It seems like script kiddies have been taking full advantage of the bug we talked about in the Symantec software. Do companies never learn?
Script kiddies have been taking advantage of intrusion prevention features of Symantec’s Norton Firewall and Norton Internet Security Suites to knock users offline in IRC channels, according to an amusing post at Washingtonpost.com. From the article: ‘Turns out that if someone types “startkeylogger” or “stopkeylogger” in an IRC channel, anyone on the channel using the affected Norton products will be immediately kicked off without warning.
These are commands typically issued by the Spybot worm, which spreads over IRC and peer-to-peer file-swapping networks, installing a program that records and transmits everything the victim types (known as a keylogger).’ Makes you wonder what other magic keywords produce unexpected results with Symantec’s software.
Reminds me somewhat of the whole ++ATH0 thing.
startkeylogger
phonex has quit (Read error: Connection reset by peer)
TomA has quit (Read error: Connection reset by peer)
something3280 has quit (Read error: Connection reset by peer
It’s kind of ironic, using the software that’s supposed to be protecting someone..to disrupt their Internet experience ;)
Now if only the script kiddies could put their group brain together and come up with something useful.
Navaho Gunleg says
IIRC, the ATH0 thing could be put in anything though (from a webpage to an email), basically affecting any vulnerable modem that received that block of data over that modem-line.
This seems limited to port 6667
Or any other non-privileged ports? I’m wondering — is there a possible way to evade detection by connecting to an IRC port on port 80? I mean, obviously the word ‘startkeylogger’ should be nicely received if it seems to come from a webpage.
Or does the firewall do deep-inspection on those packets to guess the used protocol?