Worm puts old IIS attack in full-auto mode

Anti-PoizonB0x greetings popping up already

British TV news outfit ITN was the first major site we know of to be infiltrated by the sadmind/IIS worm, a new take on a past theme which automates attacks on Solaris and Microsoft IIS boxes, using two very old exploits.

The worm first infects systems running Solaris through version 7, exploiting the two-year-old sadmind buffer overflow vulnerability which gives up root access.

Once installed on the Solaris host, the worm automatically scans for and attacks IIS machines and replaces the default page with:

f**k USA Government
f**k PoizonBOx
contact:[e-mail]

The worm attacks by exploiting the folder traversal vulnerability on IIS machines, which Microsoft reported and patched last October.

It also scans for other vulnerable Solaris systems to infect and so propagates automatically. As soon as the worm defaces 2,000 IIS boxes, it celebrates by defacing the default page(s) of its Solaris host.

A piece of a sample log from an attacked Reg reader in the UK shows typical activity on a Windows system:

08:28:43 132.254.215.22 GET /scripts/../../winnt/system32/cmd.exe 502
08:28:44 132.254.215.22 GET /scripts/root.exe 502
08:28:44 132.254.215.22 GET /scripts/root.exe 502
08:28:44 132.254.215.22 GET /scripts/root.exe 502
08:28:45 132.254.215.22 GET /scripts/root.exe 502
08:28:45 132.254.215.22 GET /index.asp 200

What looks like the attacking IP resolves to scorpion.gda.itesm.mx, at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in sunny Mexico, which is running Netscape FastTrack 3.01 on AIX. Not that this information is any use in suppressing attacks; the machine has certainly been compromised and the owners remain blithely unaware of the situation.

But it is a handy illustration of how well distributed, even random, the attacks can be; and suggests that finally patching vulnerable systems might not be a bad idea. ®

Related Story

BONG! ITN web site hacked! BONG!