Infected Windows PCs Now Source Of 80% Of Spam

twitter writes "The Register is reporting a study by Sandvine.com that blames Microsoft Zombies for 80% of all spam. The study goes on to claim that 90% filtering is not effective given the unprecedented volume and that sophisticated trojans are able to drop spam directly on end user's computers despite current efforts. Just another cost of supporting Microsoft, I suppose."

That does it!

OK, I'm turning SpamAssassin down to .01 points and letting it all get rejected. I just give up!!!

Re:That does it!

No, just wait til the newest version of Windows, Microsoft Fence Knotholes. Really, that'll stop spam.......

Re:Yet another completely biased Slashdot article

Don't you mean: everything under the Sun will be running Java?

You don't have to open anythign to get a virus

Well, that's the beauty of Windows. You don't even have to be a idiot user no more. You see, an unpatched copy of XP and a high speed internet connection can get you a backdoor trojan faster then dropping the soap down at the local penitentary.
You see, unpatched windows has exploits and all the script kiddies with porn sites know this. The most common viruses now scan computers on an IP range, find a computer prone to an exploit, and open up shop on your computer.
'What you say!' They could do that just as easily on Linux or a mac. Not quite true. OS X and Linux are both based on Unix which is considerably more stable and secure then windows (for oen thing they handle file premissions a lot better and more securly). Most importantly though, primarily where linux is concerned, there are constantly people updating and improving the linux kernel. These are often the same kinds of people who would take advantages of exploits back in high school and are now turning their knack for finding system weaknesses towards a constructive goal. Open source finds bugs faster (or so time seems to be telling us)
Last and not least, yes most people use Windows. Therefore most viruses are constructed for Windows and most computer illiterate users (many of whom don't even know what spyware or the like is) use it too. So there is saftey in obscurity.
But i beleive enough of the blame can be pinned on what a mess security in windows is and someone pointing that out isn't just a tinfoil hat wearing commie shouting witch at the Big Guy.
'Course in longhorn security is giong to be better. And everything is going to be fully integrated. Some how those two have never gone hand in hand. Only time will tell. But for now I prefer the Unix ideom of 'do one thing, do it well.'
(It also reaks less of monopoly then do everything and do it noticably)

Different OSes developed with different aims

If everyone used Macs today, it would be Macs, and if everyone used Linux, it would be Linux boxes.

This is a widespread misconception, akin to saying that if everyone drove Volvos, just as many people would die in traffic accidents as they do now. Millions of Americans have purchased large SUVs that tend to roll over [suv.org] three times more frequently than other automobiles. Volvos, on the other hand, are built with safety [automotive...nology.com] as a primary goal.

By the same token, would you expect an OpenBSD server to have the same level of default security protection as a Windows 2000 server? OpenBSD is built with the primary intention of being the world's most secure OS [openbsd.org]. Nowhere on the Windows 2000 product page do we see anything at all [microsoft.com] relating to security.

You can't assign positive characteristics to an OS on one hand (Windows XP doesn't crash as often as Windows 98) and then dismiss negative comparisons (Windows is less secure by default than Mac OS X or Linux).

Blame users all you want, but there are millions of uninformed Mac users out there. Believe it or not, in spite of their uninformed nature, they don't have to deal with anything like the litany of security and stability issues that confront Windows users.

It's hard to believe when you've been struggling with Windows for years and have grown accustomed to it, but while Linux and Macintosh aren't immune to security problems, the trojan horses and viruses that plague Windows users are a direct result of Microsoft's development philosophy, which emphasizes market dominance over quality.

Re:Yet another completely biased Slashdot article

Uninformed users are uninformed users, and short of Microsoft showing up at your house and forcing you at gunpoint not to open attachments or enable viruses, what do you expect them to do?

MS has spent a great deal of time and money making sure everyone believes that they don't have to be informed to use Windows. Apparently they were wrong.

I racall around the time MS decided to implement macros in various documents including email, MANY people stated in no uncertain terms that making email and Word documents executable was one of the dumber ideas they had ever heard.

MS could have asked itself why so much of the industry thought they'd lost their minds, but instead, they decided they were infallible and we were all too stupid to understand their brilliance.

Had they reconsidered way back then, the world could have been saved many billions of dollars in lost productivity. And they wouldn't have had to hold a gun to anyone's head to do it.

Instead they plowed ahead with their half-baked idea, and it has had exactly the result predicted by nearly everyone but MS.

I'm not saying the doubters are always right, but when they can name specific objections (documents often come from untrusted people) it is a good idea to consider carefully.

Re:That does it!

There's only so much you can really do with "being smart with your email address"

My point is that you do what you can by...
1) Not giving out real email address in forms
2) Not posting un-obfuscated email address to the web
3) Securely running your OS

But if I follow point 4...
4) Don't give your friends your email address

Then really why do I have an email addy in the first place?

Most of my spam I get are actually those annoying bounce-back messages you get from anti-virus filters. "The email you sent had the virus W32.Blaster" etc etc. The problem is that I run a solely Linux household, so it's probably coming from a virus on someone else's computer.

And for my 2c, Thunderbird's spam filter isn't half bad, if you don't mind the spam hitting your box prior to filtering.

Re:That does it!

4) Don't give your friends your email address

Then really why do I have an email addy in the first place?

Yeah and my friends of the female persuasion can't help but put my email addy on all of those greeting card sites. I had one put my email addy to my cell phone on one of those sites once and I went nuts. 5 cents/email if I go over my limit....I was gonna have to turn my service off.

Re:That does it!

I'm not sure what is wrong with you people who get overloaded.

You can register a new domain, and it will start getting spam within a week to common names such as "bob@, sally@, john@, etc.". Not all spam is because someone actually has a verified address, but because it is a common name used. We get tons of spam hit our mail server that is addressed to people that have never had an account on our domain, but is instead a common name.

Also, I just started getting spam on one biz account because I had been helping a customer, and it appears they got infected, and since I was in their address book, I got hit with them.

