There was a significant amount of coverage yesterday on research performed by NetWitness into a large set of stolen information recovered from a ZeuS botnet.  Some of the information, analysis, and commentary was very beneficial to the broader discussion of threats such as these.  There is, however, some information that we feel we should address.

• Kneber is a pseudonym for ZeuS:

Kneber is not a pseudonym for ZeuS. Kneber refers to one group of organized criminals, one group of Command and Control Systems, and 74,000+ infected victim systems for this particular ZeuS (primarily) botnet.   ZeuS is a tool, used by many groups to create command and control systems, and steal information.  There are hundreds of active ZeuS botnets, many of which are larger than this one. It is but one of many tools used in this particular botnet.  We have seen INTENTIONAL cross pollination of various trojans, including waledec, grum, and even tools such as packet sniffers.  When we discuss threat, we are referring to more than the tool used, but the organization behind them.

• Kneber is “nothing new”:

We have been very clear that this is a medium sized infestation when compared with all the tracked ZeuS botnets on the Internet.   What does make this very valuable is the opportunity to analyze such a large sample of stolen information, and quantitatively add to the discussion of threats to corporate security.  The number of infected and active systems behind some of the largest, most technology savvy companies needs to be considered, and our approach to security needs to change given the broad failure to identify or remediate these infestations.   In addition, trivializing the damage done is simply disingenuous by anyone who has seen the types of data stolen from threats such as these.

• Current protections and solutions can detect this type of activity:

This quote from Symantec, via the Guardian, KrebsOnSecurity, and others:

“Kneber, in reality, is not a new threat at all, but is simply a pseudonym for the infamous and well-known Zeus Trojan,” said the company. “The name Kneber simply refers to a particular group, or herd, of zombie computers, a.k.a. bots, being controlled by one owner. The actual Trojan itself is the same Trojan.Zbot, which also goes by the name Zeus, which has been being observed, analyzed and protected against for some time now.”

This quote is particularly troubling, as it seems to minimize the threat and is almost dismissive.   Moreover, when this particular variant was analyzed in late January (various services used), Symantec did NOT detect this as malicious.   To be fair, McAfee, Trend Micro, AVG, and most other mainstream anti-virus solutions also failed to recognize this as malicious.  In the past 3 weeks, Symantec has added signatures to detect this particular variant as a generic “Trojan Horse”.  However, if you were infected by this particular strain, your system has already processed an update that prevents you from contacting Symantec and others for updates.   In most cases, this will prevent future detection.   Worse, as part of normal operation of ZeuS, it attaches to running processes on victim systems in order to monitor them.   This data is logged along with other stolen information.   This set of data shows that ZeuS has actually attached to running versions of Symantec software on over a thousand victim systems.  Many other AV vendors are also present.

This example shows ZeuS monitoring a Symantec Live Update, and includes the ftp username and password used by the Symantec software during the update process.

• Are the facts overstated?:

The facts are fairly succinct in the whitepaper that we released.   We do not believe the threat is over-stated, and we were very conservative on the analysis released.   There are likely thousands of additional corporate networks affected, and analysis of this much information takes time.   And this is simply one of many similar operations in existence.  The group behind this effort can be described as sophisticated, yet also shows signs of lax effort to hide their trails.   The botnet is very actively managed, and continues in operation today.   The fact that they have been in successful operation for over 18 months also has to be considered.   We have also received several additional data points from federal contacts with additional insight into related government focused attacks.

More to come.

Tim Belcher and Alex Cox

While the world took pause to consider the implications of Operation Aurora, and Google lent considerable voice to the concept of Advanced and Persistent Threats (APT), we can ill-afford to believe even for a moment that they are alone in their sophistication or capability.   According to the FBI more than 100 nations have offensive cyber operations as part of their intelligence or national security fabric.  And the same attributes that make the Internet ideal for covert intelligence gathering make it attractive for corporate espionage and organized criminal activity.  The IT security industry commonly refers to the online activities of Eastern European and Asian organized crime as “cyber criminals” or “gangs”, which in many ways only serves to minimize the attention they deserve.  In truth the online operations of some organized crime syndicates are every bit as sophisticated, advanced and persistent as their nation-state counterparts.  They are truly expert at gaining footholds and siphoning off critical information.  And they are FAR more pervasive than Operation Aurora.

In late January, NetWitness security research were able to gain visibility into a large scale ZeuS-based botnet, taking user credentials and confidential information from thousands of organizations around the world (See The Wall Street Journal article).  Some of the information collected has been synthesized in the Kneber Bot whitepaper that you can dowload from the NetWitness website.

