Re: NIMDA, how to stop it

["R. DuFresne" <dufresne () sysinfo com>]

It's a pretty nasty and hard to control viri/worm, much more potents then
what has been seen in the past.

here's a pretty good link for solid info on it:

http://www.europe.f-secure.com/v-descs/nimda.shtml

The best way to defend against this nasty code, in our mind is:

educating users about e-mail and teaching them to not just point and click
on mails they are not sure of origination and contain attachments.  

anti-virus software not just on the servers, but each desktop also,
keeping the virus signatures on the servers and desktops is a must.

Patching IIS servers to prevent their infection, the patches had been
available before this or code red and it's variants had been released, few
folks took the patches seriously and thus the quick spread of these
nasties as well as the vast number of machines that remain infected to
this day.


Of course, folks not using windows related products are less likely to
face difficulties with these nasties, though others infected throughout
the net can affect your companies bandwidth when such viri/worms are
unleashed and start to spread as quickly as such code these days does...

Being this worm has a diverse number of attack vectors, some comprising
oten open ports via smtp and http, it has been extremely difficult to deal
with via simple firewalling concepts.  Proxies can help ome, but, not
completely...

Of course, others might have additional or better info, so, I could well
stand corrected, and would appreciate any corrrections.

Thanks,

Ron DuFresne


On Fri, 4 Jan 2002, Alan Young wrote:

> speaking of NIMDA, as a general recommendation, what would you all recommend
> as an effecive firewall setup to stop NIMDA?
>
> Can I stop NIMDA with just a PIX? Or do I need some sort of other "virus
> firewall" in addition to our PIX?
>
> Please forgive my ignorance, I cant search the archives (the search function
> is broken) so I dont know if this has been asked before.
>
> I am sure I must be missing some fundamental firewall knowledge, I suppose
> there are some good books on this topic???
>
> Alan Young
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: firewall-wizards-admin () nfr com
> > [mailto:firewall-wizards-admin () nfr com]On Behalf Of Behm, Jeffrey L.
> > Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2002 3:05 PM
> > To: firewall-wizards () nfr net
> > Subject: RE: [fw-wiz] The Morris worm to Nimda, how little
> > we've learned
> > or gained
> >
> >
> > > At the very least, jobs should be on the line when companies are
> > compromised by code
> > > that could have long been prevented by patching of
> > applications and OS's,
> > > especially when those patches have been widely available and publicly
> > > announced.  Even an arson victim faces penalties if they
> > have violated
> >
> > I agree with your article as a whole, but take minor
> > exception to the above
> > paragraph.
> >
> > Is the job on the line if there are no or very little
> > resources available to
> > test the patches?
> > I don't think you aren't suggesting blind application of all security
> > related patches released from a given vendor, so how does one
> > decide which
> > are the "real" ones to apply, and which are the "ones we
> > don't really need."
> > It's the old adage of "apply patches and take a chance of breaking
> > something" vs. "don't apply the patch until you are sure you
> > need it" (but
> > how are you "sure"?)
> >
> > I.E. Is my job on the line if I apply a patch and it causes
> > more damage (due
> > to my own corporate implementation) than the issue it was
> > supposed to fix?
> >
> > I will give you that there are some patches that one should
> > apply due to the
> > severity of the consequences of not applying it (BIND, Sendmail, and
> > others). My point is that if the company is not willing to provide the
> > resources (time, hardware, people) needed to properly test
> > the patch(es),
> > the job should not be "on the line."
> >
> > A minor point, perhaps, but with the lack of skilled security
> > admins, and
> > unwillingness of companies to provide adequate resource to security
> > infrastructure (including patch testing), I don't think all
> > the blame lies
> > on the ones that "should have known the patches needed to be applied."
> >
> > IMHO (and no flame nor offense intended!),
> > Jeff
> >
> > Statements made are my personal opinion and in no way reflect
> > the views of
> > any company, corporation, or business.
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: R. DuFresne [mailto:dufresne () sysinfo com]
> > > Sent: Thursday, January 03, 02 3:11 AM
> > > To: firewall-wizards () nfr net
> > > Subject: [fw-wiz] The Morris worm to Nimda, how little we've
> > learned or
> > > gained
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >                   The Morris worm to Nimda
> > >              how little we've learned or gained
> > >
> > >
> > >                                 by:  Ron DuFresne
> > >                                        (c) 2001
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > 2001 was a tumultuous year.  Prior to the September 11 airline
> > > attacks on
> >
> > <snip>
> > _______________________________________________
> > firewall-wizards mailing list
> > firewall-wizards () nfr com
> > http://list.nfr.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards
>
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