Yes, plenty of people are stupid enough to sign up for every newsletter on the web, but blaming someone with a common email name (or inferring that they are stupid, as you did in your post) who DIDN'T sign up for anything, isn't solving anything or adding to the conversation.

Pikes would stop the sapm

I've had spam show up at new accounts that were only registered, never used. I've even had spam arrive at an email account that was sent before I even created the account!

Then theare are the moron spammers who send out group addressed emails (the ones with 20-30 variants on spelling anything at all like your name.)

Anti-spam on the client is not the solution.

Sticking there severed heads on pikes outside ISPs would be far more effective and satisfying.

Or the traffic problem could be justifiably claimed as a result of poor engineering by Microsoft, and make Bill & co. responsible for the resulting expenses.

Or we could just make ISP's responsible for disconnecting any customer who has an infected machine connected. When the machine is cleaned, then they could reconnect, not before.

No, I don't care about people who can't afford to take care of their machine, buy hardware firewalls, virus scanners, etc. I don't care that people driving rust buckets can't afford better cars, either -- get the hazard off the public byways!

Re:That does it!

That works until >99% of your email is spam. I retired an account I've had for over 8 years because of this. You get so much spam that the real messages get lost. Crank up the spam filter levels and the real messages get blocked. 8 years ago, that email address was all over the place including DNS registrations because there WAS no spam - you didn't have to be careful. At this point, it's in every spammers database to the tune of over 10,000 spams per day. Sure, an occasional mosquito bite is annoying, but getting swarmed by thousands is a whole different ballgame.

But this ignores the real issue. Spam is so bad and getting worse at such a fast pace, that servers are dying under the load. ISP's and businesses are installing really bad filters that do more damage than good, blocking lots of legit mail. A couple years from now and you can kiss email goodbye as it won't be functional. The current laws on the books are pathetically weak, the proposals to help (SPF, domainkeys, etc.) are insufficiant (no critical mass, basic design flaws, etc.) and quite clearly filtering can only catch so much before the false positives kick in. About the only thing that really works is challenge / response systems (and I HATE those.)

In addition, protocol enhancements (hashcash) or replacements are 5 - 10 years off due to deployment / critical mass issues.

Nope, I'll stick with my 2 year forcast of the death of email as a viable communications tool.

Re:Is this suprising?

Even if Linux or Mac was 80% the of desktops, you would still have people not bothering to patch their computers, and have the same problem. It might be as easy to infect the computers, but the problems would still be there. Stupid users will exist no matter what operating system you give them.

All the ISPs are going to start filtering outbound port 25. If you want to run your own mail server you'll have to route it through their mail server, or use non-standard port number to route thru a 3rd party mail server.

Re:Is this suprising?

All the ISPs are going to start filtering outbound port 25. If you want to run your own mail server you'll have to route it through their mail server

And the next generation of zombie programs will do a simple DNS lookup for the mailserver of the current domain and start sending spam through the ISP's mailserver.

With the side effect that in no time no single customer of that ISP can send mail because the mail server is on every blacklist you can imagine.

Re:Is this suprising?

But if the trojans are sufficiently capable of reading an Outlook mail folder and extracting email addresses, surely they could easily look up the SMTP servers configured?

Re:Is this suprising?

The answer to this problem is requiring every SMTP connection to be authenticated. This can easily be supported with Sendmail (and, I'd imagine, other MTAs). The hardest part is dealing with all the customers when they're outgoing e-mail suddenly breaks.

But the first thing that needs to be done is to prevent machines from connecting directly out to another ISP's SMTP server. Hopefully this is done by one of the proposed IETF standards and not by simply blocking port 25, but we'll see.

Re:Is this suprising?

And the next generation of zombie programs will do a simple DNS lookup for the mailserver of the current domain and start sending spam through the ISP's mailserver.

With the side effect that in no time no single customer of that ISP can send mail because the mail server is on every blacklist you can imagine.

I don't think this is a problem. Once this becomes widespread, the ISPs can just put measures to block individual customers who start sending large enough volumes of e-mail, or even spam filtering outgoing mail. This is already [plus.net] being done by at least one UK isp [plus.net] that I know of. Their reasoning is that they don't want their entire mailserver blacklisted, so will prevent the customer from sending the spam in the first place. I am not aware whether they block outbound 25.

Re:Is this suprising?

With the side effect that in no time no single customer of that ISP can send mail because the mail server is on every blacklist you can imagine.

And guess what --- that's exactly what must happen. It'll serve to teach that ISP that they have to spam-scan outbound mail, too, to avoid being blacklisted by everybody else. Actually, that's the whole point of forcing all their customers' mail through the ISP's outbound mail server in the first place: to be able to scan for spam and worms before they unload them onto the general public.

Re:Is this suprising?

That is exactly what we want them to do, given current technology and anti-spam systems. The ISPs will have far more ability to detect and stop the spam, and actually care. Your average customer doesn't understand what spam is, beyond the concept of "email I don't want", but ISPs have a very good idea of what spam is, what technologies work to stop it, and have the deep pockets to make it happen.

Its time the Internet stopped being a slave to the dumb users and put control back in the hands of people who know what they are doing.

Once again, I'll have to disagree with this.

That argument is based upon the assumption that security == marketshare.

Security is not the same as marketshare.

The vast majority of zombies were infected via Outlook's ability to run executables from email.

In order for Linux to have the same infection rate as Windows, Linux would have to have the same (or similar) flaws. For example, the same email client installed, by default, upon every Linux machine and that email client would have to run executable content.

Windows was designed with "user-friendly" being far more important than security. So important that security would be compromised in order for a feature to be "user-friendly". That is why there are so many problems on Windows machines.

Here's an example. Grab the latest copy of WindowsXP, run it without anti-virus software. Why is WindowsXP still vulnerable to the same viruses that Windows95 was?

Re:Once again, I'll have to disagree with this.

> Why is WindowsXP still vulnerable to the same
> viruses that Windows95 was?

