CD-Rom Spyware, delivered to your door in less than 60 minutes!

by Chris Boyd, Wayne Porter

 Imagine this scenario Big Jim the Mailman comes knocking at your door, and pushes a bunch of letters through your mailbox. Nothing unusual there - let's see....bill, bill, final demand, application letter, more final demands, charity collection leaflet, a picture of what's going to happen to you if you don't pay your final demand...

..but wait! What's this...a whole bunch of CD Roms. Well, nothing unusual there, either. You're feeling a bit sick and tired of your ISP, so you decide to give Mega Fun Internets Corp a try. Nothing to lose, right? You insert the CD, boot that thing up and.....nothing. A few more attempts, and you hurl the CD into the trashcan. At this point, you remember your credit card bill is overdue - as you logon, you fail to notice the keylogger that's been silently installed by the CD...

Far fetched? No, it's already happening. There has already been a large fallout from "trusted" CDs infected with rootkit technology - we only need to cast an eye over the multitude of Sony Rootkit stories. However, a story has emerged from Japan that should be enough to make anyone think twice about inserting a supposedly "trustworthy" disk:

31-year-old Atsushi Takewaka is suspected of accessing victims' computers to steal internet banking passwords, which he used to illegally withdraw money from online accounts. According to police, Takekawa is alleged to have told them, "I created the spyware in about three months using a range of software. I wanted money to live on." Hirayama is said by police to have also admitted attempting to steal money out of bank accounts by sending CD ROMs to firms that, when run on a PC, would install the spyware.

  Now the CD Rom aspect of the story is barely given a mention, but let's zoom in on that for a second. How many disks do you think come through your mailbox each week? How many does the average end-user insert into their computer? We imagine it's a fair percentage. How easy would it be for someone to create a similarly malicious CD, and distribute it via door drops, adverts in papers under the guise of accounting software/games/self-help programs, sweepstake "winners" or even a bogus music CD? The amount of ways people could game the system using an infected CD is pretty frightening, especially as the first stage of the attack would rely on old-school advertising tricks based in the real world. Tactics along the lines of those employed by Internet Registrar companies, who send letters warning that your domain is about to expire, only for the hapless victim to pay up and then realise the letter sender was not their registrar, could work very well in this respect. Combine a few adware fanatics with a few experienced door-drop conmen and you have a recipe for disaster.

  There have already been warning shots fired for this kind of attack - notably here, and here. Interestingly enough, these were also in Japan. Looking back, it's highly likely that those attacks were engineered in the same manner as this more recent effort. The potential for damage using this method of install could be extremely severe. The above theoretical examples are bad enough, but what if someone simply took a pile of legit Net Connection CDs from any standard ISP, swapped the real disk for a phoney one, then started posting them from door to door? Stranger things can (and will) happen in the field of spyware. And, as we can see in a recent interview with the BBC, FaceTime Security Research Manager Chris Boyd details his thoughts on where the spyware "arms race" will lead next. Those thoughts point to one thing - the people behind these kind of attacks will use any and all means necessary to achieve their goal.

  Automatically installed rootkits and keyloggers, from a previously unthought of object you see enter and exit your house on a daily basis?

That's something we would rather wasn't delivered in 60 minutes or less. And they can keep the late delivery fee, too.

This article is copyright 2005 by XBlock.com.
It may not be reprinted or copied without the express written consent of the author.

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