full-disclosure - Tracking a virus by logging infected machines

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From: joel at helgeson.com (Joel R. Helgeson)
Subject: Tracking a virus by logging infected machines

Why would any virus writer do this?  This leads a clear audit trail that
would lead the authorities directly back to the creator.

I suppose it wouldn't be a bad thing if the virus author was looking for
some free room & board for the next 5-10 years.

Joel R. Helgeson
Director of Networking & Security Services
SymetriQ Corporation

"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll
be warm for the rest of his life."
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard M. Smith" <rms@...puterbytesman.com>
To: <jasonc@...ence.org>; <full-disclosure@...ts.netsys.com>
Sent: Monday, September 01, 2003 6:38 PM
Subject: [Full-Disclosure] Tracking a virus by logging infected machines


> Hi Jason,
>
>    >>> Is there any way to determine who the winner is?
>
> Not that I want to encourage virus writing, but I think it would be very
> helpful to gather infection statistics if a  virus were to keep a log of
> the IP addresses of all the machines it infected.  The log could be
> appended to the end of the executable file of the virus.  Each copy of a
> worm or virus would contain a record of one branch of the tree of
> infected machines.
>
> To make a log easy to locate and extract, the log can start with an
> easily identified string such as "VIRUS INFECTION LOG\n".  IP addresses
> should be recorded in ASCII with a \n between each IP address.
>
> Richard
>
> _______________________________________________
> Full-Disclosure - We believe in it.
> Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html
>