Hate to say it, but it's because Windows XP-generation and its apps still have the same objective as Windows 95 and its apps did.

Functionality first, security second, internet be damned

Win95 was a pre-internet age OS. yes, the internet was around, but the vast majority of machines with 95 installed were not connected, or were connected on crappy slow modems at best. Windows XP's ethos has simply failed to keep up with the progress in internet connectivity.

Now, some users have kept up - I could run a 95 machine as securely as an XP machine right now, but the market has grown out of proportion to the average computing knowledge of the market, partly as a result of the simplicity and availability of windows. Unfortunately, the default configuration, until Windows Server 2003, has not had internet security in mind.

A non-net connected, or well firewalled, XP machine is pretty safe, just as a 95 machine is.

Re:Once again, I'll have to disagree with this.

Actually, the real story goes that with months left before shipping Win 95, Gates decided that "The Internet" was the killer app. So the entire company turned on the spot and integrated "The Internet" into the OS.

Going from a non-networked, single-user OS to the hyperconnected Internet client that Win 95 was supposed to be in just a few months must have been difficult... Probably not a lot of time for all those paradigms to be re-thought...

Re:Once again, I'll have to disagree with this.

"In order for Linux to have the same infection rate as Windows, Linux would have to have the same (or similar) flaws. "

If 80% of the users had Red Hat 9 installed, they'd be sending out 80% or more of the spam. RH9's sshd is exploitable out of the box. Heck many distros CDs come with exploitable sshds and often sshd is the service that gets started by default.

The same people who don't patch their windows machines won't patch their linux machines.

In some stupid hacking contest half a year back, there were silly people who picked RH as their O/S, didn't know how to secure it and kept getting rooted. Either they didn't patch sshd or didn't patch OpenSSL.

The spammers won't really care whether there are 100 vulns or 1 vuln in one machine. All they care is how many vulnerable machines there are.

Heck, from my webserver logs I see that at least some spammers are trying to get apache's mod_proxy to send email. They are succeeding for some configs.

Here's a victim:
http://forums.devshed.com/archive/t-99035
Here's another incident
http://cert.uni-stuttgart.de/archive/bug traq/2003/ 07/msg00277.html

Re:Once again, I'll have to disagree with this.

In order for Linux to have the same infection rate as Windows, Linux would have to have the same (or similar) flaws. For example, the same email client installed, by default, upon every Linux machine and that email client would have to run executable content.

Umm same email client? Outlook doesn't let you run executables period. It doesn't even let you recieve executables(.scr .bat .vbs .exe), this has been a secuiryt feature since outlookXP(2002). New viruses zip their content and user must open the zip file and fun the executable. This is not a flaw in outlook, outlook express, eudora on any other mail program. Its a flaw of the user.

Outlook XP Default Security [winnetmag.com]
My doom email virus [symantec.com]

Re:Is this suprising?

Seems fairly obvious to me.

Yes, but the other 20% aren't coming from compromised non-windows systems, they're being sent by spammers who know they're sending it. If the other 20% were coming from trojan'ed *nix boxes, then I'd say you're on to something.

Fact is, 4 out of 5 emails that end up in my spam bin are there because (a) some sleaseball wrote a trojan to deliver them, and (b) someone else wrote a trojan-friendly OS to enable it in the first place.

I understand that some ISPs are now cutting off infected folks until they can show they've patched. I think that we'll be seeing more of this, and I can't say I disagree (as long as they understand what a Unix, Linux, or MacOS box is).

Re:Is this suprising?

They don't. They will simply lop port 25, and force you to use their smtp servers, or lack thereof. While they are at it, meter you $0.10 a letter. And 50 years from now we will be asking why email costs so damn much.

Re:Is this suprising?

Yes it is surprising. Traditionally spam has come from mail servers that were setup as open relays (by accident or design) but nowadays its coming from Windows desktop machines with viruses which setup their own mail servers. Combine that with the growing prevalence of broadband home connections and spam is just getting worse and worse.

Re:Is this suprising?

Microsoft Windows is on 80% of desktops or thereabouts. Microsoft Windows is responsible for 80% of spam. Seems fairly obvious to me.

It isn't obvious. At all. In earlier years, spam was sent by spam hosts owned by spammers.

By "spammers" I mean those people who knowingly and deliberatly distribute spam, and usually make money by doing so.

The hosts and the networks they were connected to became discovered and mail coming from those hosts and networks was treated suspicious by black-list-based filters.

So the spammers use more and more infected zombie PCs. Microsoft Windows is on 80% or more of the desktops. And now these Microsoft Windows-based infected zombie PCs are sending 80% of spam, according to the article

However, this does not mean (which would contradict your "this is obvious" logic) that the x% MacOS X-based, Linux-based and *BSD-based PCs are as easily infected and effectively sending x% of the spam.

NO...

Just another cost of supporting Microsoft, I suppose.

Just another cost of supporting users who install the software. Most of these hijacked Windows boxes are a result of a user wanting to see Britney Spears naked.

CLICK HERE--ALL NEW PICTURES OF BRITNEY SPEARS NAKED

This has nothing to do with Windows security other than running an ignorant user as an administrator.

Re:NO...

But but.... you forgot the URL. I want to see Britney naked NOW!!!11

It's not 80% _OF_ spam

As far as I can figure from the statement in the article:

"After comparing those data points with the total volume of legitimate messages passing through the service provider's mail system, we are able to arrive at our percentage of 80 per cent", ..it seems to me that the article should say 80% of the service provider's mail traffic was generated by zombies. This is completely different from the statement made in the topic.

It's like you'd go to a bar and observe that 80% of women leave with drunken idiots, and thus proclaim that drunken idiots are able to hit 80% of women.

There may be some causality and statistical significance, but it definitely isn't as clear as the article suggests.

Obligatory

Was this really actually a surprise to anyone or was this just confirming the obvious?

Re:Will only get worse

No, the pirates have a blatant disregard of the infrastructure by keeping running insecure, unpatched software. Microsoft should not be held responsible for pirates who illegally run unlicensed software.

