Worm forcing reboots.

Howdy,

I happened to notice several Win32 boxen, spontaneously have problems
with the shift key. When rebooted all installed automatic updates and
the problem went away. Basically the shift key functioned in reverse
making typing irritating.

It occurred to me that this would be an effective way to force a
reboot and subsequent installation of a root kit without drawing a lot
of attention.

Anybody else experience this? Does this fit the profile you know of?

-Praying for bitfrost.
-Matt

"shrike@cyberspace.org" <shrike@cyberspace.org> writes:

>Howdy,

>I happened to notice several Win32 boxen, spontaneously have problems
>with the shift key. When rebooted all installed automatic updates and
>the problem went away. Basically the shift key functioned in reverse
>making typing irritating.

Somebody hit the caps lock key. Hit it again and the typing will be back to
normal.
No reboot needed.


>It occurred to me that this would be an effective way to force a
>reboot and subsequent installation of a root kit without drawing a lot
>of attention.

>Anybody else experience this? Does this fit the profile you know of?

Unruh wrote:

> "shrike@cyberspace.org" <shrike@cyberspace.org> writes:
>
>> Howdy,
>
>> I happened to notice several Win32 boxen, spontaneously have problems
>> with the shift key. When rebooted all installed automatic updates and
>> the problem went away. Basically the shift key functioned in reverse
>> making typing irritating.
>
> Somebody hit the caps lock key. Hit it again and the typing will be back to
> normal.
> No reboot needed.


Actually any sane person will reconfigure the keyboard controls such that
the shift key resets the caps lock as well, like in good old times.

On Mar 21, 12:58 pm, Unruh <unruh-s...@physics.ubc.ca> wrote:
> "shr...@cyberspace.org" <shr...@cyberspace.org> writes:
> >Howdy,
> >I happened to notice several Win32 boxen, spontaneously have problems
> >with the shift key. When rebooted all installed automatic updates and
> >the problem went away. Basically the shift key functioned in reverse
> >making typing irritating.
>
> Somebody hit the caps lock key. Hit it again and the typing will be back to
> normal.
> No reboot needed.
>
> >It occurred to me that this would be an effective way to force a
> >reboot and subsequent installation of a root kit without drawing a lot
> >of attention.
> >Anybody else experience this? Does this fit the profile you know of?

And they say security people have no sense of humor...

No, the capslock function is reversed, and it effects punctuation as
well as characters. It shows up like a driver bug or something, but
since I've experienced it across multiple hardware/software versions
that seems unlikely.

I run a fairly fascist security policy and periodically analyze
snapshots of traffic with Ethereal. Every time I get an automated
update I'm wondering whether it is legit or not. I've disabled about
half the services windows runs by default, renamed crap that
periodically gets turned back on by microsoft updates (without my
permission). I try to insure my box only runs only what I want it to
run. I understand the concept of a user actually configuring a machine
is fairly alien in the Win32 world, but there it is.

I chose to run Cygwin to get most of my Unix tools. It isn't a
complete replacement for Linux, but it is easier than hauling around a
second box. It is also pickier than Linux. If something builds with
gcc on cygwin compiling on linux is easy.

My point here, is that I'm not a noob. There is some flaky code here.
If I wanted to force a reboot quietly, I would make it look like a
typical windows bug. If I wanted to relay data, I would encap it in
HTTP, or DNS traffic so it would be inocuous to the average firewall.
So when I see something that looks hanky, and I would do something
like that if I were doctor evil, I ask a question. Which is: has
anybody seen a root kit or worm that dicks up the keyboard driver to
force a reboot?

-Matt