Now your organization can have a 24/7 guard dog to monitor key DNS resolutions and protect against the effects of DNS cache poisoning, DNS tampering and other resolution attacks. Our tool is an easy to use, yet quite flexible and powerful solution to monitoring for attacks that have modified your (or your upstream ISPs’) resolutions for sites such as search engines, software updates, key business partners, etc.

DNS Doberman is configured with a set of trusted host names and IP address combinations (yes, you can have more than one IP per host…) which are then checked on a timed basis. If any of your monitored hosts returns an IP that the DNS Doberman doesn’t trust – then it alerts you and your security team. It supports a variety of alerting methods to support every environment from home users to enterprises.

You can learn more about the tool and download the FREE version from the link below. The FREE version is completely useable and if it suits your needs, you are welcome to continue to use it indefinitely. The FREE version is restricted to 5 hosts and only checks each host once per hour. Registered users ($99.95) will receive support, minor version upgrades and the ability to check an unlimited number of hosts every 15 minutes!

To learn more or get your copy today, please visit the MSI main web site, here.

Attackers are apparently zigging when we thought they would be zagging again. An article posted yesterday talks about how attackers have passed on using the exploits published by the common frameworks and instead, have been pretty widely using a more advanced, capable and less known tool to exploit the DNS vulnerabilities that have been in the news for the last few weeks.

In the article, HD Moore, a well known security professional (and author of Metasploit), discusses how the attackers seem to be bypassing the exploit that he and his team published and instead have been using another exploit to perform illicit attacks. In fact, the attackers used their own private exploit to attack the Breakingpoint company that Moore works for during the day. I was very interested in this approach by the attackers, and it seems almost ironic somehow, that they have bypassed the popular Metasploit tool exploits for one of their own choosing.

This is interesting to me because when an exploit appears in Metasploit, one would assume that it will be widely used by attackers. Metasploit, after all, makes advanced attacks and compromise techniques pretty much “click and drool” for even basic attackers. Thus, when an exploit appears there, many in the security community see that as a turning point in the exploitability of an attack – meaning that it becomes widely available for mischief. However, in this case, the availability of the Metasploit exploit was not a major factor in the attacks. Widespread attacks are still not common, even as targeted attacks using a different exploit has begun. Does this mean that the attacker community has turned its back on Metasploit?

The answer is probably no. A significant number of attackers are likely to continue to use Metasploit to target their victims. Our HoneyPoint deployments see plenty of activity that can be traced back to the popular exploit engine. Maybe, in this case, the attackers who were seriously interested had a better mechanism available to them. Among our team there is speculation that some of the private, “black market” exploit frameworks may be stepping up their quality and effectiveness. These “exploits for sale” authors may be increasing their skills and abilities in order to ensure that their work retains value as more and more open source or FREE exploit frameworks emerge into the market place. After all, they face the same issues as any other software company – they have to have high value in order to compete effectively with low cost. For exploit sellers this means more zero-day exploits, more types of evasion, more options for post-exploitation and higher quality of the code they generate.

In some ways, tools like Metasploit help the security community by giving security teams exploitation capabilities on par with basic attackers. In other ways, perhaps they also hurt the security effort by enabling more basic attackers to do complex work and by driving up the quality and speed of exploit availability on the black market. It is hard to argue that such black market efforts would not be present anyway as the attackers strive to compete amongst themselves, but you have to wonder if Metasploit and tools like it serve to speed up the pace.

There will always be tools available to attackers. If they aren’t widely available, then they will be available to a specific few. The skills to create attack tools are no longer the arcane knowledge known to a small circle of security mystics that they were a decade ago. Vendors and training companies have sliced and diced the skills into a myriad of books, classes, training sessions, conventions and other mechanisms in order to “monetize” their dissemination. As such, there are many many many more folks with the skills needed to develop attack tools, code exploits and create malware that has ever increasing capability.

This all comes back to the idea that in today’s environment, keeping anything secret, is nearly impossible. The details of the DNS vulnerability were doomed to be known even as they were being initially discovered. There are just too many smart people with skills to keep security issues private when there is any sort of disclosure to the public. There are too many parties interested in making a name, gaining some fame or turning a buck to have any chance at keeping vulnerabilities secret. I am certainly not a fan of total non-disclosure, but we have to assume that even some level of basic public knowledge will eventually equal full disclosure. We also have to remember, in the future, that the attacker pool is wider and deeper than ever before and that given those capabilities, they may well find mechanisms and tools that are beyond what we expect. They may reject the popular wisdom of “security pundits from the blogosphere” and surprise us all. After all, that is what they do – surf the edges and perform in unexpected ways – it just seems that some of us security folks may have forgotten it….

Unfortunately, the blackout period for the DNS issues has been broken. The exploit details have been made public and have been in the wild for a number of hours. While the security researchers involved have tried to remove the details and analysis, Google had already cached the site and the details are now widely known.

Please patch IMMEDIATELY if you have not already done so!

If you can not patch your existing DNS product, please switch to a patched public DNS (for Internet resolution) or deploy OPENDNS as soon as possible.

Here is a quick and dirty plan of action:

1. Catalog the DHCP Servers you use on the Internet and internally. Be sure you check all branch locations, firewalls and DHCP servers to ensure that you have a complete picture. If you find any Internet facing DNS with recursive enabled, disable it ASAP!

2. Verify that each of these DNS implementations are patched or not vulnerable. You can check vulnerability by using the “Check DNS” tool at Mr. Kaminski’s page, here.

3. Test the patch and get it implemented as quickly as possible.

4. Note that you may have to upgrade firmware and software for firewalls, packet filters and other security controls to enable them to understand the new DNS operations and keep them from interfering with the new way that DNS “acts”.

Please note that the exploit for this cache poisoning attack in now public and exploitation on a wide scale could already be underway. PATCH AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!

Symptoms to look for include:

Vulnerability: unpatched and non-random source ports for DNS query responses.

Exploit: check for a large number of non-existent subdomains in your DNS records (or subdomain requests in your logs) if you are an authoritative DNS for a domain, attackers will be poisoning the cache with subdomain records at least according to some researchers.

If you have questions or concerns, please contact MSI for more information or assistance.
Updates to our DNS paper and other details will be released soon, so check back with stateofsecurity.com for updates.

I just had a quick conversation with an IT technician who alluded to the idea that more than Zone Alarm may be broken by the new port randomization behaviors of “patched DNS”. These fundamental changes to the ports allocated for DNS traffic may confuse existing firewalls and other filtering devices that are unaware of the changes to DNS behaviors.

For example, if you have filtering devices that specific port ranges defined for egress or ingress of DNS traffic, especially if you are using a non-stateful device, this configuration may need to be changed to allow for the greater port range applied to the “patched DNS” setup. Systems that are also “DNS aware” might not expect the randomization of the ports that the patching is creating. As such, filtering devices, especially at the perimeter may well need to be reconfigured or upgraded as well to allow for continued operation of unimpeded DNS traffic.

There may be SEVERAL other nuances that become evident in some environments as the patch process for the DNS issue continues to evolve. Stay tuned to stateofsecurity.com and other security venues for information and guidance as it becomes available.