Re:Will only get worse

Well, I tend to agree in some ways an disagree in some. If the problems with Windows security holes and such would only affect the computer in question then I would be all for not allowing the updates to be loaded on a pirated machine but with the current system the legimate users of Windows (and other internet users as well) suffer from the neglicence of the users of pirated software. It doesn't only limit to spam, but also network worms which can be a nuisance with the amount of network traffic they create. I think Microsoft would do a favor to all of the internet with allowing patches to be applied to non-licenses (pirated) versions of Windows.

<bad-analogy> I would compare it to stolen cars. For example, if a car would have a really really serious design flaw that would make it blow up during rush hour taking along with two blocks, would you want the car manufacturer to fix the car even though it was stolen? </bad-analogy>

Re:Will only get worse

Microsoft has just as much right to profit as anyone else does.

Which is to say, none.

Microsoft should make a deal with all software vendors to require them to put in code that checks to make sure all the latest updates are applied to the Windows box before you're allowed to install the software.

That seems like a very unwieldy solution to me. Wouldn't it be simpler for Microsoft to fixtheir system, rather than have every other software vendor on the planet work around the problems with Microsoft software?

Re:Will only get worse

"always avoid even numbered service packs"

You know, the 2K in Win2K is a pretty big even number...

j/k

Re:Will only get worse

Geez, I hope the same rule doesn't apply to the minor version of the Linux kernel . . .

Re:Will only get worse

If somebody is naive enough to allow their PC to be used as a zombie, I can't really see them rushing out and installing service pack 2. MS should introduce some commercials or something to tell Joe Average that he should patch his windows.

Re:Will only get worse

I guess I have to disagree with you on this one.
Most people are using the OS that thier computer shipped with, whatever HP or Compaq or Dell put on there.

The people who are using a pirated copy, more that likely know enough about computers to actually keep a computer clean.

It's the other home users out there, joe blow, who gets his cable modem, his new PC and leaves it on all the time. That's the guy they are refering to in the article. Not someone involved enough to actually track down a pirated copy of XP, get a serial that works, and spend the time upgrading.

Re:Will only get worse

The people who are using a pirated copy, more that likely know enough about computers to actually keep a computer clean.

Not if they received the pirated copy on the computer they bought from Fast Eddy's Discount Computer Emporium.

Re:Will only get worse

To be precise, SP1 won't install if you are using one of two well-known keys (the most common of which is the FCKGW- one that went out with the Devils0wn .iso).

Latest word from Redmond is that SP2 will follow a similar rule, except that installations using one of 20 corporate keys will be blocked.

If you used a keygen, SP2 will probably install with no problem. Microsoft have spouted a lot of FUD over their anti-piracy initiatives. For instance, Windows Update shouldn't work unless you are using a legitimately issued key on the MS database, but it obviously does.

To get back vaguely on topic, what SP2 will do to prevent spam is to (a) install a better firewall and turn it on by default and (b) turn on automatic updating. This should protect the most clueless users, but I suspect most of them were using legit copies anyway.

Anyway, to get vaguely back on topic, it's the second Tuesday of the month, so let's see what the MS patch fairy brings us today. Probably another exploit for those nasty spam trojan people.

It won't make it worse

``When XP Bug patch 2 comes out, this suituation will only get worse, since ppl can't patch their dodgy ( illegal) copy of XP.''

That won't make it worse - the situation for those user's who can't or won't install SP2 will stay exactly the same as before. Those who do install it will improve. So, it will make life not worse, but better.

It would be interesting if a critical vulnerability were dicscovered that pretty much stops the system from functioning (like Blaster). If only those with licensed installations can get the fix, the rest might realize that you don't get a good OS for free by pirating Windows. Something, though, tells me that Microsoft will make critical fixes available to anyone, though.

Re:Not suprised

"Windows users: Please learn Linux or buy a Mac. Thanks"

This is always the solution that comes up. There are a couple reasons why Microsoft is always picked on for virus/worms.

1. They are the single most popular operating system to date. Therefore they have the most users and giving the spammer/cracker more chances to get personal info or crack their system.

2. Most Microsft users are users that do not always keep up with patches or updates to their system. Most really don't understand why they would have to do it. Not only that, because most new users start with Windows, it's easy for them to fall for most of the phishing attacks as well.

Now, will all of that said above if, hypothetically, everyone switched over to Linux or Mac OS I'm not sure it would change much. You can talk about how secure Linux and Mac are, but they STILL are only as secure as the user wants it to be. I could still see many new users run as root all the time, open unknown files and the rest of the tips that they teach you NOT to do on Windows. Just because you don't see any Linux viruses doesn't mean they don't exist. The fact is that most people who are USING those OSs are a bit smarter and care more about security than your average Windows user that these worms/viruses/spams are being sent to.

Re:Not suprised

You're missing a point: They bundle an insecure mail client and an insecure email client with the OS, and make them difficult to uninstall. It would be very difficult to get every Linux user to have Evolution and Mozilla (which are secure) installed on their machine.

Mac OS X is a different case, but they have secure email and browser applications. (For the most part. The issues have pretty much been fixed by now.)

Yes and

90% of all statistics are invented. Especially when they bash Microsoft, but certainly not any ones that indicate anything good about Microsoft.

So instead of investing all this time and money

in filter research, maybe we should be spending it on educating users in basic protections....or converting the unwashed masses. I like the 2nd one better :P
Please note the sarcasm in the "unwashed masses" comment before modding me as a troll :P

Re:An Idea

Most blacklist services these days list all dynamic IPs for most Internet Service Providers. I get an occasional bounced email because my server is on one of those IPs. Annoying as hell. But at least I can add those kind of hosts to my transport map and have email destined for them routed through my ISP's mail server.

Re:An Idea

Many ISP's don't allow you to run a mail "server".
But you're talking about blocking _outbound_ STMP traffic. That has nothing to do with servers.

