Although the answer may be more in coming from an attorney than from a tech, IMHO your legal responsibility is to inform both owner of the box as well as victims. As long as you show "best effort" in reporting you should be allright. But, particularly with medical victims that must conform to HIPAA, there could be serious ramifications if you don't.
Keep in mind that it is trivial to find out it was that box, if investigators from the victims/compromised patients decide to run it down. That is why the cracker used that box to start with, so he couldn't be tracked. That box will be your best evidence for defense (hoping you had enough sense not to reformat it.) Curt Purdy CISSP, GSEC, MCSE+I, CNE, CCDA Information Security Engineer DP Solutions [EMAIL PROTECTED] 936.637.7977 ext. 121 ---------------------------------------- If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, you will be hacked. What's more, you deserve to be hacked. -- White House cybersecurity adviser Richard Clarke -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Mark Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 10:39 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [inbox] [Full-Disclosure] Reacting to a server compromise Hello list, In light of the current state of the internet with the DCOM vuln, I would like to ask for some advice on a situation I had at work. A little while ago(but before the DCOM vuln was released) I had a Win2k box hacked. The box was outside our firewall, running minimal services(ftp/www/smtp - gateway only) and was set to download/install everything it could via Auto-updates. Apparently I didn't reboot it often enough for all of the updates to take effect. Personally I really don't care how the hacker got in, as the box has now been replaced with a hardened Linux server, and when the attacker had control, they were still outside our firewall. The attacker created a user account with admin privs, installed a trojan, disabled all network access to any users except this new account, and proceeded to hack other vulnerable NT machines out on the net. I found a list of about 100 IPs with usernames and passwords that were either blank or the same as the username. My question is: Do I report this, and run the risk of the Feds charging me because these attacks originated from my subnet? Do I inform the owners of the machines that were hacked that their systems have been compromised? Judging from the usernames, some of these machines belonged to doctors offices, and may contain sensitive information. Or should I just have a nice cup of STFU, and pretend nothing happened? Before the flames start about how I'm such a lazy admin, I'd like you to know that I'm a developer full-time for a small company with a small budget and I manage the network with my "free" time. Yes it was stupid to stick a windows box out on the net without a firewall. I tell people all the time the same thing, maybe I'm just a sadist that likes watching M$ boxes get hacked, I don't know. But in that instance I really didn't care. I'd appreciate any comments anyone has.... Thanks, Mark _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html
