Symantec Enterprise Security Solutions protect against potential Chinese-based attacks

Date: April 30, 2001

Details:
Symantec Corporation advises its customers to be aware of the potential for a possible increased occurrence of hacker attacks during the time period of April 30 to May 7, 2001. Sources have indicated an increase in activity coinciding with two major Chinese holidays; International Workers Day and Youth Day, and the two-year anniversary of the accidental bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

Symantec Enterprise Security Solutions are able to detect worms and associated vulnerabilities that are believed to be in use in the ongoing "hacker" wars. One worm known as "Lion" exploits known system vulnerabilities in BIND to gain privileged access to Linux systems. The worm installs a distributed denial-of-service program, runs a "rootkit" to hide its presence, and then proceeds to search for other vulnerable systems to infect while attempting to mail the victim's system passwords back to an address located in China.

Several U.S. web sites have been defaced in the ongoing "war". These sites are being exploited through well-known vulnerabilities in web servers for which patches are readily available. There may be other attacks more severe or subtle than web defacement. Here is an example of the defacement perpetrated against one Web site.

Risk Impact:
Medium

Symantec Enterprise Solutions:
NetProwler, Symantec's network intrusion detection system, can detect Lion's attempts to gain access to systems as well as checking for known vulnerabilities in Microsoft IIS versions. Symantec's Intruder Alert, a host-based intrusion detection system, is capable of detecting the "rootkit" used by Lion to hide its activity. Norton AntiVirus can detect the presence of the worm on a system. Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) and NetRecon, Symantec's vulnerability management and assessment systems, can detect the presence of vulnerable BIND versions. ESM can further help manage security patch update functions for your through the ESM patch module. Symantec's Raptor Firewall can block attempts to exploit the BIND vulnerabilities that the Lion worm exploits.

References:
Microsoft IIS and PWS Extended Unicode Directory Traversal Vulnerability
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/1806

NT IIS MDAC RDS Vulnerability
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/529
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/654

Exploitation of BIND Vulnerabilities
http://www.cert.org/incident_notes/IN-2001-03.html

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