Outbound SMTP traffic can be generated by any mail server that only listens on internal interfaces, or directly by your favorite mail client.

What you're talking about is breaking the Internet even more than it already is now, turning it into a big client-server network where the servers are operated by the big media companies.

It is also, coincidentally, the lazy sysadmin approach.

Don't do it, don't go blocking big swipes of IP just because some of them do something wrong.

Be smarter, find a way to only block those that do something wrong!

- Erwin

Re:An Idea

Seems like a good idea at first look, but it's not. Here's why: lots of small businesses run their systems on static IPs which ISPs allocate within their dynamic residential netblocks. Without *very* thorough checking it's a bad idea... but who cares right, I mean, you'll just be blocking some small time companies... nobody who matters, right?

I can't send email to *anyone* at AOL now, despite running an OpenBSD firewalled Linux server for our business. It's doesn't even bounce, just disappears into the void. There are *no* Windows worms or spam coming out of my network, but some ass at AOL decided to block the whole ADSL subnet anyway. Nice way to break the Internet guys. And THANKS AOL for replying to my question about it - NOT! The arrogance of IT geeks and uninformed management strikes again. How about thinking a little harder about it, and implementing reverse host checks based on sender address, or rate limiting with temporary blocking - a real email server can cope with that just fine. There's lots of alternatives other than just shutting yourself off from a chunk of the Internet.

I think MS is not the only one to blame

If computers are going to be a tool used by anybody, I think along with securing OS's real user education must be encouraged.
Today you have to have a license to drive so why not learn how to play safe if your PC is connected to a public network.

Re:I think MS is not the only one to blame

Because unless you can convince the government that being an "inconsiderate and stupid" computer user has actually physically harmed another user this won't happen. Now driving is a whole different story.

Symptom of the (near) mono-culture

The fact that Windows is everywhere is why it's such a tempting target; a hit rate of 1% on virus infection of Windows PCs is a good number, so it's worth going after. If linux had a good market share, it would be running the spam zombies.

Yes, linux can be more secure than Windows, but the fact is that over 90% of these zombie PCs could have prevented infection by simply having (a) their firewalls enabled and/or (b) having intelligent users. By default, most linux distros don't come with firewalls enabled either (at least, the last time I checked; I think it's becoming more common for firewalling to be enabled though, as with XP SP2) and as for (b), well, we'll always have stupid users.

Re:Symptom of the (near) mono-culture

the fact is that over 90% of these zombie PCs could have prevented infection by simply having (a) their firewalls enabled and/or (b) having intelligent users

It's more than that. Why do you need a firewall? Because your computer is sitting there listening for a bunch of crap that it doesn't need to be listening for. Install Windows XP, and then run Microsoft's Baseline Security Analyzer [microsoft.com]. It will tell you that you are about to be fried. Why is that? Why should the user have to be constantly vigilant against threats?

I've yet to see what XP SP2 does, and hopefully it does more than just turn on a firewall. Hopefully, it starts to take things more seriously. Hopefully, Linux starts to as well. It's nice than it can be made to be secure, but it's not exactly simple to do so.

Quit blaming the users for the shortcomings of the developers. You're putting the burden in the wrong place.

Re:Symptom of the (near) mono-culture

The users often are the problem; give a user 10 steps to perform to possibly view some naughty pictures of a celebrity and chances are, a significant proportion of them will do so and infect their computer in the process. Heck, some of them would probably run it as root/admin if you asked them to...

remote scans of Windows systems?

From the MBSA site:

"MBSA Version 1.2 includes a graphical and command line interface that can perform local or remote scans of Windows systems."

So Microsoft releases a GUI tool to remotely scan Windows installations for security vulnerabilities, and yet it includes virtually *no way* to automatically exploit those vulnerabilities to provide a remote login?

Typical of them to rush an inferior product out the door and rely on marketing muscle to sell it over superior third party alternatives.

Re:Symptom of the (near) mono-culture

the fact is that over 90% of these zombie PCs could have prevented infection by simply having (a) their firewalls enabled and/or (b) having intelligent users

Can we change (b) to 'informed' users? It is possible to be intelligent about non-computer matters and still be running a zombie. It's about ignorance, not (necessarily) stupidity.

I continue to skeptical of the apparently widely held opinion on this site that (knowledge about computers/programming/security/[insert specific topic here]) == intelligence.

Re:Symptom of the (near) mono-culture

The fact that Windows is everywhere is why it's such a tempting target; a hit rate of 1% on virus infection of Windows PCs is a good number, so it's worth going after. If linux had a good market share, it would be running the spam zombies.

No. This is not true, and a counter-example is enough to invalidate this very common theory. Actually, I have 2 here, but other /. readers may have more :
1. Web servers : Apache has twice the market share of microsoft IIS. but is far less taken as target.
2. Databases : microsoft SQL server has only around 16% of market share, less than Oracle, db2 and probably MySQL, but it is the most common target.

Targets are first chosen regarding the facility to compromise them. Popularity will come as a second point to consider. Of course this is true when the potentitial of targets is high enough, which is the case in my examples.

Yann

"Infected Windows PC's"

Which translates into Geekish as "PC's Infected with Windows."

training

Schools need to start teaching security. Just the idea and what you do. Kids will go home and teach thier parents. And slowly more people will become educated. How else can you educate the masses?

In other news...

Weather today will be periods of widespread brightness, followed later this evening by periods of widespread darkness. Also, Bill Gates is still in the list of top 10 richest people in the universe.

Unprecedented rates of infection

I can't speak for all geeks out there (we are usually on the front line), but I have seen so many computers running Windows XP out there just getting raped by adware/spyware/worms/trojans lately. One of the primary culprits? Internet Explorer.

The reason I believe it is Internet Explorer is that I have seen a machine that is behind 2 different firewalls (one of which is a very well configured PIX) get molested. It wasn't used for e-mail, no P2P programs for downloading and nothing else was used except the browser. I am SURE some people were browsing dodgy websites on that machine. So far, it is the only PC on that IP segment that has been infected so it wasn't from another machine.

