Educause Security Discussion mailing list archives

Re: Spyware, trojans and keyboard loggers?


From: "Edwards, Francis" <Francis.Edwards () MONTGOMERYCOLLEGE EDU>
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 15:02:02 -0400

Jim,

NAI/McAfee is set to release version 8.0i of VirusScan Enterprise in
mid-August.  (It's been delayed a few weeks to work out some items
discovered during beta testing.)  Coupled with their ePO management
system, looks like it will do what you're asking about.  See
http://www.mcafeesecurity.com/us/products/mcafee/antivirus/desktop/vs.ht
m  In addition to automatically handling a list of spyware and other
'unwanted' software, they say "administrators can even define a custom
list of company-specific unwanted programs...[to] alert, clean, remove,
and quarantine..."

Francis Edwards, CISSP CCP
Manager, IT Security
Montgomery College
Office of Information Technology
7362 Calhoun Place
Rockville, MD 20855-2759
 
240/314-3091
Francis.Edwards () montgomerycollege edu
 
 


-----Original Message-----
From: The EDUCAUSE Security Discussion Group Listserv
[mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of James Moore
Sent: Monday, July 26, 2004 1:23 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: [SECURITY] Spyware, trojans and keyboard loggers?


We are creating a "desktop security standard" and want to include
protection against spyware and keystroke loggers.  I am trying to get
good coverage.  I had anticipated that the big A/V vendors would have
swallowed up anti - spyware/backdoors/keyloggers by now.  But it seems
that they haven't.  In fact some are producing their own anti-spyware --
e.g. NAI/McAfee.  Some vendors, like SpyCop claim that most "keystroke
logger" protection doesn't cover 1) the commercial/shareware keyloggers
and 2) nearly as many as they do.

I am looking to get to the bottom line, which is coverage, in
conjunction with clarity (i.e. it doesn't come with a 368 page manual
that users are expected to read.  It also doesn't come with simple 2
step instructions, the first of which is "get a MS in computer science).

Any advice? Sample desktop security standards?

Thinking ahead to server security ... Any advice? Sample server security
standards? 

Thanks,

- - -
Jim Moore, CISSP, IAM
Information Security Officer
Rochester Institute of Technology
13 Lomb Memorial Drive
Rochester, NY 14623-5603
Office: 585-475-5406
Lab: 585-475-4122
Fax: 585-475-7950 

"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity." Albert Einstein

"The release of new internet threats have not created a new problem. It
has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one."
Parallels quote by Albert Einstein on atomic energy

-----Original Message-----
From: The EDUCAUSE Security Discussion Group Listserv
[mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Jordan Wiens
Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2004 2:49 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] keyboard logger?

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004, Mark Wilson wrote:

Has anyone heard of a keyboard logger keykb.exe (167kb) ?  A
compliment program may be named bkyek.ni (211 kb).  Any 
information on
this is appreciated.  I am not that experienced in
evaluating malware
so any other tips on obtaining information about malware may help.

The keykb.exe is detected as the following:

Clamscan:       Trojan.Spy.Agent.P
F-secure:       TrojanSpy.Win32.Agent.p [AVP]
                (f-secure just uses kav to detect it in this case)
Dr. Web:        Trojan.Virtumod
Kaspersky:      TrojanSpy.Win32.Agent.p
RAV:            TrojanSpy/Win32.Agent.P

You can try searching for more info from those AV vendor sites.

It's UPX packed (thanks Kaspersky).  Here's some selected
strings for fun:

http://203.199.200.61/
:AttachThreadInput
POST
HTTP/1.1
g_PopupPerDay
g_ServerIPs
g_Upgrade c:\Projects\GatorClone\GatorClone\Release\GatorClone.pdb
Copyright (c) 1992-2001 by P.J. Plauger, licensed by 
Dinkumware, Ltd. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
c:\Projects\GatorClone\KillHook\Release\KillHook.pdb

The other ini file is either encrypted or compressed, doesn't
contain any strings, or some combination of those, and 
doesn't have a format I can guess at by glancing through it.


Quick and Dirty General Malware Analysis Tutorial:
--------------------------------------------------
For easy and effective malware analysis, get a copy of vmware
(30 day free versions available, but it's well worth the cost 
if you can get your university to buy a copy) and load it up with:
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/filemon.shtml
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/pmon.shtml
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp.shtml
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/regmon.shtml

Along with a good sniffer (ethereal is hard to beat:
http://www.ethereal.com/) and depending on your level of
guts, run it in the vmware environment with the network off 
or on and monitor what it does.

Make sure to save a snapshot of your vmware image after
you've set it up before infection so you can reset it to a 
clean state immediately afterwards.

On the linux side of things, there are a number of anti-virus
programs you can purchase and get for free that you can 
script together to scan malware automatically.  That and the 
file and strings command are essential as well (for windows 
equivalents try:
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/misc.shtml#strings
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net)

Windows users could try the same assuming they were able to
get the command-line scanners of the anti-virus softwares 
installed and scripted together as well.  Alternatively, 
check out virustotal which does most of the hard work for 
you: http://www.virustotal.com.  One of the few downsides to 
virustotal is they don't report of the packing information 
that (for example) Dr. Webb and Kaspersky report which can be 
essential to unpacking and examining malware.

For those who really want to dig deep, get a good
disassembler/debugger in your vmware image as well.  I'd 
highly recommend Ollydbg (though there was a recent exploit 
announced in it, but that's why we're running it in our 
vmware image anyway, right?  We're already planning on 
running malware, so that shouldn't be that much of a problem 
other than the fact that Ollydbg can't debug code 
specifically built to exploit it):
http://home.t-online.de/home/Ollydbg/ though many people like 
the commercial products SoftIce and IDA Pro.

--
Jordan Wiens, CISSP
UF Network Security Engineer
(352)392-2061

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