http://www.pcworld.com/article/257045/update_linkedin_confirms_account_passwords_hacked.html
By Ian Paul, PCWorld Jun 6, 2012 8:32 AM
UPDATED 2:15 p.m. PT
Author: easternhost
Conficker Worm Was Dry Run for Stuxnet, Researcher Says
A well-known security consultant has gone public with his startling hypothesis that Conficker, a notorious but still-mysterious computer worm that confounded IT managers for months in 2008 and 2009, was actually a dry run for Stuxnet, the worm that infected and apparently disabled an Iranian nuclear facility in 2010.
“Conficker was a door kicker,” John Bumgarner, a former U.S. Army and U.S. Marines officer who’s also worked at IBM and Lucent, told Reuters in a story that was posted online Friday morning (Dec. 2). “It built out an elaborate smoke screen around the whole world to mask the real operation, which was to deliver Stuxnet.”
If Bumgarner’s hypothesis is true, it would finally explain the mystery behind Conficker, which had infected perhaps 15 million PCs by early 2009. The worm built a huge botnet army of linked computers, yet never switched it on. Its authorship has never been determined, though evidence hints at Ukrainian cybercriminals.
Stuxnet is thought to have been created by U.S. and Israeli intelligence services to cripple the Iranian nuclear-fuel-processing facility at Natanz, which suffered unexplained accidents and shutdowns in the summer of 2010.
Other security researchers aren’t convinced by Bumgarner’s scenario.
“This account stretches my credulity to [the] breaking point,” said Britain-based Trend Micro researcher Rik Ferguson in a blog posting later Friday.
“Conficker/Stuxnet is quite the stretch,” tweeted Kaspersky Lab researcher and ZDNet writer Ryan Naraine on Friday.
Too many coincidences?
Bumgarner, who is now the chief technology officer for the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit think-tank that advises government agencies on cybersecurity, thinks there are too many similarities between Conficker and Stuxnet to be coincidental.
Both were highly sophisticated, both spread via USB sticks and both rapidly mutated, he said. Bumgarner also said there are overlapping dates marked in the developed code for both, as well as in Duqu, a recently discovered Trojan that many security experts think was created by the writers of Stuxnet.
Ferguson didn’t buy it.
“The levels of sophistication in Conficker and Stuxnet are in different leagues,” he countered. “Stuxnet was a far more sophisticated animal, taking advantage of zero-day vulnerabilities and requiring specialist knowledge of SCADA systems and nuclear facilities.”
Ferguson pointed out that all of Conficker’s exploits were of already-known vulnerabilities that many people simply hadn’t bothered to patch. In contrast, Stuxnet used four rare and valuable “zero-day” Windows exploits that had never before been known of, and Duqu used one.
Bumgarner also leaves out the fact that Conficker initially spread through a vulnerability in the networking component of Windows. Only later did it move on to exploiting the “instant-run” feature that automatically ran programs on USB sticks as soon as they were plugged into PCs.
Conficker was eventually defeated by a group of security and software companies that Microsoft put together in early 2009. It is now detected and destroyed by most major anti-virus software packages. Microsoft is still offering a $250,000 reward for information leading to its creators.
Nevertheless, Bumgarner told Reuters that Conficker, like Stuxnet, is a cyberweapon, not a criminal creation, and that its silent botnet may someday wake up.
“Conficker represents the largest cyberarmy in the world,” he said. “These soldiers are just waiting for their next mission.”
http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/-conficker-stuxnet-duqu-1384/
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Bookmark and Share Published Thursday, December 30, 2010 9:41 PM by Patrik Runald
With regard to affordable SEO services, or search engine optimization for web site ranking, 2011 will bring an entirely new set of threats designed to strip organizations of confidential information and exploit users. Leading the charge will be a series of blended threats…
First, expect Stuxnet sequels. Because it takes a substantial amount of time to develop advanced persistent threats like Stuxnet, we predict similar exploits will be carried out once or twice in 2011.
Second, companies will struggle to stay secure while covering more ground. Today’s threats continue to morph based on where/how companies do business. Blended threats (like Zeus and SpyEye) will continue to evolve and use a variety of delivery methods. Malicious content is no longer binary files delivered in attachments; it is script-based or embedded within rich media. As our previous Insights post referenced, many threats spread rapidly through social media. This is going to continue be a challenge as 13 percent of all Web traffic is going to Facebook and this number continues to increase as more businesses use social media.
While many cybercriminals are nearly 100 percent focused on stealing corporate data to make money – most IT professionals don’t have the bandwidth to personally secure every Web page and email employees use. 52 percent of data-stealing attacks were conducted over the Web and another nine percent happened over email last year.
In 2011, strained IT departments will need to defend more territory and allow more Web access, despite increasingly sophisticated threats. Cybercriminals know that legacy technology simply looks for the signature or reputation of threats that are known, which is why they are so successful at exploitation.
And finally, we anticipate malware exploit kits will add zero-day vulnerabilities faster, increasing their use in drive-by download attacks. As more targeted attacks are researched, more zero-day vulnerabilities will be discovered. Blended threats are ever-evolving and tested by cybercriminals on anti-virus before they are released. Our research also showed the prevalence of the threats currently out there. Users of the top 1,000 sites are only two clicks away from malware at any given time. And, we saw a 111.4% increase in the number of malicious websites from 2009 to 2010.
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