The sheer volume of information gathered and has forced us to reconsider the common belief that this very successful botnet is simply “financial services” related.  In fact, this particular botnet was much more concerned with culling account and network access credentials, as well as collecting as much detail about victim identities as possible.  In effect, they were less concerned with accessing any particular account, than being able to access ALL accounts related to a victim.

As we began analyzing victim information, we rapidly formed a picture of thousands of corporate compromises around the globe.  As with Aurora, many of the largest most technology savvy companies had internal compromised hosts, which had culled various corporate user level and administrative credentials.

We may attempt to broadly classify threats in the security industry, in hopes that we can make the complex more digestible to management.  However, classifying threats like this as “banking trojans” may do a large disservice to the victim companies.  Indeed, there are many that broadly dismiss threats such as these as “unsophisticated”, or less advanced than a pinpoint attack like Operation Aurora.  Rest assured, these adversaries could not care less how we classify their work.  They are well organized, have demonstrated technical sophistication on par with many intelligence services and do not forgo the opportunity for financial gain with the the information they collect.  If they are collecting network credentials, it means they are using or selling them in an active underground economy – which may include sponsoring foreign intelligence services. What is easier? Designing a campaign like Operation Aurora, or simply purchasing access to your target companies?

We are working with federal law enforcement, and continue in our efforts to notify victim organizations.  Please feel free to download our white paper and I am confident we will discuss great detail in future blog posts.

It’s a little known fact that NetWitness has been innovating in the security field for over 11 years, which was further validated by the announcement of our recently granted US Patent # 7,634,557. Clearly, when it comes to network analysis we do it better than anyone else, and it’s really the only way to get the results you need.

Reaching back over a decade (ca.1999) when our first patent was filed, ( US Patent # 7,016,951 ), and murmurs of network forensics were swirling from a few experts in the security community, our innovation in this field was in full swing.  The technology was chartered as an analytical application to make sense of network traffic for users with no networking experience.  This in itself was no small task, as I cannot emphasize how difficult it was explaining what an IP address was to an English major. See the snapshot of NetWitness v3.5 ca. 2002, ironically it looks like some our 2010 competition.

In retrospect, NetWitness was conceived in a reverse direction from how most security products end up being developed.  Our strategy was to understand the data FIRST, then figure out how to capture it and scale it reliably into an enterprise.  Honestly, we spent several years trying to determine the best way to present complex network data to our users, which at that time was simple HTTP and SMTP sessions.  We had no idea how the network application profile of an Enterprise would evolve to what it is today.   With that said, we made sure that the advanced methods we developed were flexible enough to evolve with the Internet and the needs of our users.  These methods found their way into these two patents.

The first and most important patent is a method for traffic capture, session reassembly, metadata extraction and recursive port-agnostic service identification. Did you get all that?  Back when Firewall and IDS were tinkering with port numbers for rule logic, NetWitness was beyond that approach over 10 years ago.  The assumption to classify network traffic by port alone is prone to mistakes for reliable security analysis. It was not until recently there was a prominent increase in products that are, or at least market port agnostic support, like application firewalls and some DLP products.

The second patent, the topic of this announcement, extends the core technology by defining a system and method for organizing and describing the traffic we collect.  Yet again an example of how we designed the technology to evolve as the Internet evolved.   The patent specifically focuses on the session data model and structures that fuel the Investigator interface and the user experience.  The result is the most visible difference between NetWitness and our competitors, as well as what provides the analytical value when responding to <INSERT NETWORK PROBLEM HERE>. Another example of the product evolution can be seen in the screenshot below of NetWitness v5 ca. 2004.

Its always been my assertion that to do true network forensics, or really any good network analysis, you need a few key ingredients:

1) Reliable, scalable, and forensically sound network capture.  Unfortunately the vast majority of “network forensic” vendors stop HERE!

2) As you would expect from any forensic science, the technical ability to piece the clues or segments of an event back together is the next logical step. For network forensics its assembling the packets back into full sessions, because without this step you have disparate puzzle pieces, without a complete picture.

3) Then finally the right tools to analyze, correlate, mine and report the findings to humans. Thankfully there is an NetWitness App for that and a free API/SDK too.

These elements combined are the foundation of what NetWitness NextGen is, and the basis of our technology that is truly becoming a game-changer in security.  NetWitness Corporation was founded in late 2006, but unknown to many, the innovation and pioneering environment that fuels the technology today started 10 years earlier.  Enjoy our innovation by using Investigator Freeware, and know that before the security challenges of today really materialized we were hard at work creating solutions for today. Network security products that simply work.

Cheers,

NetWitness v9, ca. 2010.