Wired mag article on spammers playing traceroute games with trojaned boxes

Thu Oct 9 16:11:56 UTC 2003

At 11:51 AM 10/9/2003, Chris Boyd wrote:

>On Thursday, October 9, 2003, at 10:04  AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
>
>>
>>http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,60747,00.html
>>
>>--
>>srs (postmaster|suresh)@outblaze.com // gpg : EDEDEFB9
>>manager, outblaze.com security and antispam operations
>>
>>
>
>I found one of these today, as a matter of fact.  The spam was advertising 
>an anti-spam package, of course.
>
>The domain name is vano-soft.biz, and looking up the address, I get
>
>Name:    vano-soft.biz
>Addresses:  12.252.185.129, 131.220.108.232, 165.166.182.168, 193.165.6.97
>           12.229.122.9
>
>A few minutes later, or from a different nameserver, I get
>
>Name:    vano-soft.biz
>Addresses:  131.220.108.232, 165.166.182.168, 193.165.6.97, 12.229.122.9
>           12.252.185.129
>
>This is a real Hydra.  If everyone on the list looked up vano-soft.biz and 
>removed the trojaned boxes, would we be able to kill it?

They're using extremely low TTL's on most of their records. Typically 2 
minutes to accomplish this. The thing is I would imagine at least ONE of 
those NS servers cannot change within a 2 hour window whereas the others 
can change every 2 minutes. If you identify the server that only changes 
every 2 hours and track what it's replaced with every 2 hours, you're 
likely to find a rotating list of master servers... Another question is why 
is NeuLevel (the registrar for .biz) allowing TTL's on the NS records to be 
2 hours and submitting those to the GTLD servers. Maybe it's just me, but 
that's the first time I've seen a registrar set such a low TTL on an NS 
record. If NeuLevel is any good they would likely have some sort of 
information to identify the owner of the domain, even if the information is 
invalid listed on their whois server. They might have a credit card 
transaction although that too could always be a stolen credit card number.

Any other ideas or different angles/experiences?

; <<>> DiG 9.2.2 <<>> +trace a vano-soft.biz.
;; global options:  printcmd
.                       80336   IN      NS      l.root-servers.net.
.                       80336   IN      NS      m.root-servers.net.
.                       80336   IN      NS      i.root-servers.net.
.                       80336   IN      NS      e.root-servers.net.
.                       80336   IN      NS      d.root-servers.net.
.                       80336   IN      NS      a.root-servers.net.
.                       80336   IN      NS      h.root-servers.net.
.                       80336   IN      NS      c.root-servers.net.
.                       80336   IN      NS      g.root-servers.net.
.                       80336   IN      NS      f.root-servers.net.
.                       80336   IN      NS      b.root-servers.net.
.                       80336   IN      NS      j.root-servers.net.
.                       80336   IN      NS      k.root-servers.net.
;; Received 449 bytes from 216.182.1.1#53(216.182.1.1) in 40 ms

biz.                    172800  IN      NS      A.GTLD.biz.
biz.                    172800  IN      NS      B.GTLD.biz.
biz.                    172800  IN      NS      C.GTLD.biz.
biz.                    172800  IN      NS      D.GTLD.biz.
biz.                    172800  IN      NS      E.GTLD.biz.
biz.                    172800  IN      NS      F.GTLD.biz.
;; Received 228 bytes from 198.32.64.12#53(l.root-servers.net) in 270 ms

vano-soft.biz.          7200    IN      NS      NS1.UZC12.biz.
vano-soft.biz.          7200    IN      NS      NS2.UZC12.biz.
vano-soft.biz.          7200    IN      NS      NS3.UZC12.biz.
vano-soft.biz.          7200    IN      NS      NS4.UZC12.biz.
vano-soft.biz.          7200    IN      NS      NS5.UZC12.biz.
;; Received 223 bytes from 209.173.53.162#53(A.GTLD.biz) in 150 ms

vano-soft.biz.          120     IN      A       200.80.137.157
vano-soft.biz.          120     IN      A       12.229.122.9
vano-soft.biz.          120     IN      A       12.252.185.129
vano-soft.biz.          120     IN      A       165.166.182.168
vano-soft.biz.          120     IN      A       193.92.62.42
vano-soft.biz.          120     IN      NS      ns5.uzc12.biz.
vano-soft.biz.          120     IN      NS      ns1.uzc12.biz.
vano-soft.biz.          120     IN      NS      ns2.uzc12.biz.
vano-soft.biz.          120     IN      NS      ns3.uzc12.biz.
vano-soft.biz.          120     IN      NS      ns4.uzc12.biz.
;; Received 287 bytes from 204.210.76.197#53(NS4.UZC12.biz) in 130 ms

Vinny Abello
Network Engineer
Server Management
vinny at tellurian.com
(973)300-9211 x 125
(973)940-6125 (Direct)
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Tellurian Networks - The Ultimate Internet Connection
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