Anyone else see this out there?

Re:Unprecedented rates of infection

Anyone else see this out there?

Yes, the majority of inexpert computer owners I'v run into for the last few months have been wondering why their machines are running slow, showing lots of pop-ups and dialing premium rate or international numbers on their own. Small companys as well as home users.

I'v given up trying to educate people. They won't switch from IE and outlook. I don't want to get into a discussion about who used the
family computer to look at a porn site. They lack the basic understanding of what the computer is doing required to make a decision when personal firewall software asks if a connection should be allowed.

Re:Unprecedented rates of infection

I had a NT4 box get owned from inside our test network. It appears that a users home box got owned and when he VPNed internal machine, a virus rode along for the ride and then started scanning iternal machines and found the NT sitting duck on the test network. The NT box then procedded to try to open some odd connections so I let it. It then downloaded something that would open up a smart proxy and then it tried to send out something in the order of a billion messages which my free bsd firewall/cluestick box accepted and most of them were addressed to AOL.

So what we have here is someone writing a virus that can get into a recent windows box that then looks for remote control connections and knows how to exploit them. Then it installs a different program that can scan and install a spam proxy on machines that can access the net and only machines that have net access.

That was about a year ago. MS came out with the pach many months after the box had been owned. After that, I've got a new rule, no pc can talk to anything else except the samba server by defautl. No PC has any access to the net except through squid. I don't set up default gateways now either. Default PC installs can't even ping anything but the samba/squid box. Too bad SAP Business one is forcing me to break some of this for some clients. Maybe they will port it to solaris like they said they would.

Oh, our new dev machines are made by apple.

Step One: Follow the money.

Step Two: Follow the money.
Step Three: Follow the money.
Step Four: Take a wild guess.

I'm just going to keep on saying this, year after year, as it becomes more and more clear that those engaging in spam are operating outrageously criminal enterprises: If you want to stop spam, FOLLOW THE MONEY.

Find some Viagra spam. Buy some Viagra. Trace the shipment to you, trace the cash transfer from you, arrest. It's not that hard. It's just not very geeky. People, there's no magic technical solution to this -- there's increasingly illegal stunts being pulled, and the only people out there with the IP-layer mechanisms for tracing the attackers really can't afford to release that data as it would compromise rather more important investigations. But -- we've got a very mature infrastructure for tracing financial and mail fraud. We just need the political will to use it against Spam.

It's just not that hard.

--Dan

Re:Step One: Follow the money.

Speaking from experience, I can tell you that it's not as easy as it seems...

Various jurisdiction's spam laws vary, but at least in .au where I'm located, the Spam Act 2003 only provides for civil penalty provisions against the spammers (in essence, the .au government will sue you for violating the spam act in civil court.)

Even though the evidential burden in a civil case is much less (balance of probabilities/preponderance of the evidence) than in a criminal case (beyond reasonable doubt,) it still proves difficult to tie a spam purporting to advertise, for example, penis pills, to a purveyor of penis pills.

Penis pill guy sends his spam through a few thousand of 'fresh proxies' (spam guy terminology for freshly rooted or virused machines garnered from crackers or vx people), penis spam ends up in inbox with penis pill guy's contact details.

So far so good, but there's no causal link between A and B of any forensic value whatsofuckingever. Correlation is not causation.

I'd be more inclined to see a system which plugs into the MTA somewhere between RCPT TO and DATA, which performs a basic open proxy scan on the originating MTA (similar to what many EFnet servers are doing ATM,) and if the originating MTA fails the test, mail is refused (preferably with a '550 5.1.1 no such user' error as this may help get you off certain lists) and the originating IP is added to some form of distributed blacklist for X hours (i'd suggest 48... long enough to allow ample time for the machine's owner to find out that they have a virus or spam problem and fix it, not really long enough to cause a major problem.)

I'm actually working on building such a system at the moment... Details will be posted to my website when I have some half decent code that runs (instead of making postfix' smtpd dump core.)

On behalf of all responsible MS admins....

... I apologise for the percentage of MS users who are beyond help, and for the admins who allow them to be so.

We keep our corporate networks nice and clean, we stomp on infections fast, we try to educate our users, we run filters and firewalls, we put in place policies and we try our damndest to prevent this stuff.

But if those users go home to an infected PC, then we've failed. failed badly. We don't get paid to keep home machines clean, but how much harder would it be to really educate our users? really?

What can we do? Well, we can impress on our users, as I'm trying to do, that thay can suffer real, genuine harm if they don't practice safe computing.

I have this idea. A user doesn't give a crap if they're not harmed directly by a virus. OK, they have a spamming trojan on their machine, do they notice? no, they don't.

So I make sure I tell my users that there are viruses out there which can log their keystrokes and, by inference, steal their credit card number or online banking details or any other personal information.

That makes them wake up. Once there's a chance they might be directly affected in ways other than a slightly slowed down machine, then they start to take notice.

I'd urge every other techie on a windows network to inform your users in the same way. make sure they know that viruses aren't just something that affects other people. then they'll wake up, and everyone else will be better off. really.

Sounds low to me

For the next two weeks until i start a non-crappy job at a linux based company, I still work graveyards at one of the larger aggregate dialup resellers in the US (no, my email address, whois records, etc, are not indicative) and this means i mainly handle abuse complaints.

We get the occasional hit & run spammer who signs up for one of the $9.95/mo services with a prepaid credit card (so we can't effectively fine them) and then spams the heck out of the connection until we cut them off, but 99% of spammer complaints (that aren't due to spamcop being fooled by well crafted headers from brazil, or confused by unpublished relay hosts in our spam filtering cluster) are traced to users who have been with us for some time, who have never given us any trouble, and who have called customer service frequently for fairly basic help with simple internet setup tasks -- usually an account shared by a family with several children, or used by an old lady who just wants to look at pictures of the grandkids on the intarweb gadget. Pretty unlikely spammers.

