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Re: phish war game
From: "lsi" <stuart () cyberdelix net>
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:54:40 +0100
Hi all!
Greets from the deep dark recesses of the internet. Now, back to
this incredibly difficult and intractable problem of phishing.
X-Force have apparently put out some kind of press release announcing
a large drop in phishing volumes. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-
style/gadgets-and-tech/news/phishing-dries-up--are-scammers-changing-
their-game-1777899.html
If I may just repeat what I said a year ago...
In reality, RED will terminate the game voluntarily when phish revenue per
hour falls below revenues per hour available from other sources.
Of course, I can't claim that wide-scale filtering, which is what I
was advocating last year, did the trick, as there was none. Instead,
I'll claim that RED discovered for themselves that Average Revenue
Per Mail was too low to be attractive, relative to other sources.
Continuing in this line of reasoning, what will happen next, is that
RED will concentrate resources on more profitable revenue streams,
and consequently, de-skill and de-tool on the less profitable streams
such as phishing. Later, if they try to go back to phishing, they
will find they need new techniques and also, a new version of their
generator software, neither of which will be easy to come by.
So I'm going to call it and say this ship is leaving, and it's not
comin' back. There was only ever going to be a small window of
opportunity for RED to attack, before BLUE and GREEN wised up, and it
seems that window is now closing.
Thank you for playing, insert 20p to continue.
Stu
On 5 Aug 2008 at 2:03, stuart () cyberdelix net wrote:
From: lsi <stuart () cyberdelix net>
To: full-disclosure () lists grok org uk
Subject: phish war game
Send reply to: stuart () cyberdelix net
Date sent: Tue, 05 Aug 2008 02:03:18 +0100
BLUE TEAM: anti-phishing blacklist
RED TEAM: phish
GREEN TEAM: end-users
starting degree of obfuscation: 0% (none)
starting number of blocked domains: 0
----------
round 1:
action: RED sends billions of phish
consequence: 5% of GREEN members are suckered and lose some cash
action: BLUE blocks the top 20 phished domains using the FROM field
consequence: 80% of RED members are forced to make new sites and find
new victims
current degree of obfuscation: 0%
current number of blocked domains: 20
round 2:
action: RED obfuscates their FROM fields by 20% and resends billions
of phish
consequence: 4% of GREEN members are suckered and lose some cash
action: BLUE blocks the next top 20 phished domains using the FROM
field
consequence: 80% of RED members are forced to make new sites and find
new victims
current degree of obfuscation: 20%
current number of blocked domains: 40
round 3:
action: RED obfuscates their FROM fields by 20% and resends billions
of phish
consequence: 3% of GREEN members are suckered and lose some cash
action: BLUE blocks the next top 20 phished domains using the FROM
field
consequence: 80% of RED members are forced to make new sites and find
new victims
current degree of obfuscation: 24%
current number of blocked domains: 60
round 4:
action: RED obfuscates their FROM fields by 20% and resends billions
of phish
consequence: 2% of GREEN members are suckered and lose some cash
action: BLUE blocks the next top 20 phished domains using the FROM
field
consequence: 80% of RED members are forced to make new sites and find
new victims
current degree of obfuscation: 28.8%
current number of blocked domains: 80
round 5:
action: RED obfuscates their FROM fields by 20% and resends billions
of phish
consequence: 1% of GREEN members are suckered and lose some cash
action: BLUE blocks the next top 20 phished domains using the FROM
field
consequence: 80% of RED members are forced to make new sites and find
new victims
current degree of obfuscation: 34.56%
current number of blocked domains: 100
round 6:
action: RED obfuscates their FROM fields by 20% and resends billions
of phish
consequence: 0% of GREEN members are suckered and lose some cash
----------
GAME OVER: RED loses at round 6, as 0% of GREEN members are suckered,
due to over-obfuscation.
final degree of obfuscation: 41.47%
final number of blocked domains: 100
----------
observations:
1. The model is over-simplified, in reality it's unlikely that BLUE
would consistently achieve 80%. However in reality it's also
unlikely that RED would enjoy a linear relationship between
obfuscation and success, specifically, the more RED obfuscates the
less success it has. Both teams might suffer diminishing returns
from their efforts. (for the purposes of the above model, these
effects have been allowed to cancel each other out)
2. The model has a constant 1% reduction in the victim rate, this is
debatable, however it will never go upwards, eg., there is nothing
RED can do to push that number back towards 100%. Conversely,
everything BLUE does pushes that number towards 0%. In addition,
other anti-phishing technologies will also be pushing the number
towards 0%. GREEN itself might even push the number down.
3. The model does not allow RED to increase the number of phish they
send. In reality, they way well do so. However they will blocked
faster in this case, not only by BLUE but also by other technologies,
such as spam filters. (for the purposes of the above model, these
effects have been allowed to cancel each other out)
4. The model does not allow the game to be terminated voluntarily.
In reality, RED will terminate the game voluntarily when phish
revenue per hour falls below revenues per hour available from other
sources. This will be some time before 0% of GREEN members are
suckered, perhaps as early as round 3.
5. The blacklist contains 100 items at the time RED loses. It may
contain as little as 60 at the time RED terminates voluntarily.
----------
links:
(...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_War_Games
(this is a sales brochure, however it describes a war game a bit
nicer than wiki, it's got diagrams, for a start)
http://www.coleago.co.uk/uploads/Training/War%20Gaming.pdf
(this isn't relevant to a war game, it might be something like what's
happening when the top 20 phished domains are used to select the
items to blacklist, OTOH, it might not, I don't know, I'm not a
statistician. I'd love to know the name of the technique, I use
something similar to optimise my spam rules...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_method
(this was mentioned in one of the papers I quoted previously)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
---
Stuart Udall
stuart at () cyberdelix dot net - http://www.cyberdelix.net/
---
* Origin: lsi: revolution through evolution (192:168/0.2)
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