The Dark Visitor

Skimming through the news today and came across an article in pr-inside.com, on Iranian hacker attempts to disrupt Jewish American leader’s message to Iran. A small blurb in the piece suggested that there was some evidence of Chinese fingerprints or assistance:

In the month since Hoenlein’s message was posted, Rosen said there have been «dozens» of attempts to hack into the site, called Jerusalemonline.com. He said they succeeded in labeling the Web site as «dangerous» on the Google search engine.

In an e-mail message to The Associated Press, Rosen said his technicians identified the hackers as «probably Iranian based with Chinese assistance or fingerprints.

I have written to Jerusalemonline for further clarification on this section of the article and hopefully will have an update. It would be very interesting to see if there is more to this, even if the Iranians are just using Chinese hacker malware.

I swear people have to sit around and think of phrases like this…from the WSJ:

In addition to cybersecurity threats in other countries, “so many people are going to the Olympics and are going to get electronically undressed,” said Joel Brenner, the government’s top counterintelligence officer. He tells of one computer-security expert who powered up a new Treo hand-held computer when his plane landed in China. By the time he got to his hotel, a handful of software programs had been wirelessly inserted.

More nudity here…

Bruce Schneier is a well-known security and cryptography researcher.  He has a popular blog where he posted his recent article detailing “The Truth About Chinese Hackers”, which was written for Discovery Channel.

This article is not particularly insightful and sort of lumps all of the Chinese hackers into a single group of young, male patriotic kids doing it for the babes and limos.

These hacker groups seem not to be working for the Chinese government. They don’t seem to be coordinated by the Chinese military.

The hackers are in this for two reasons: fame and glory, and an attempt to make a living.

This is very short sighted.  We should be honest here, neither Bruce Schneier nor Heike and I know with absolute certainty what Chinese hackers are doing, who is coordinating them and who might be paying them.  Maybe the article shouldn’t be titled “The Truth About Chinese Hacker” because Bruce doesn’t know what the truth is (Heike would have said that he couldn’t handle the truth either, but that’s not my style).

I think a lot of people assume that activity attributed to the PRC is simply based on the IP address.  After studying spear phishing attacks, custom malware attacks and the types of data that have been exfiltrated from various NGO targets it seems likely that some entity is coordinating the collection and exploitation of this information.  In my humble opinion, there may be more to this than WoW passwords.

US Declaration of Independence

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Posted under US attacks…for those men and women who sacrificed so much for our freedom.

Very interesting testimony before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission on PRC cyber space capabilities. The commission broke the talks down into three major sections, with some congressional persepective and admin thrown in for good measure. The primary topics were space capabilities, cyber capabilities and proliferation. Only panel three spoke on cyber issues but a typo in the contents section says panel two also spoke on it. Panel two actually talked about space capabilities.

The three people called to testify before the panel were Colonel McAlum, Mr. Thomas and Dr. Mulvenon. All three gave very good presentations. If you don’t want to search through the whole document, the cyber section begins on page 45.

I would also point out on this slide that it’s really important to get the lexicon right. In the open source media and other forums, you hear the term “cyber attack” used rather liberally, and you won’t hear anyone in the Department of Defense use that term in the context of cyber reconnaissance or network intrusions. What we are seeing today are network intrusions.

Really glad to finally hear someone clarify the difference between cyber attack and intrusion. Words really do make a difference.

The rest of the report on PRC cyber space capabilities found here….

This is a very interesting read by John J. Tkacik on Chinese cyber attacks that runs counter to many of my arguments.  The PDF document titled Trojan Dragon: China’s Cyber Threat is 12 pages but well worth checking out.

Genesis of China’s Cyberwarfare

In the 1990s, China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS), which manages the country’s police services, pioneered the art of state control of cyberspace by partnering with foreign network systems firms to monitor information flows via the Internet. By 1998, according to an insider’s account of China’s Internet development, the MPS and its subordinate bureaus found that their resources for monitoring the Internet had been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of Internet traffic—which by 1998 had not yet reached 1 million users in China.

