[iwar] Nice sting

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-06-13 23:19:41
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 23:19:41 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [iwar] Nice sting
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/25692.html

By Thomas C Greene in Washington Posted: 12/06/2002 at 18:25 GMT

What happens when you float a counterfeit IIS hole in a carder chatroom
on IRC, tantalizing its young denizens with a quick, easy score? Do they
proxy up, patiently enumerate the site, grab banners, analyze what
they're up against and carefully plot an attack? Or do they rush into
the trap like so many elite lemmings?

That's what CardCops' Dan Clements and Penetrationtest.com's Karsten
Johansson wanted to know.  So they set up a fake IIS directory
.../InetPub/scripts/_private on an Apache server (yes, Apache), with a
fake security hole, seeded a couple of IRC carder channels with the
news, and watched. 

Within 24 hours approximately 200 cyber warriors had bitten the hook,
and not one figured out that they were stuffing around on a Linux box. 
A quick banner check, or even a quick check with Netcrtaft, was all
they'd have needed to see what they were onto.  No one tried to own the
machine; and a surprising number didn't even bother to go through a
proxy. 

Scanners were employed but not by many; a handful appear to have used
Nmap and/or Nessus, and two appear to have used an older version of Gaa
Moa's HTTP Exploiter (GME) which contained a number of recommended
directory paths until GM decided to release it without them in later
versions to discourage the utterly clueless. 

A few visitors showed initiative and attempted a couple of known
exploits with Front Page Extensions, continuing to trust that they were
on an IIS server.  Also "a few people recognized the apparent directory
traversal attack that we emulated, and attempted to read other
directories using our 'exploit,'" Johansson said. 

In the bogus IIS directory were a couple of .exe files and an .xls
spreadsheet with fake CC numbers.  "Roughly half of the of the people
who connected actually downloaded the xls file with the fake credit card
numbers in it.  There were a lot of 'look but don't touch' connections,
and some people who focused on the .exe files instead," he added. 

"Most of them simply downloaded the files in the exploited directory.  A
few then tried to look at the primary Web page but did not return once
they received the fake 404 error.  A fair number of them did manage to
find the fake login screen, though, but nowhere near as many as I
expected."

A couple also requested favicon.ico -- the little custom icon added to a
Web browser's favorites list.  Since servers log the requests, an
attacker can often learn where the logfiles are located, which can in
turn lead to additional exploitation.  Again, immediate failure was not
followed up with curiosity. 

A number looking for /.htpasswd ended up looking for /.htpasswrd ,
/~passwrd , /~.passwrd /htpasswrd /htpasswd, etc.  (The circumflex
character merely refers to the home directory, so it's clearly useless
unless there's a user named 'htpasswrd' on the system.)

It was interesting that the carders exhibited so little imagination,
curiosity and patience.  If they couldn't get what they wanted easily,
either by trying some stock exploit or running some automated progie,
they gave up without a struggle.  Those who attempted additional
exploits and failed seemed not to ask themselves why they failed. 

Of course, by selecting IRC for a venue one is necessarily selecting
less sophisticated IP warriors.  But there's a reason for this. 
CardCops' Clements reckons that the vast majority of CC fraud can be
attributed to the cumulative effects from vast batallions of unskilled
opportunists, which the carder channels represent.  It makes sense to
expect competent blackhats to have better things to do than whack minor
pr0n pay-sites and Mom & Pop e-commerce sites for easy pickings. 

CardCops, a CC fraud-prevention Web site, "believes in engaging hackers
and carders on their own turf...where we can define the location of the
virtual battlefield," Clements says. 

"It's a warning to kiddies: 'it's not as easy as you think.' We're
letting them know that we'll be in their virtual world; and they'll
always have to wonder if someone's playing with them."

He's hoping that by publicizing the results of the joint sting with
Penetrationtest.com, the teeming millions of would-be cyber fraudsters
will get a sense of how easily they can be jerked around, deceived, even
trapped -- and perhaps be deterred. 

At least until they figure out what a banner check is. 

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