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Re: CERT
The paranoia is getting out of hand. Let's take this one point by
point. I've deleted the poster's name, because this note is just an
example; it's not the only such posting.
Certainly that may be so.. but in this case they didn't merely
tell 'you' with a simple note, instead they did atleast 2
things which really are bothersome and overstepping common
'courtesy' of merely informing 'you':
``You''? Who is ``you''? The CERT note didn't mention any
individual. They might not have the information. If they did, it
might be because the account was compromised. (That was the case the
last time I helped a friend investigate ftp droppings. In that case,
though, it was only the ftp account, not the login account, so
notifying the owner would not have been damaging. Btw -- remember the
recent CERT advisory on bugs in the WUSTL ftpd?)
1) Instead of going directly to the owner of the directory in
question or the administator of the host they jumped over
'your' head and went to the domain administrator. I can see
going to a site administrator if they had reason to believe the
owner of the directory was doing something illegal.. but then
again they have no authority to make/enforce/etc any kind of
laws. They were just plain out of line. Consider this example
(and I'll give them the benefit of doubt here that someone
really did complain to them and they aren't on some witchhunt
of their own): I am Cert and Mr Von Karman has emailed me to
say that a /jet/Enigma-cypher-code directory appears to have
illegal software of some kind.. so I send up my email.. not to
you.. but to Goldin, the new NASA head that I believe this
directory owned by you has illegal software on it. Well that is
a good way to put some bad marks on your record even if you do
prove it untrue to your boss.. maybe you had just removed the
evidence before he checks out your acct.. either way he shuts
down your net access for a while..'just to be sure', and look
out next time you want a promotion.. can't be to safe.. you
might be a security risk!
As I said before, they might not know who was involved. Even if they
did, and even if the account wasn't compromised, it's the SA's
responsibility to investigate. What if a local user is doing un-
authorized things? Take this particular case -- they could easily end
up being sued for contributing to copyright infringement. They might
win -- but defending against a lawsuit is expensive.
2) They didn't check the system out before hand and blatantly
said as much.. what kind of service to you is that? my friend
met a guy who knows bigfoot..but certainly you don't see me
bothering the people who own the land where bigfoot is supposed
to live.
Check it out? How? Apart from the question of whether or not you want
CERT looking through your directories (and I can just hear the
complaints now -- ``On no evidence but an anonymous tip, CERT logged
in, listed everything, looked for *my* hidden areas that I used to
distribute restricted software, and tied up my link to the Internet for
hours while the downloaded everything in sight'') -- it isn't
feasible. I just ftp'd to soda for a quick look-see. A ls-lRa
generated 160K bytes. Simply screening that takes time. Many of the
files showed only numeric uid's; the ftpd passwd file was obviously not
up to date. Even if I knew the suspect files, I might not know who the
responsible user was. Many of the files had informative names like
``packet123.Z''. They mirrored the full X11R5 distribution.
How much time and effort should CERT put in?!?!! A competent SA will
at least know the putative ownership and reliability of the owner of
most of that stuff; CERT sure doesn't (except, of course, for the list
of hackers they may or may not have, and which has been (rightly)
objected to).
3) They want to confiscate logs from the system.. That sure as
heck isn't any of their business..
Confiscate? Confiscate? They asked for a copy, if available.
``Confiscate'' generally means ``take away''. They're not taking
anything from you. If the logs do show anything, it's precisely their
business -- evidence of someone abusing your system (I'm assuming here
that there really was 3rd-party deposits and retrieval of files).
Quick -- how many of those file transfers are coming from stolen
accounts? In my experience, a goodly number.
Look, I have my own concerns about CERT in this matter, notably the
questions of what evidence they're acting on, and whether or not
they're being used (consciously or not) to silence unpopular sites.
I've sent them a note asking those questions. But let's try to keep
things in perspective.
Oh yeah -- as an added bonus, I've enclosed a transcript of the kinds
of things I do when trying to find an administrative contact for some
machine. I don't see any avenues of contact more likely than ``root''
or ``postmaster''. And it's clearly a large-scale timesharing machine,
where there's no one individual clearly responsible for it.