Keep reading…

Somehow I missed this article at Dark Reading on “whale phishing” by Chinese hackers:

SecureWorks, a leading security services provider, reported today that a Chinese hacker is behind the current and former executive “whaling phishing scams” involving the US Federal Courts and the IRS. The new US Tax Court scam, targeting financial executives, which started two weeks ago is the latest in a wave of whaling attacks involving the IRS and the Federal Courts beginning in June 2007. Jackson also just discovered that the same hacker launched an IRS whaling scam this past weekend and the SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit is investigating it currently.

Dark Reading has some excellent stuff, including the rest of this article…

WASHINGTON — Hackers believed to be operating from China have broken into computers in Congress, apparently in search of information on Chinese dissidents, two GOP lawmakers said Wednesday.

The hackers were not identified, but one of the lawmakers, Rep. Christopher H. Smith of New Jersey, a senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he thought all signs pointed to the Chinese government.

Federal authorities have been increasingly concerned in recent years about the Chinese government’s aggressive deployment of scientists, engineers, foreign businessmen, students and others to sweep up U.S. technology and information. Protecting the United States against cyber attacks and high-tech crimes is the FBI’s third priority, behind combating terrorism and public corruption.

The extent of the intrusions on Capitol Hill, which officials said began in August 2006, was unclear, although Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), whose office had four computers affected, said that other members of Congress were targeted, as well as at least one congressional committee. “They got everything,” Wolf said at a news briefing, describing the attack on his office systems.

Cont…

Heike and I have reported on the well-known Chinese hacker sunwear several times:

People’s Armed Police Officer Hacking?

Sunwear Picture Proclaimed a Joke

Chinese Hacker…repeat offender!

Top Chinese Veteran Hackers

A forum posting on eviloctal from sunwear shows a screenshot of a hacked metasploit.com with his mark:  “hacked by sunwear ! just for fun”.  Here is a link to the eviloctal.com forum posting.  Thanks to sunbelt for the news.  No way to tell if it was a hoax or real just yet. The metasploit site seems to be normal at the time of this writing.  The forum post was made by sunwear on June 3.

Update (June 3 2003hrs GMT): One reader commented that the site was indeed hacked and that he was redirected to the evil octal forums.

Update from HD at Metasploit: The issue was that someone hacked a machine on the same subnet and was ARP spoofing the gateway. The metasploit.com machines were not compromised, but all HTTP requests coming into the ISP network were passed through a MITM defacer that inserted that HTML. Once I as able to set a static ARP entry and notify the ISP, the problem was resolved. So, to make things clear, the metasploit.com servers were not hacked, the ISP’s network was.

Not sure if this even qualifies as a post but, whatevah:

Government officials are not confirming a report that Chinese officials may have secretly copied the contents of a government laptop computer during a December visit to China by Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez’s visit to China has raised security questions.

The Associated Press said an investigation into the suspected incident also involved whether China used the information to try to hack into Commerce computers.

The AP cited officials and industry experts as sources for the story, which said the surreptitious copying is believed to have occurred when a laptop belonging to someone in the U.S. trade delegation was left unattended.

When asked whether the Commerce Department is looking into the matter, spokesman Richard Mills said, “We take security seriously, and as we learn of concerns about security, we look into them.”

This does continue…

The first calls are starting to make the rounds on Chinese hacker sites to attack the Sharon Stone website. The actress recently started a firestorm in China after she gave an interview suggesting that the earthquake in Sichuan was the result of bad karma. I guessed it would be just a matter of time before Chinese hackers targeted her online and have been monitoring the boards.

One site has posted a bit of initial reconnaissance of the website:

There was also a post asking to have the unofficial website of Sharon Stone hacked:

Tried going to the website for a contact address but found the, “This site may harm your computer” posting. Maybe Jumper will have the time to check it out later.

UPDATE FIZZLE: Just got word from Jose that nothing happened with the CNN website today. Chinese hackers are starting to make me look bad and I will not stand for that!!

