense.
If an attacker originates an attack on you,
you are welcome to use ENOUGH force to stop it.
I think a requisite measure of restraint would be
proven, and any subsequent culpability waived.
Stop it? .... -j DROP
iptables
Retaliation against the attackets system, which just happens to be a rooted box at MegaCorp ? Year, real smart idea - their lawyers will surely see the sanity of what you did and not sue..