__________________________________________________________ The U.S. Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Capability ___ __ __ _ ___ / | /_\ / \___ __|__ / \ \___ __________________________________________________________ INFORMATION BULLETIN Sober.X (Y) To Download New Code On or After Jan. 6 December 15, 2005 17:00 GMT Number Q-076 ______________________________________________________________________________ PROBLEM: The Sober.X (Y) worm is set to download new code from several sites starting on Jan. 6, 2006 and continuing indefinitely. The function of this new code is unknown at this time. PLATFORM: All Windows platforms. DAMAGE: This is a mass mailing worm and clogs mail servers with malicious messages. The operation of the new, downloaded code is unknown. SOLUTION: Use updated antivirus software. Block access to the download sites and watch for connection attempts to those sites. Information on detection and removal is available on most antivirus sites. ______________________________________________________________________________ VULNERABILITY The risk is MEDIUM. Sites with up-to-date antivirus programs ASSESSMENT: will already have eliminated this worm. However, should a copy of the worm get by your antivirus scanning, the threat from the unknown downloads is unknown at this time and could be significant. ______________________________________________________________________________ LINKS: CIAC BULLETIN: http://www.ciac.org/ciac/bulletins/q076.shtml AV SITES: Symantec: http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data /w32.sober.x@mm.html F-Secure: http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/sober_y.shtml http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives /archive-122005.html#00000729 ______________________________________________________________________________ The Sober.X or Y variants have a download capability to download new code starting on January 6, 2005 and continuing, at regular intervals, indefinitely. In order to hide the downloads and prevent the download URLs from being blocked, the downloads are from randomly generated URLs at the following free domain hosting sites. people.freenet.de scifi.pages.at free.pages.at home.arcor.de For example, starting January 6 and continuing for 14 days, the URLs are, home.arcor.de/dixqshv/ people.freenet.de/wjpropqmlpohj/ people.freenet.de/zmnjgmomgbdz/ people.freenet.de/mclvompycem/ home.arcor.de/jmqnqgijmng/ people.freenet.de/urfiqileuq/ home.arcor.de/nhirmvtg/ free.pages.at/emcndvwoemn/ people.freenet.de/fseqepagqfphv/ home.arcor.de/ocllceclbhs/ scifi.pages.at/zzzvmkituktgr/ people.freenet.de/qisezhin/ home.arcor.de/srvziadzvzr/ people.freenet.de/smtmeihf/ At the end of fourteen days they will change to a new set of random URLs. While most of the connection attempts will be to non-existant URLs, the virus writer knows in advance what the URLs will be on any particular day. Thus, when he wants to upload new code, he simply registers the appropriate URL and uploads the new code. It is unknown what this new code will do, and can be whatever the virus writer chooses. As such, sites should block access to these four domains starting on or before January 6 and continuing for several weeks. Sites should also watch for any connection attempts to these domains. Any connections to these domains, failed or otherwise, could point to an infected system. The domains are free hosting services in Germany and Austria and blocking them for a period of time should not impact your operations. ______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Verisign’s iDefense for the heads-up and list of download sites. ______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC, the Computer Incident Advisory Capability, is the computer security incident response team for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the emergency backup response team for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). CIAC is located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. CIAC is also a founding member of FIRST, the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams, a global organization established to foster cooperation and coordination among computer security teams worldwide. CIAC services are available to DOE, DOE contractors, and the NIH. CIAC can be contacted at: Voice: +1 925-422-8193 (7x24) FAX: +1 925-423-8002 STU-III: +1 925-423-2604 E-mail: ciac@ciac.org Previous CIAC notices, anti-virus software, and other information are available from the CIAC Computer Security Archive. World Wide Web: http://www.ciac.org/ Anonymous FTP: ftp.ciac.org PLEASE NOTE: Many users outside of the DOE, ESnet, and NIH computing communities receive CIAC bulletins. If you are not part of these communities, please contact your agency's response team to report incidents. Your agency's team will coordinate with CIAC. The Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) is a world-wide organization. A list of FIRST member organizations and their constituencies can be obtained via WWW at http://www.first.org/. This document was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor the University of California nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation or favoring by the United States Government or the University of California. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or the University of California, and shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes. 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