The accounting department doesn't like it, would prefer to shoot first with a $100 fine and let customers beg for forgiveness later, but i argue constantly that we should give them at least one chance to disinfect their computer. We go ahead and fine 'em if they don't fix their issue within a few days, though, and then accounting makes them prove they are disinfected before giving them their money back.

It's poor customer service, ultimately, but wtf is an isp to do? If we just pestered them with email they'd assume we didn't really mean it, and would never fix their systems.

I refer to this study in spam complaints

Since this study was published, whenever I receive spam that (according to the Received: headers) appears to have been sent via a broadband IP address, I refer to it in my spam complaints to ISP's. I also suggest closing outgoing port 25 per default, and only opening it for customers who explicitly indicate wanting to run a mail server.
I keep a text file with this message for easy pasting into the spam complaint.

Computer users license required.

It's easy to bash Microsoft about insecurities and bugs and, yes, MS do have a lot to answer for when it comes to security holes in Windows.

But the fact is that it's the *majority* of Windows users, without a clue about the mechanics of their PCs and the Internet that create the problems for those of us who take the time to understand how IP networks & OSes work - whether that's Windows, Linux, UNIX, OS X, etc. etc.

Now is the time for ISPs to start coming down hard on their subscribers and not handing out Internet access to people until they have proven a degree of computer proficiency first - even to have to present a "License to use a computer on the public Intenet". I'm sure ISPs could make some money out of providing training for those licenses also.

I am tired of hearing the same old Windows v Linux arguments - they're *irrelevant* in this case, it's just about the people who don't know what they're doing (yes, 99.9% of them do use Windows) making it bad for those of that do know what we are doing.

The only defence Linux has is that Joe Bloke users who just want to play games and check email have no reason to not use the OS that came with their PC, namely Windows. Those of us that do use Linux do so out of choice and have gone through a high learning curve while using it - therefore, the average Linux user probably knows a lot more about how OSes & networks function than the average Windows user.

I know the solution for SPAM problem...

Now that we know top spammers / email marketing firms....
How long would it take for geek population to find the PHYSICAL sites where they are located. And no we wouldn't be interested proofing that they send THE spam we recieved, only fact that they send spam lots of it. Now get AK47 in large quantities, and some explosives and timing based detonators. If 50 or more email marketing sites are attacked at same time all-around the world. With those offices destroyed, and top spammers sleeping with the fishes, how many would think that the email marketing is easy and safe money making business. The punishment maybe on a hard side compared to the crime, but it would simply eliminate Spammers.

That is a study?

Did I miss the actual study with actual data? I only saw the one page executive report.

Pretty flimsy but probably true.

It isn't THAT hard to avoid spam/adware etc.

...if Windows users would start using Firefox or something with some real protection on it.

For example back at home my dad and sister both have their own computers. Both of these computers are constantly just clogged with so much ad/spyware that they are a chore to use. After formatting them both and reinstalling Windows XP I decided to install Firefox for them to use as their browser. It's been several months since then and both computers are FAIRLY free of all malware. There is still some but it is a major improvement.

Anybody on a Windows machine plagued with stuff needs to drop Internet Explorer unless they can manage to avoid going to sites that are notorious for infecting your computer with stuff.

Not a Product Endorsement

Where I work, we've been using a Barracuda Networks Spam Firewall. Just out of the box it worked pretty well, but I've been very busy with other projects and never bothered to train it. So... within the past two or three months, more spam has been slipping through. Last week, I finally got a small break from the other projects and decided to spend the week training the system. The first thing I learned was that you want to have at least twice the number of messages marked "not spam" as you do the messages marked "spam". Right about now, I have 3000 marked as "not spam" and about 1400 marked as "spam". The change in the amount of messages being blocked increased dramatically after just a few days of training the system. The system provides a graph displaying the number of messages allowed, blocked, tagged (as possible bulkmail), infected, containing an invalid recipient, or just a high rate of messages from one host. Just looking at the blocked portion of the graph, it appears that training the unit has given me almost a multiple of ten times the number of messages blocked. Add to that, the fact that it appears to be very accurate, and I am one happy camper.

With all of that said, I will also say that from what I've seen of the Barracuda, it's probably about 80% customized Linux and other OSS projects and 20% proprietary code. So, I think you can probably achieve this level of accuracy in your own custom built system using Linux and OSS. The main reason we went with the Barracuda is that I've just been too busy to research building our own custom solution. But... if you have the time, inclination and knowledge, it shouldn't be too hard.

The greatest benefit of bayesian filtering combined with whitelists, RBLs and antivirus (as in the Barracuda) at the network level is that you don't have to worry much about your user's PCs. That, and forcing them to use a web based client make for a pretty decent mail environment.

Yes, spam is up, but filtering actually does work.

I can offer confirming evidence of the unprecedented volume of spam. Last summer my spam had reached levels of 6,000 per month. During the fall and winter the spam activity dropped by over 50%, but the respite ended about 60 days ago. I am currently looking at just shy of 9,000 spam messages per month in my inbox. Yikes! Fortunately, I have spambayes... so I only have to touch 5-10 messages in my "possible spam" folder each day. It's not as onerous as it sounds, since I only see about 1 non-spam per week in my possible spam folder, so it only takes a couple of seconds to look for something I recognize and nuke the rest.

Of course, that doesn't do anything about all the bandwidth and server resources that are wasted handling all of that spam.

TMDA

For personal use, I am still a big fan of Tagged Message Delivery Agent [tmda.net] which I use mainly for its challenge-response and auto-whitelisting functionality. I don't get any spam, and this on an email address that has been on a popular public website for years.

Of course, TMDA is probably not what you want to use for a business, but for personal use it is great!

Did you read the story?

Two points: (1) the story never mentions Microsoft and (2) it says filters are 90% effective, not ineffective.

