*This post will detail an account I had with a customer while working at the ISP*
We were alerted that a certain IP of ours was spitting out spam and malware traffic like crazy. When we pulled the connection history, all of their outbound traffic was port 25(SMTP) leaving the country. We located the client and attempted to contact them.
The first few calls were unsuccessful. After you leave a few messages and the staff says “the owner is not here right now, but I will leave this message” it smells of a small shop. I called later in the day and was finally able to reach the manager. I explained to him the traffic we were seeing and that he should contact his tech support.
I asked him about his setup and he said he had only one PC connected to our network with no router in between. All of our connections were bridged so that PC was full blown on the internet. He said it was an old windows 98 machine; to make matters worse! He then told me that this is his only POS(Point of Sale) machine and it handles all of his credit card transactions. What he told me next made my jaw drop; his IT support told him not to worry about the virus!
So we have a machine, spitting out tons of spam and stealing who knows how many credit cards and the guy he PAYS for support told him not to worry! His IT support told him not to worry about it because there is nothing he can do and even if he does fix it a problem will just show up again; viruses are everywhere!
I couldn’t believe what he told him. It took a lot of convincing to get the owner to even understand why this was such an issue. At the end of the day I still couldn’t get him to take it seriously and deal with the issue. We ended up turning off his internet connection to save his customers.
Always keep in mind when dealing with smaller merchants; they usually don’t have the money or training to even care about security for their credit card transactions. They are using software that *may* be secure and who knows if their computers are maintained.
If you see something fishy or if the staff is having a hard time with their computer; just pay cash!
G13 ISP Stories, Security
I recently came across this post at the Iowa Technology Blog about security in small businesses. I wanted to add a few stories of mine to demonstrate the importance.
For a short while, I worked at an ISP in their Internet Abuse Dept. We were responsible for responding to alerts and notifications of spam and other malware coming from our network. All of our clients were on Static IPs, so we were able to identify our clients and give them details about the kinds of traffic we were seeing.
Our main offenders were always small businesses. These were companies that had less then 10 computers, no full time IT staff, and had no idea about computer and network security. These were often the most difficult clients to deal with as when I called no one in the office had an idea as to what I was calling about.
In the next few posts I will detail a few cases that I dealt with while working at that ISP.
G13 Security
I was tasked with coming up with a solution to allow people to securely access our network. We did not want to have a client, so IPSEC VPNs were out. We currently use Cisco’s SSL VPN but were unhappy on how it operated. It is not very user friendly.
I was torn between using Sonicwall or Barracuda’s SSL VPN appliance for this task. Either would allow us to have a public web page which users would have to enter their credentials and have access to the network. We went with the Sonicwall due to price and features.
After some initial configuration headaches, I am really coming to enjoy working with this appliance. I wish that making bookmarks for services can be done at the server end; this would help when configuring new users.
G13 Security
We are in the process of migrating to a new domain. We are first migrating our field staff. Each field staff needs their own “home” folder to store documents. To keep this secure; we need to have read permission for everyone on the root folder and then only allow the user to view their individual issue. I had to accomplish the following:
- Create the folders by username
- Remove inheritance from the parent folder
- Remove “Domain Users” permission from each folder
- Add the user with change permissions on the folder
I had to do this for about 190 users; doing it manually would have been a pain.
To create the folders, I had a list of all the usernames by login. I put the names into a text file and used the following commands in a batch file to create the folders:
@echo off
for /f %%i in (file.txt) do mkdir %%i
Once the folders were created, the next step was to work with the permissions. I found a utility called SetACL. I replaced the “mkdir %%i” in the batch file with the following commands to complete the rest of the tasks:
- setacl -on %%i -ot file -actn setprot -op “dacl:p_c” (Remove inheritance)
- SetACL -on %%i -ot file -actn trustee -trst “n1:domain users;s1:n;ta:remtrst;w:dacl” (Remove Domain Users)
- setacl -on %%i -ot file -actn ace -ace n:%%i;p:change (Add the user with change permissions to their folder
G13 Windows
I am increasingly seeing cases of infection from Rogue AV software. My company is currently working on phasing out our old Symantec 10 and replacing it with Kaspersky, but in the mean time we keep getting these infections.
Luckily the infections have not been very destructive. They are only in one user profile and are usually just an EXE in either Application Data or Local Settings/Application data.
Kaspersky’s viruslist.com has a good article talking about why these are so prevalent and how they are getting past some AV products. The article can be found here.
G13 Malware, Security, Windows
The company I work for now is in the Healthcare Industry. We have a number of users with field devices and due to the new HIPAA regulations, all of the hard drives must be encrypted.
After years of toiling with encryption as a hobby; I finally have a chance to deploy and manage enterprise level encryption!
We have decided on using PGP Whole Disk Encryption. After reading through the manual and setting up the server and a few clients; this is a relatively easy platform to work on. So far I have been very happy with it.
One more new skill under my belt.
G13 Cryptography, Security
I was correct in that the malware was previously unknown. Here is the response from Kaspersky’s Lab:
From: <newvirus@kaspersky.com>
To: <xxx@xxx.com>
Date: 01/13/2010 02:32 PM
Subject: RE: Malware sample [KLAN-57074893]
Hello,
pkdpsysguard.exe – not-a-virus:FraudTool.Win32.WinSpywareProtect.caf
New potentially risk software was found in this file. It’s detection will be included in the next update. Thank you for your help.
——————————————-
Best wishes, Pavel Firsov.
Virus analyst , Kaspersky Lab.
_____________________________
newvirus@kaspersky.com
http://www.kaspersky.com http://www.viruslist.com
Score a win!
-G13
G13 Malware, Security, Windows
We recently came across a piece of Fraudware on one of our client PCs. This one is your typical faux anti-virus application which makes repeated attempts to get you to purchase itself.
The good news is that this was not a case of Vundo; it appears that the malware was only specific to one user profile.
Only one EXE was found; once it was deleted the issue went away. We quarantined a sample and I submitted a copy to Anubis as well as Offensive Computing. Neither of these sites could identify what kind of malware it was.
The report from Anubis can be found here. The sample can also be found on Offensive Computing by searching for the md5sum: 6b833d23ddfae069883a3b562e0435ba
The malware seems to have created its own proxy server and modified the settings in Internet Explorer. This prevented us from visiting any sites besides their created one.
I submitted a sample to Kaspersky’s Virus Labs for further analysis.
-G13
G13 Malware, Security, Windows
I have been tasked with choosing a new anti-virus program for my company. After reviewing documents on http://www.av-comparatives.org/ and demoing the software; we decided to go with Kaspersky Open Space Security.
We chose the Business Space Security suite since we were only interested in just anti-virus protection on our workstations and servers. The price could not be beat; we were quoted at about 1/2 the cost of Symantec Endpoint Security.
The one thing we really like about Kaspersky is that after it scans our domain for workstations, it shows us which machines are not protected by Kaspersky. The desktop engine is also very light weight and the administrative interface is not overly complex.
So far it has been a great product!
-G13
G13 Security, Windows
Busy year. I am with a new company in a new role. I will be focused more on security and network now than before. I will have new topics to post soon!
-G
G13 Uncategorized
