Posted on 12/7/2001, 2:43:03 AM by classygreeneyedblonde
A hacker who has discovered and warned about major security failures at Microsoft, America Online, and Yahoo has found another problem, this time at WorldCom. According to 20-year-old Adrian Lamo, WorldCom's security vulnerability could have exposed many of the company's customer networks to attack, including those belonging to Bank of America, Citicorp, JP Morgan, and Sun Microsystems.
WorldCom spokeswoman says the company secured its networks within hours of being notified by Lamo about the problem. There is no evidence of any impact for WorldCom customers, she says. Human error, according to the spokeswoman, resulted in the wrong filter being used on a router
Lamo says the improper configuration is not something always covered in security audits. Security personnel are "mostly looking for known vulnerabilities, and this wouldn't typically come up," he says.
Lamo says he was able to surf WorldCom's internal network just as if he were a company employee. He says he would have been able to list names and Social Security numbers "in batches of 500" for the telecom's more than 80,000 employees. But WorldCom shouldn't be faulted for not having found the security problem before he did, he adds. "It's the same thing that affected Yahoo, Microsoft, and Excite@Home."
Pete Lindstrom, director of security strategies for Hurwitz Group, is more critical. "Why was some random, well-meaning hacker able to find this problem before the internal WorldCom security management group?"
Pete Lindstrom, director of security strategies for Hurwitz Group, is more critical. "Why was some random, well-meaning hacker able to find this problem before the internal WorldCom security management group?"
Because they are probably an overworked bunch that spend most of their time reacting to problems that arise instead of being able to proactively fix things. Management usually underestimates the amount of work it takes to effectively harden networks.
80
HTTP Web server
21
FTP servers typically run on this port
53
DNS. Attack against old versions of BIND
111
RPC. vulnurable on many Linux systems. Can get root
4665
?
22
Secure Shell, old versions are vulnerable
520
?
6346
Gnutella is a peer-to-peer file sharing tool
27374
Scan for Windows SubSeven Trojan
4
?
Ayup. I remain firmly convinced that a chimpanzee could easily work as an "IS professional" in many companies if it had an MBA and didn't poop on the conference room table during staff meetings.
Good intentions don't alleviate what he has
claimed to have done. He should be held
accountable and prosecuted if he intentionally
defrauded for his own purposes.
I don't believe that he was able to get into
the customer networks and at the same
time the WorldCom Corporate network
because there is physical separation
between the internal network and what
is sold to customers. This sounds like false
bravado from an young punk.
But then, what do I know? I'm just a
Worldcom technician.
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