Net-Sec mini letter 
Issue 15 - 30.05.2000 
http://net-security.org 

Net-Sec is a mini letter delivered to you by Help Net Security. It covers weekly roundups of security events that were in the news the past week. Visit Help Net Security for the latest security news - http://www.net-security.org. 


General security news 
Security world 
Virus information 


General security news 
-------------------------------- 

ANOTHER YAHOO GLITCH 
For the third time in recent months, Yahoo has acknowledged software glitches that have compromised the integrity of people's accounts. In the current instance, "My Yahoo" account holders found themselves shut out of their accounts, in some cases finding that other people had signed up successfully with their usernames. 
Link: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1933988.html 

SECURITY FLAW IN PGP 5.0 
A flaw has been found in the randomness gathering code of PGP 5. 
PGP 5 will, under certain well-defined circumstances, generate public/private key pairs with no or only a small amount of randomness. Such keys are insecure. 
Link: http://net-security.org/cgi-bin/reports/fullnews.cgi?newsid959152226,98584, (use the "," on the end) 

SETTING UP PORTSENTRY 
"So what exactly does this Portsentry do and why do you need it? Well, Portsentry is this very very cool security application.. Not good enough? Alright, that's fair. What Portsentry does is it listens on the ports you are not using for port scans. When it detects a scan, depending on how you set it up, it will then add them to your hosts.deny file and drop them through either ipchains or the route command. What this does is as soon as the person scanning you trips Portsentry, your computer stops responding to them..." 
Link: http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/security/portsentry1.html 

EXPERTS LECTURE FEDS ON CYBERSECURITY 
Congressional funding to curtail cybercrime has been focused on law enforcement and existing programs, but the real solution will come from education, research and development programs, federal officials said Tuesday. 
Link: http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2000/0522/web-cyber-05-24-00.asp 

SECURITY PROFESSIONALS 
Mick is employed by IBM Global Services as a "white-hat" hacker. His days are spent trying to break into the computer networks of IBM's clients, either remotely on the Internet or in disguise by infiltrating the client's building and hacking into the computer system on site. 
Link: http://www.infowar.com/hacker/00/hack_052300a_j.shtml 

IS PKI SECURE ENOUGH? 
If e-commerce is a hot subject, then so is public key infrastructure (PKI). But what value does PKI really have? If you ask some experts, the answer is little value if any, and the cited reasons are many. Read the whole article on Win NT Magazine. 
Link: http://www.winntmag.com/Articles/Content/8843_01.html 

"THEORETICAL ISSUE" 
Microsoft responded to a security flaw reported by @Stake's L0pht Research Labs. Spokeswoman said the security hole "to date ... is a purely theoretical issue, and no customers have reported the problem to Microsoft." She added that the company "responded to this issue immediately" by providing the patch. 
Link: ComputerWorld article - http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/05/25/000525hncert.xml 
Link: L0pht advisory - http://www.l0pht.com/advisories/msoua.txt 
Link: CERT advisory - http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2000-07.html 
Link: Microsoft's solution - http://www.net-security.org/cgi-bin/bugs/fullnews.cgi?newsid958236475,50914, (use the "," on the end) 

SPEAKING BAN 
Kevin Mitnick will get some free high-powered legal help as he prepares to challenge a condition of his prison release that effectively bars him from writing or speaking about the computer industry. 
Link: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1951220.html?dtn.head 

TERRIBLE PRIVACY SITUATION 
If the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Bill is passed in UK, internet service providers will be forced to install black boxes in their data centres that connect directly to an MI5 monitoring centre in London. 
Link: BBC article - http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_762000/762514.stm 
Link: What is RIP bill? - http://net-security.org/cgi-bin/reports/fullnews.cgi?newsid957739742,92588, (use the "," on the end) 

CURADOR CHARGED 
Raphael Gray, aka Curador has been charged this week with 10 offences under the UK's Computer Misuse Act. He also faces two charges of deception. 
Link: http://www.securitywatch.com/scripts/news/list.asp?AID=2854 

WAP RELATED DEFACEMENT 
It looks like probably the first site created for usage with WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) was defaced. WAP version of Italian Wappi web site (http://wap.wappi.com) was changed by De Meestervervalser. Just a note - It cannot be seen by a normal browser, but you could see it from Gelon trough their emulator. 
Link: Site seen with Nokia GSM - http://www.gelon.net/cgi-bin/wapalize.cgi?url=http://wap.wappi.com 
Link: Screenshot (21kb) - http://www.net-security.org/misc/wap2805.jpg 

RUNNING A BSD-BASED FIREWALL 
Internet security is currently a hot topic. Because of that, many smaller networks are turning toward firewalls to give them some protection. Many of these networks do not have the money to pay for a commercial firewall product, so they are moving to free Unix-based firewalls such as IP Firewall, IP Filter or IPChains. 
Link: http://www.bsdtoday.com/2000/May/Features165.html 

FRANK VAN VLIET INTERVIEW 
by BHZ Tuesday 30 May 2000 on 4:34 PM 
LinuxSecurity.com has an interview with Frank van Vliet aka {}, the author of AuditFile and the man who recently pointed out to configuration errors on apache.org. 
Link: http://www.linuxsecurity.com/feature_stories/feature_story-47.html 