--Steve Bellovin
-----
$ whois -h rs.internic.net soda.berkeley.edu
No match for "SODA.BERKELEY.EDU".
The InterNIC Registration Services Host ONLY contains Internet Information
(Networks, ASN's, Domains, and POC's).
Please use the whois server at nic.ddn.mil for MILNET Information.
$ finger [email protected]
[soda.berkeley.edu]
Login: root Name: The Allmighty
Directory: / Shell: /bin/csh
Office: E238, x2-7453
Last login Mon May 31 22:17 (PST) on console
No Plan.
$ finger [email protected]
[soda.berkeley.edu]
finger: postmaster: no such user.
$ dig mx soda.berkeley.edu
; <<>> DiG 2.0 <<>> mx soda.berkeley.edu
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY , status: NOERROR, id: 6
;; flags: qr rd ra ; Ques: 1, Ans: 2, Auth: 3, Addit: 8
;; QUESTIONS:
;; soda.berkeley.edu, type = MX, class = IN
;; ANSWERS:
soda.berkeley.edu. 55780 MX 4 soda.Berkeley.EDU.
soda.berkeley.edu. 55780 MX 6 scotch.Berkeley.EDU.
;; AUTHORITY RECORDS:
Berkeley.EDU. 161050 NS VANGOGH.CS.BERKELEY.EDU.
Berkeley.EDU. 161050 NS VIOLET.Berkeley.EDU.
Berkeley.EDU. 161050 NS UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU.
;; ADDITIONAL RECORDS:
soda.Berkeley.EDU. 55780 A 128.32.149.19
scotch.Berkeley.EDU. 55780 A 128.32.131.179
VANGOGH.CS.BERKELEY.EDU. 161050 A 128.32.130.2
VIOLET.Berkeley.EDU. 161050 A 128.32.136.22
UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU. 39151 A 128.32.137.3
UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU. 161050 A 128.32.130.12
UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU. 161050 A 128.32.149.36
UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU. 51896 A 128.32.133.1
;; Sent 1 pkts, answer found in time: 0 msec
;; FROM: inet to SERVER: default -- 0.0.0.0
;; WHEN: Tue Jun 8 20:16:07 1993
;; MSG SIZE sent: 35 rcvd: 295
$ telnet soda.berkeley.edu 25
Trying...
Connected to soda.berkeley.edu.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 soda.berkeley.edu Sendmail 5.65/KAOS-1 ready at Tue, 8 Jun 93 17:10:50 -0700
helo research.att.com
250 soda.berkeley.edu Hello research.att.com, pleased to meet you
vrfy root
250-Eric Hollander <"|/accounts/hh/remail/slocal.pl">
250-Keir Morgan <kmorgan>
250-ERic MeHlHaFf <mehlhaff@ocf>
250-ERic MeHlHaFf <\mehlhaff>
250-Tom Holub <tom>
250-John S. Jacob <jsjacob>
250-Matthew L. Seidl <seidl>
250-Shannon D. Appel <"| /usr/local/lib/mh/slocal -user appel -verbose">
250-Sean N. Welch <[email protected]>
250-Dan Wallach <[email protected]>
250-Donald J. Kubasak <kube>
250-David G. Paschich <dpassage>
250-Adam Glass <\glass>
250 Adam Glass <glass@postgres >
vrfy postmaster
250-Eric Hollander <"|/accounts/hh/remail/slocal.pl">
250-Keir Morgan <kmorgan>
250-ERic MeHlHaFf <mehlhaff@ocf>
250-ERic MeHlHaFf <\mehlhaff>
250-Tom Holub <tom>
250-John S. Jacob <jsjacob>
250-Matthew L. Seidl <seidl>
250-Shannon D. Appel <"| /usr/local/lib/mh/slocal -user appel -verbose">
250-Sean N. Welch <[email protected]>
250-Dan Wallach <[email protected]>
250-Donald J. Kubasak <kube>
250-David G. Paschich <dpassage>
250-Adam Glass <\glass>
250 Adam Glass <glass@postgres >
quit
221 soda.berkeley.edu closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.
