[SecurityRatty] tag: e-business

Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability - Pick Any Two

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:50:19 +0000

Under Worm Assault, Military Bans Disks, USB Drives

The Defense Department's geeks are spooked by a rapidly spreading worm crawling across their networks. So they've suspended the use of so-called thumb drives, CDs, flash media cards, and all other removable data storage devices from their nets, to try to keep the worm from multiplying any further.

The ban comes from the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, according to an internal Army e-mail. It applies to both the secret SIPR and unclassified NIPR nets. The suspension, which includes everything from external hard drives to "floppy disks," is supposed to take effect "immediately." Similar notices went out to the other military services.

In some organizations, the ban would be only a minor inconvenience. But the military relies heavily on such drives to store information. Bandwidth is often scarce out in the field. Networks are often considered unreliable. Takeaway storage is used constantly as a substitute.

Its almost like we built out a bunch of systems and then connected them to huge networks without building security into the software or something.

Bush's exit to put new e-records system to the test

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 02:00:00 +0000

The National Archives received only 32 million e-mails from the Clinton administration eight years ago, but in a few months, it expects to get hit with 50 times that from the Bush administration, which has exacerbated the problem by dragging its feet in supplying the data.

Opinion: Obama's Blackberry Is No Security Threat

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:00:00 +0000

A lot of the stories about President-Elect Barack Obama possibly having to relinquish his BlackBerry when he takes office Jan. 20 are, for a variety of reasons, just plain dumb.

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IETF: Should we ignore the Kaminsky bug?

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:00:00 +0000

The ongoing debate about a serious flaw in the DNS discovered this summer brings to mind a famous quotation from Voltaire: "The perfect is the enemy of the good."

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Feds urged to provide cybersecurity incentives

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:00:00 +0000

President-elect Barack Obama needs to take a new approach to cybersecurity, with government providing incentives for private businesses to adopt security measures, the Internet Security Alliance, a cybersecurity group, said today.

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Will Code Malware for Financial Incentives

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:57:55 +0000

A couple of hundred dollars can indeed get you state of the art undetectable piece of malware with post-purchase service in the form of automatic lower detection rate for sure, but what happens when the vendors of such releases start vertically integrating just like everyone else, and start offering OS-independent spamming, flooding, modifications and tweaking of popular crimeware kits in the very same fashion? The quality assurance process gets centralized into the hands of experienced programmers that have been developing cybercrime facilitating tools for years.

It's interesting to monitor the pricing schemes that they implement. For instance, the modularity of a particular malware, that is the additional functions that a buyer may want or not want, increase or decrease the price respectively. Others, tend to leave the price open topic by only mentioning the starting price for their services and they increasing it again in open topic fashion.

Let's take look at some recently advertised (translated) "malware coding for hire" propositions, highlighting some of the latest developments in their pricing strategies :

Proposition 1 :
"Programs and scripts under the following categories are accepted :
grabbers; spamming tools for forums, spamming tools for social networking sites, modifications of admin panels for (popular crimeware kits), phishing pages

Platform: software running on MAC OS to Windows
Multitasking: have the capacity to work on multiple projects
Speed and responsibility: at the highest level
Pre-payment for new customers: 50% of the whole price, 30% pre-pay of the whole price for repreated customers
Support: Paid
Rates: starting from 100 euros

If, after speaking ultimate price, you decide to add to your order something else - the price change. Prepare the job immediately, which will understand what to do and how much it will cost you, if you have any suggestions for a price, then lays them immediately and not after the work is completed. If you order something that requires parsing your logs, and their continued use, you agree to provide "a significant portion of the logs, so that after putting the project did not raise misunderstandings due to the fact that some logs are no longer "fresh", because of their "uniqueness". In this case, for the finalization of the project will be charged an additional fee."

This is an example of an "open topic pricing scheme" with the vendor offering the possibility to code the malware or the tool for any price above 100 euro based on what he perceives as features included within worth the price.

Proposition 2:
"Starting price for my malware is 250 EUR. Additional modules like P2P features, source code for a particular module go for an additional 50 EUR. If you're paying in another currency the price is 200 GBP or 395 dollars. I sell only ten copies of the builder so hurry up. The trading process is simple - a password protected file with the malware is sent to you so you can see the files inside. You then sent the money and I mail you back the password. If you don't like this way you lose.

I can also offer you another deal, I will share the complete source code in exchange to access to a botnet with at least 4000 infected hosts because I don't have time to play around with me bot right now.

This proposition is particularly interesting because the seller is introducing basic understanding of exchange rates, but most of all because he's in fact offering a direct bargain in the form of access to a botnet in exchange for a complete source code of his malware bot. Both propositions are also great examples that vendors engage by keeping their current and potential customers up-to-date with TODO lists of features to come next to the usual CHANGELOGS, and, of course, establish trust by allowing potential customers to take a peek at the source code of the malware they're about to purchase.

Related posts:
Coding Spyware and Malware for Hire
The Underground Economy's Supply of Goods and Services
The Dynamics of the Malware Industry - Proprietary Malware Tools
Using Market Forces to Disrupt Botnets
Multiple Firewalls Bypassing Verification on Demand
Managed Spamming Appliances - The Future of Spam
Localizing Cybercrime - Cultural Diversity on Demand
E-crime and Socioeconomic Factors
Russia's FSB vs Cybercrime
Malware as a Web Service
Localizing Open Source Malware
Quality and Assurance in Malware Attacks
Benchmarking and Optimising Malware

Oregon Woman Loses $400,000 to Nigerian E-Mail Scam

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:20:02 +0000

An Oregon woman who is out $400,000 after falling for a well-known Internet scam says she wasn't a sucker or an easy mark.

Judge delays trial of accused Palin e-mail hacker

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 02:00:00 +0000

David Kernell, the Tennessee college student indicted a month ago for allegedly breaking into the e-mail account of former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, will face trial next May, according to court documents.

Judge delays trial of accused Palin e-mail hacker

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 21:00:00 +0000

The Tennessee college student indicted a month ago for allegedly breaking into the e-mail account of then-Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin will face trial in May 2009, not next month as originally scheduled, according to recent court documents.

Palin Hacker Denies Felony Charge and 'Hacker' Label

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:15:00 +0000

David Kernell, the Tennessee student accused of breaching Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's e-mail account, is seeking to have a felony charge against him thrown out. He also wants a federal court to bar prosecutors from referring to him as a "hacker."