Security world 
-------------------- 

LEESBURG, FL - May 22, 2000 - Network Associates McAfee Virus Scan, a leader in the anti-virus software industry, recently repealed its unjust ban of NetBus Pro 2.10, a remote administration tool by UltraAccess.net. McAfee's change in attitude toward NetBus Pro 2.10 was not the result of backroom negotiations, but rather upon the advice of McAfee's own legal counsel, according to Judd Spence, CEO of UltraAccess Networks Inc. Mr. Spence sees this as the first step in the vindication of NetBus Pro 2.10 among the anti-virus companies. 
Press release: http://net-security.org/cgi-bin/press/fullnews.cgi?newsid959014656,98635, (use the "," on the end) 

LOS ALTOS, California, May 23, 2000 - InfoExpress, Inc., a leader in secure remote access and extranet solutions today announced an exclusive distribution agreement with U.K.-based Network Utilities (Systems) Ltd., a leading distributor of best-in-class enterprise security. The agreement names Network Utilities the sole provider of InfoExpress' marketing and technical support in the U.K. market. 
Press release: http://net-security.org/cgi-bin/press/fullnews.cgi?newsid959090959,5116, (use the "," on the end) 

ISPCON Spring 2000-Orlando, FL-May 23-IBM and Zero-Knowledge Systems today announced an agreement to provide the hardware platform for Zero-Knowledge's cryptographically assured global privacy infrastructure, the Freedom Network. 
Press release: http://net-security.org/cgi-bin/press/fullnews.cgi?newsid959214624,35970, (use the "," on the end) 

SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 25 /PRNewswire/ -- McAfee Retail Software, a division of Network Associates, Inc. (Nasdaq: NETA), today announced McAfee Internet Guard Dog Pro, an all-in-one solution containing a personal firewall and parental controls to keep children safe while online. Parents are now able to protect their children from accessing questionable sites along with preventing unauthorized individuals from gaining access to their files. 
Press release: http://net-security.org/cgi-bin/press/fullnews.cgi?newsid959697420,11489, (use the "," on the end) 

Note: If your company wants their press releases to be published on Help Net Security, please do mail your requests to press@net-security.org . All press releases could be found on: http://net-security.org/text/press/ 



Virus information 
------------------------ 

PE_KALA.15208 
Risk rating: Low 
Virus type: File Infector 
Destructive: N 

Aliases: 
PE_KALA.15208, KALA.15208 

Description: 
PE_KALA.15208 is a memory resident PE virus that appends 15,208 bytes to the files it infects. There are no visible symptoms of virus activity except the change in file size. 

More information: http://www.antivirus.com/pc-cillin/vinfo/virusencyclo/default5.asp?VName=PE_KALA.15208 



O97M_CYBERNET.A 
Risk rating: Low 
Virus type: Macro 
Destructive: Y 

Aliases: 
CYBERNET.A, X97M/Cybernet@mm, CYBERNET, OF97/Cybernet-A 

Description: 
O97M_CYBERNET.A is a polymorphic, cross-infector macro virus that infects both Word documents and Excel worksheets and spreads via email as an attachment. 
SUBJECT: 
"You've GOT Mail !!!" 
BODY: 
"Please, saved the document after you read and don't show to anyone else. The document is also VIRUS FREE. so DISREGARD the virus protection warning !!!" 

On December 25 and August 17, this virus is triggered and it drops its various payloads: inserts figures in active document, inserts code in AUTOEXEC.BAT, modifies Config.sys and displays a message. 

More information: http://www.antivirus.com/pc-cillin/vinfo/virusencyclo/default5.asp?VName=O97M_CYBERNET.A 



VBS_FIREBURN.A 
Risk rating: Medium 
Destructive: N 

Description: 
This VB Script virus is currently in the wild. It spreads via Microsoft Outlook and mIRC and the email maybe in German or English. The email has the subject header: "Hi, how are you?" and comes with an attachment that may have one of several file names. If the current system date is June 20th, the virus modifies registry and disables mouse and keyboards. It also displays a message before it modifies the registry. This virus runs using Windows Scripting Host (WSH). To execute, this virus uses the file WScript.EXE or CScript.EXE. Once this file has been disabled (eg. Deleted/Renamed/Moved), the virus no longer runs. 

More information: http://www.antivirus.com/pc-cillin/vinfo/virusencyclo/default5.asp?VName=VBS_FIREBURN.A 



W97M_RESUME.A 
Risk rating: Medium 
Virus type: Macro 
Destructive: Y 

Aliases: 
RESUME.A, RESUME, RESUME.WORM, W97M_MELISSA.BG, MELISSA.BG 

Description: 
W97M_RESUME.A is a Word macro virus that spreads via email using Microsoft Outlook. This macro virus does not infect document files and only acts as a worm. Once triggered it deletes all files in the root directories and sends out email to all addresses listed in the address book. The email has the subject: "RESUME- JANET SIMONS" and comes with an attachment Explorer.doc, which contains this virus. Trend advises all email users to not open any email with above mentioned subject header and not click on any unsolicited attachments. 

More information: http://www.antivirus.com/pc-cillin/vinfo/virusencyclo/default5.asp?VName=W97M_RESUME.A 


HNS staff 
staff@net-security.org 
http://net-security.org