$ finger @soda.berkeley.edu
[soda.berkeley.edu]
Login Name Tty Idle Login Time Office Office Phone
aaron Aaron C. Smith qR Jun 8 08:58 Limbo 643-7217
aaron Aaron C. Smith *qT Jun 8 08:58 Limbo 643-7217
achoi Andrew Choi pB 3 Jun 7 18:19
appel Shannon D. Appel pK Jun 8 09:57 CEA 643-5657
aswan Andrew Swan pW Jun 8 17:06
calvin Wa Pak qe 22:11 Jun 7 18:57
cgd Chris G. Demetriou qf Jun 7 22:15 278 Cory 510-642-7520
cliffwd Cliff Draper pe 36 Jun 8 16:30 9-204a 643-3426
cynthia cynthia leigh haynes *pr 3 Jun 8 16:43
cynthia cynthia leigh haynes ps Jun 8 16:43
deb Debra Waldorf *p7 Jun 8 16:20
deb Debra Waldorf *qg 51 Jun 8 15:27
eganloo Egan Loo pJ Jun 8 16:57
eric Eric van Bezooijen qz 1:01 Jun 8 15:50 238E
gwh George William Herbe pc 1 Jun 8 14:13 238E
gwh George William Herbe pm Jun 8 14:26 238E
henchiu Henry Chiu pR Jun 8 17:02
ho Kinson Ho *q3 1:13 Jun 8 15:08 608-1 Evan 642-8290
hughes Eric Hughes *qm 36 Jun 8 10:34 238E
isaac Isaac Cheng *pE 12 Jun 8 09:51
isaac Isaac Cheng *qw 12 Jun 8 10:59
jenn Jennifer Hom *pF Jun 8 16:52 238E 415-688-8034
jlb Jordana Brown pQ Jun 8 14:45
karlht Karl Thiessen *pb 13 Jun 8 16:28 238 Evans 642-7453
kenji Kenji Hubbard *pX Jun 8 17:08 238E
kube Donald J. Kubasak pU 2 Jun 8 17:05 CEA ESOC 643-7367
marco Marco Nicosia qI Jun 8 15:58 238E 510-283-9587
maroo Maroo Lieuw *qx Jun 8 13:33 849-9872
michelle Michelle Tisi *qZ 5:30 Jun 8 11:34
ming Tje Ming *qj 9 Jun 8 15:28
ming Tje Ming *qO 2:17 Jun 8 13:50
mlee Michael Lee *pD Jun 8 16:49
mlee Michael Lee *qC Jun 8 15:52
nancy Nancy Cheng *pf 1:18 Jun 8 14:17
nancy Nancy Cheng *qV 1:53 Jun 8 13:52
payam Payam Mirrashidi po 19:13 Jun 7 20:54 199MD Cory 642-1297
psb partha s. banerjee *py 2:25 Jun 8 14:32 IBM Almade 510-649-7505
psb partha s. banerjee *pz 2:38 Jun 8 14:32 IBM Almade 510-649-7505
ralbers Rick Albers *pV Jun 8 17:06
rmgee Randall Gee *pn Jun 8 14:28
robert Roberto Boyd *pA Jun 8 16:47
rsr Roy S Rapoport *pY Jun 8 17:09 510-540-5535
seidl Matthew L. Seidl qk 1 Jun 8 10:31 238E x2-7453
seidl Matthew L. Seidl *qB Jun 8 08:32 238E x2-7453
sfd Scott Drellishak pl Jun 8 16:40 Kerr 3-202
tom Tom Holub *pH Jun 8 16:53
tom Tom Holub pI Jun 8 16:53
welch Sean N. Welch *p0 Jun 8 09:04 MTV21-122 415-336-4289