If this keeps up, it may be easier to list the days that Chinese hackers are not calling for an attack on CNN.

Had some serious reservations about posting this article for a couple of reasons but decided it is probably worthwhile. The cons are that there is ZERO confirmation from other sites about the impending attack and the alert posting did not list a sponsoring organization. On the pro side, it included a website that was setup on the 20th (after initial attack) that is linked in the post and looks like it is there to support the action.

So, large CAVEAT: UNCONFIRMED

Added bonus, stupid clock again:

The Announcement

At 8:00 pm (Beijing local) on 25 April, Chinese hackers will attack CNN

[Announcement] 2008-04-21 On 25 April, 8:00 pm (Beijing local), Chinese hackers will attack CNN.

Everyone, please pay attention to the issuses regarding the effort to invade the CNN website. We are requesting the support of all Chinese. If you are an expert hacker, we request you ardently strive to invade www.cnn.com. If you are a novice, we request you use DDOS flood attack or put up a couple of pieces of hacker software. If you are not a hacker, we request that you land on the www.cnn.com website at 8:00 pm on 25 April.

Try with all your might to establish a link with the website in order to waste its resources. If their website is continually at capacity for three hours, the server may just crash. Don’t forget, there are over 1.4 billion Chinese! There are over 100 million Chinese online, they won’t be able to withstand us.

Please, assist us with the invasion of www.cnn.com, this represents the honor of China over the issue of Tibetan independence. The www.cnn.com website has put out a large amount of unsubstantiated reports that are a serious challenge and US hackers have already invaded many of our websites. It is time for revenge; let us begin a new round of Sino-US hacker wars. Let them know the strength of the Chinese people.

If it is convenient, please circulate this message to all of your groups. We need support…. Currently, many of us are going to this webpage to carry out the attack, http://www.goupsoft.com.cn/Bs_Cnn.html. The first time you open it, it might not display. Just refresh the page and it should be okay.

Kinda Lazy (but genius!)

Over at the attack website of goupsoft.com, you land on an automated webpage that uses your computer and IP address to continuously “attack” the CNN website unless you close the browser. My guess is that it is constantly making fresh requests from CNN to tie up bandwidth. The graphic below even shows the number of attacks you have made on the site.

Yeah, I kinda attacked CNN 24 times…Whoops! Well, CNN never returned my e-mail either! Damn, I’m sort of a Chinese hacker now? Anyway, the only really interesting thing in that blurb of Chinese above is that they call CNN a “whore.” Really, twice.

This Attack Method Spreading

While this might be the oldest trick in the book, it is new to me so I’m putting it out there. The website http://www.chenmin.org/doscnn.html is using pretty much the exact same attack method as mentioned previously.

Once again, you land on the webpage above and it begins refreshing the CNN website in an iFrame every five seconds using up their bandwidth (Jumper explained this to me). So, I sort of attacked CNN another five,six, seven…forty times looking at the program. Here is Jumper’s full explanation from the question I e-mailed to him last night about the site:

Yes. It loads an iframe: And then it reloads itself every five seconds:

<script>

var e=document.getElementById(’cnn’);

setInterval(”e.src=’http://www.cnn.com‘”,5000);

//1000 表示1000毫秒,你可以修改并转发

</script> Probably not as effective as the Mao-inator program.

I direct your attention to the last line (emphasis mine) in Jumper’s e-mail. Number one, he dubs the program he analyzed yesterday as the Mao-inator™, which I personally find hilarious. Number two, there seems to be a slight amount of professional jealousy involved since he is dismissing my program as “less effective” than the one he worked with. Yeah, but did yours call CNN a “whore” didn’t think so! Less effective, I think not sir!

All kidding aside, this is an excellent method for incorporating large numbers of unskilled people into your DDoS attack. It comes with the added advantage of using their computers, IP addresses and bandwidth and you don’t have to train them. The only skill that is required is the ability to open a webpage in a browser and let it run. Plus, recruits who might not be so willing to stick around to the end of the fight, if tied to a computer all day, are free to do whatever they want while at the same time defending the motherland. My vote GENIUS!

