RPC errors

Mon Aug 11 21:56:43 UTC 2003

On Mon, 11 Aug 2003 17:33:33 -0400
 Kevin Houle <kjh at cert.org> wrote:
> 
> --On Monday, August 11, 2003 02:26:40 PM -0700 Mike Damm
> <MikeD at irwinresearch.com> wrote:
> 
> >The DCOM exploit that is floating around crashes the Windows RPC service
> >when the attacker closes the connection to your system after a successful
> >attack. Best bet is to assume any occurrence of crashing RPC services to
> >be signs of a compromised system until proven otherwise.
> >
> >http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2003-19.html
> 
> That's good advice. Many of the known exploits cause the RPC service
> to crash after the exploit is successful. I'll point out that not all
> exploits cause the service failure. So, the absence of an RPC service
> failure is likewise not an indicator that a vulnerable machine has
> escaped compromise.
> 
> Kevin

Interestingly, we have clear examples of boxes which were not infected but on
which RPC services did crash.  This may suggest that the worm also takes
advantage of the unrelated RPC DOS vulnerability (2000 and XP) which I believe
MS has still not patched.

John