Observing Malware Outbreaks with Honeypots

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Observing Malware Outbreaks with Honeypots

Low-interaction honeypots like Nepenthes or Amun are good at capturing autonomous spreading malware that propagates via exploiting vulnerabilities in network services: by emulating specific vulnerabilities, these honeypots trick malware into exploiting the honeypot and we can capture a copy of the malware.
These honeypots also allow us to observe outbreaks of new malware samples: since quite many people run Nepenthes or Amun nowadays and also send the samples to cwsandbox.org for automated malware analysis, we can correlate the submissions of many different sensors at a central location. For example, we received the malware sample with MD5 sum cb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2ea from a total of 57 different sensor at the timestamps depicted below:



Timestamp               Filename

2008-01-10 19:36:25     grospolinacb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eauLa1AA

2008-01-10 22:11:47     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2easBj96A

2008-01-11 00:03:32     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2easm4aaA

2008-01-11 00:18:58     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaA

2008-01-11 00:22:22     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eayK4gcQ

2008-01-11 00:22:56     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eadOoZcA

2008-01-11 00:34:36     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaf92wA

2008-01-11 00:44:56     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaBmLfOg

2008-01-11 00:45:09     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eagv4WoQ

2008-01-11 00:53:59     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaOewZcA

2008-01-11 01:11:01     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaQANtUA

2008-01-11 01:56:59     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaeEtIA

2008-01-11 04:48:11     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaYO0fA

2008-01-11 05:32:44     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eadOoZcA

2008-01-11 06:35:31     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaf0fA

2008-01-11 08:21:13     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaze0fA

2008-01-11 08:49:09     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaSu4fA

2008-01-11 09:25:49     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaanj2kA

2008-01-11 09:41:40     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaJ8ZcA

2008-01-11 12:00:10     cb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2ea

2008-01-11 13:42:14     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2ea1E4a6A

2008-01-11 14:15:43     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaSHkgA

2008-01-11 14:37:06     grospolinacb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eamKgfA

2008-01-11 14:38:37     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eabGhXGQ

2008-01-11 18:30:29     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaMPofKg

2008-01-11 18:39:25     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaGSGoWQ

2008-01-11 20:33:26     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eab0fA

2008-01-12 04:19:46     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eauJQiA

2008-01-12 12:12:12     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaGDoqMQ

2008-01-12 14:32:15     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaSIUgA

2008-01-13 20:37:45     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaYO0fA

2008-01-14 17:38:54     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaQ8fA

2008-01-14 22:26:54     grospolinacb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2ea2rqiGw

2008-01-15 06:27:12     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaM0sA

2008-01-15 09:32:40     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaM0sA

2008-01-18 10:20:58     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaKEuA

2008-01-19 02:10:38     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eagfofkA

2008-01-20 05:37:39     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaxeoZcA

2008-01-25 09:43:36     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaLvAfA

2008-01-29 15:36:08     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaBxofsA

2008-01-29 20:47:39     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaJ00A

2008-02-01 18:48:12     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaEcoA

2008-02-02 12:24:22     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eawcUgLg

2008-02-02 19:35:56     cb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2ea

2008-02-07 13:59:24     cb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2ea.dat

2008-02-08 15:48:30     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaGfoWA

2008-02-14 14:14:03     cb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eacb032b12af742555...2ea

2008-02-21 14:20:01     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaWN0fA

2008-02-28 16:56:53     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaoexA

2008-03-03 15:15:39     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaA

2008-03-11 02:56:00     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaAfA

2008-03-14 11:11:51     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaJgfA

2008-03-15 17:31:37     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaGGYnA

2008-03-20 10:55:43     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eacb032b1...2ea

2008-03-20 17:05:07     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaoflA

2008-03-31 12:12:02     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaYO0fA

2008-04-07 07:06:12     nepenthescb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2eaxMUg3A

2008-04-08 02:37:22     cb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2ea

Each timestamp depicts the first point in time where the specific sensor captured a copy of the malware. As you can see, the malware outbreak happened presumably at January 10, 2008. From then on, honeypot sensors all around the world captured a copy of this specific bot. The CWSandbox report contains more detailed information about the botnet, e.g.:

The bot creates a file named C:\WINDOWS\system32\explorer.exe, which is a copy of itself

It creates a run key for the Windows registry such that the bot is started again after a reboot

The C&C server is located at the IP address 67.43.232.36 and listens on the TCP port 8080

C&C channel is #wawa and the command issued by the botmaster at the time of analysis is: ipscan s.s.s dcom2 -f -s

This entry was posted by Thorsten Holz on Saturday, July 26. 2008 at 13:05. and is filed under honeynets, malware. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own blog. All new comments are subject to moderation before being displayed.

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katsumi says:

#1 2008-07-27 15:38 (Reply)

I found three of my honeypots reporting this binary, as you can verify via filename grospolina???????????????????????
belfagor reported it at
64816 Jan 17 2008 /opt/nepenthes/var/binaries/cb032b12af742555e60124f6d7d2d2ea
however, thats a long time in the past,
and content was deleted once.
so i can't verify that it was first caught by moloch or baal, so i can't help.
What's the idea behind?

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Observing Malware Outbreaks with Honeypots