Make up your own odds if this will actually take place. I have informed Jose Nazario at Arbor Networks who has been monitoring this situation closely and has had great insights.

UPDATE 1: Located the blog for Li Haiwei, the owner of the attack website goupsoft.com.cn, and my boy has some serious issues with CNN and Tibet. Lots of disturbing imagery for the whole family:

The graphic reads, “CNN- I like it. I am CNN.” Then some stuff way too small to read. The Nobel Peace Prize award you can read yourself and at the bottom Tibet.

UPDATE 2: Netcraft has a live performance monitor for the CNN webiste here.

CNN hating Chinese nationalists can download a tool to send high volumes of requests to www.cnn.com in an attempt to knock it offline.  The tool is bundled in a .rar file that contains a readme and the pre-compiled windows binary.  A quick virus check showed that some scanners identified it as backdoor but that didn’t seem to be the case.  When I ran the tool, a simple flag icon appeared in the lower right of my test VM.

 When I click on the flag, the full interface appears with three options:  start/stop, minimize and exit. 

Here is a sample of the request/response I got after running it for a few seconds:

GET /aux/con/com1/../../[LAG]../.%%%%%%%%./../../../../fakecnn/redflag-stay-here.php.aspx.asp.cfm.jsp HTTP/1.1

Accept: */*

Host: www.cnn.com

Connection: Keep-Alive

 
HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request

Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:12:34 GMT

Server: Apache

Vary: Accept-Encoding

Content-Length: 287

Connection: close

Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN”>
<html><head>
<title>400 Bad Request</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Bad Request</h1>
<p>Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.<br />
</p>
<hr>
<address>Apache Server at www.cnn.com Port 80</address>
</body></html>

I read somewhere that it is self-updating but I never saw any requests other than DNS resolution (to my own configured DNS servers, not hard-coded) and requests to www.cnn.com.  I’ll run it in “paused” mode for a while to see what happens.

UPDATE (0100GMT 23 April 08):  No suspicious traffic came from this binary (apart from what was expected, of course).

UPDATE (1628GMT 24 April 08): Heike and I have dubbed anticnn.exe the “Mao-inator”.

Even though a major attack did not occur on CNN, there were some lessons learned that we can take away from this event. So what did we learn? Here are some of things I noted:

1. We can reconstruct a bit of the social side of the attack
2. There is some evidence about their method of organization for operational tactics
3. Stockpile of ready made software for novice attackers
4. Possible reasons the attack was canceled

Social

The first thing we need to do is identify the reason behind the attack. What were the catalysts that led the Chinese hacker community to go after CNN? This would be my list:

1. CNN report on Chinese hackers is seen as unfair and accusations that parts of the CNN interview were fabricated
2. CNN makes remarks about the Tibet situation that angers the nation
3. Anti-CNN’s call for protests provides timing for coordinated effort
4. Beijing’s call for an apology from CNN may have been seen as tacit support for the attack. Or, at least that there would be no retribution if one did take place. This might be the most important factor of all.
5. Reliving the glory days of the Sino-US cyber conflicts
6. Making a name for themselves and building their own Chinese hacker cell. Many of China’s most famous hackers got their start during the early years of conflict with different nations.

Organization

With the decision made to launch an attack, they seem to have decided to use the website that cn_magistrate opened in 2007:

Domain Name: hacksa.cn
ROID: 20070811s10001s50288265-cn
Domain Status: ok
Registrant Organization: 判官
Registrant Name: 判官
Administrative Email: Kenan2677@126.com
Sponsoring Registrar: 北京万网志成科技有限公司
Name Server:ns1.okidc.com Name Server:ns2.okidc.com
Registration Date: 2007-08-11 11:59
Expiration Date: 2008-08-11 11:59

The website would be used for a central gathering point, dissemination of information and organization. During this phase, they probably planned their basic attack formation and strategy. Using the QQ charts found on www.hacksa.com, I was able to make this very rough organizational chart: