Yesterday I followed up on some HoneyPoint traffic signatures that have been floating around for a while. I have been seeing a pretty steady increase in various scans for several types of PHP vulnerabilities over the last few months, so I started looking around at some of the script kiddie PHP scanners that were out there.

Interestingly, I found a couple of scanners on a forum that were pretty advanced. They each include 250 – 300 signatures for PHP vulnerabilities, several modes of “IDS evasion” that are minimally successful, at best, but do have options to adjust scanning speeds, manage scan target lists and other useful stuff. Overall, I was actually impressed with the depth, stability and capabilities that these script kiddy style tools possessed.

I will continue to troll through some more lower end tools and check them out for how their coding has improved. I think it is likely that compared with the many of the script kiddy tools of yesteryear, I will find that even the basic development and coding skills in the lower end of the attacker pool has improved. The attackers who develop basic tools and feed the script kiddy crowd seem to be becoming more and more capable of in-depth coding and development. While far from a shock to infosec folks, it does represent a phase shift that we should be aware of. Likely, their tools will continue to grow in stability and sophistication – all of which makes for more formidable opponents.

Just something to think about….