SSH worms
By Adam Gaffin, NetworkWorld.com, 05/11/05
A new paper by some MIT researchers suggest it might be fairly easy for attackers to use SSH to launch lots of worms:
... We found that a surprisingly large fraction of the known hosts entries were to hosts on distant networks, that the bulk of these entries could be reached by compromising a small fraction of the user accounts in our survey, and that 62.8% of identity keys encountered were stored unencrypted. ...
But they also propose an antidote, at least for OpenSSH. Via Bruce Schneier, who says:
... While a worm of this type has not been seen since the first Internet worm of 1988, attacks have been growing in sophistication and most of the tools required are already in use by attackers. It's only a matter of time before someone writes a worm like this. ...
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