As an ISP our biggest OS problem is Linux. Proportionally it causes far more problems than Microsoft. Why? Because Linux users sit around saying "poor MS user" and don't even know they've been hacked. And the majority have been hacked. If you say "Oh, that can't be" then you've just joined the crowd :P

Starting a class action against Microsoft

There are law firms [lieffcabraser.com] that handle class actions for negligence. That firm has already won against Microsoft in another case. They're currently sueing AOL, AT&T, Nextel, and Lucent over various consumer-related claims. So they clearly handle cases like this.

So if you're a victim of Microsoft's negligence in making systems that can easily be converted to attack zombies, click here [lieffcabraser.com] to contact that law firm. The most effective victims would be those who run Linux, because they're not subject to Microsoft's EULA. For them, it's a pure negligence issue. A Linux-based ISP or hosting service would be the poster child for such an action. They're being hammered on, they didn't sign any Microsoft EULA, and they're clearly suffering sizable damages due to Microsoft's negligence.

It's time for this to become a major legal issue.

My stats are slightly different

This "study" is dubious at best IMO. They don't show any details on how they came up with the statistic of 80% spam originating from zombie PCs. They just declare this as if it were factual. While I agree that the percentage of spam coming from hijacked broadband PCs is definitely increasing, I think their figures are not accurate.

Based on my own statistics, which I've begun compiling over the last year, the source of spam and amount has remained fairly consistent. In terms of the number of spam messages, the lion's share of spam continues to originate from APNIC address space (China, Korea, Etc.) -- now whether or not these systems are zombies, I don't know but I am more inclined to believe that they're not. There are spammers who have made arrangements with some ISPs overseas who seem to be able to rotate their source IP in a very large chunk of address space.

I see at least 40% of spam coming from APNIC blocks and other assorted International spam havens. The second largest chunk of spam sources seem to be: Southwest Bell, TDE, SBC and others -- these likely include a combination of zombie PCs and ISP deals.

Now I'd buy the 80% figure IF you cut out the Chinese and Korean sources, and maybe most ISPs these days are now blocking big chunks of class B space in lieu of the signal-to-noise ratio they're generating. Then it makes sense, but this "study" is no "study" - it's more like a press release without any substance.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize that zombie PCs are becoming more of a force in the spam industry. And why is that? It's because ISPs are starting to blacklist IP space -- it has NOTHING to do with content-based filtering (which I keep saying is a waste of time). So yea, we can expect more DUL PCs to be compromised, but based on my analysis of my own logs, there has not been the radical shift in spam sources that the article implies.

Take them now

If 80% of all spam is coming from HACKED PC's, there clearly is criminal hacking charges on a federal and/or international level that could be brought against these guys, at some degree, conspiracy to say the least. I'm pessimistic of the DOJ's "promise" to bring the "top 50" spammers to justice this year. Why isn't that alone fueling the relentless takedowns of these guys while they pursue 15 year old virus writers that don't do much beyond pranks? Just because these zombied pc's are probably 99% home computers and not business computers where dollar amounts of damages can be easily calculated. It seems that's always the playing factor in how much the FBI "cares" about computer crimes.

Oh dear, not again...

Look, is this any surprise at all when approximately 80% of home computers out there run Windows?

The MS bashing in this thread is ridiculous. Even if you run Windows, you could be running Thunderbird, Eudora, Pegasus, Phoenix, M2, the list goes on, instead of Outlook/Outlook Express. It's not the OS's fault or the mail clients fault, it's the users fault and most dumb people use Windows or Macs because everything else is too difficult. Keeping Windows secure is comparatively easy compared to other Operating Systems, just let Auto-Update take care of it and you don't even notice the patches happen if you don't want to notice them.

I'm quite sure that Windows 2000/XP has become one of the easiest to patch operating systems. It is also fast on route to becoming one of the most secure operating systems for the desktop, and this is controversial, but with the number of holes that have been discovered, made massively public and fixed quickly make it likely to be more secure than other Operating Systems. If every Windows machine suddenly booted up with a different OS one morning, I'm sure that OS would have to go through the same level of patches as Windows has had to go through. Whether those patches would be released quicker or slower than with Windows is impossible to say, but I can say pretty safely that they would not be installed as soon after release on those other OSes as they would be on Windows.

Microsoft has managed to build security and a smooth simple patching system out of the fact that it is the dominant OS for desktops and gets targeted a lot by crackers. I doubt other operating systems would stand up to the same onslaught and keep up with patches (both on the developer side and the user side), especially since they tend not to even have automatic updates.

One last point: It's very easy to say that "open source is more secure", actually it's not necessarilly true. Open source projects (like the kind I work on) tend to have bugs that people searching for exploits can find, but the original programmers do not even look at. Sections of code such as a method that has always worked fine could be an exploitable flaw, but that method would never be studied by the developers until it has been exploited and had attention drawn to it, just like in closed-source. Companies that sell closed source software often also have QA teams who's JOB involves looking at those lesser used functions for security flaws, these guys get paid and their whole employment revolves around checking for holes, but even they miss them. I don't see what the argument is for Open Source software being any less full of holes than closed source software, when open source software groups usually don't even employ those kind of people. Sure with OSS, the bugs are fixed quickly by the whole community, but does that mean the users apply the patches any quicker, or that there are less bugs in the first place? I don't think so.

My biggest gripe....

Is when people counter the "I don't use Linux because I'm not that adept concerning computers." argument with "well it wouldn't kill you to learn more about your computer."

This is true, but I am a Windows user for a long time now (still run Linux on my server) and I haven't had a computer virus in AGES (at LEAST 6-7 years).

Because I have a firewall, I don't use IE or Outlook, and I keep stuff patched.

The point? If you learn more about your computer you can make Windows alot safer. and I guarantee you it wont take as much learning/suffering as it takes to get started in Linux on the desktop. Not to mention patching my Windows machine is as simple as running windows update....my linux server? Well, depending on what were talking about it could be as simple as downloading an RPM or, and this is the fun part, updating something from source....either way its nowhere near as easy as updating Windows....hopefully someday it will be!