VB Blog

First sponsors of VB2017 announced

Posted by Martijn Grooten on Mar 6, 2017

We are excited to announce the first five sponsors of VB2017, companies based in Europe, Asia and North America.

Posted by Martijn Grooten on Feb 27, 2017

A recent paper showed that many HTTPS-intercepting security solutions have implemented TLS rather poorly. Does that mean we should avoid such solutions altogether?

Posted by Martijn Grooten on Feb 23, 2017

Researchers from Google and CWI Amsterdam have created the first known collision of the SHA-1 hashing algorithm, making a very strong case to ditch it.

Posted by Helen Martin on Feb 23, 2017

VB was saddened to learn this week of the passing of one of the pioneers of the AV industry, Ross Greenberg. This Throwback Thursday we look back at an interview with Ross in November 1995.

Posted by Martijn Grooten on Feb 20, 2017

Have you analysed a new online threat? Do you know a new way to defend against such threats? Then submit an abstract in the CFP for VB2017!

Posted by Martijn Grooten on Feb 17, 2017

APT reports are great for gaining an understanding of how advanced attack groups operate - however, they can also provide free QA for the threat actors. Today, we publish a VB2016 paper by Gadi Evron (Cymmetria) and Inbar Raz (Perimeter X), who discuss what they think is wrong with many APT reports and what can be done to improve them.

Posted by Martijn Grooten on Feb 14, 2017

Industry veteran Mikko Hyppönen recently urged would-be security researchers to ditch their favourite pop music and listen to security podcasts on their commute to work instead. Virus Bulletin Editor Martijn Grooten shares his favourite security podcasts.

Posted by Martijn Grooten on Feb 10, 2017

In a presentation at VB2016, Patrick Wardle, Director of Research at Synack, discussed the possibilities of Mac malware recording the user via the webcam. Today, we publish the video of Patrick's presentation.

Posted by Martijn Grooten on Feb 9, 2017

Virus Bulletin Editor Martijn Grooten calls for the security community not to forget those most vulnerable in the digital world, including political activists living under oppressive regimes, and victims of abuse.

Posted by Helen Martin on Feb 9, 2017

In early 1991, the world was a troubled place and conflict and violence were being reported globally on a daily basis. With this as a backdrop, the world of "indiscriminate" computer viruses which "victimise in a random and unpredictable manner" seemed relatively trivial to then Editor of VB, Edward Wilding.

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VB2017 video: Consequences of bad security in health care

Jelena Milosevic, a nurse with a passion for IT security, is uniquely placed to witness poor security practices in the health care sector, and to fully understand the consequences. Today, we publish the recording of a presentation given by Jelena at VB201…
"You are probably asking yourselves what a nurse is doing at a cybersecurity conference. Trust me, my colleagues are even more surprised, because they truly believe that hospitals… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2017/11/vb2017-video-consequences-bad-security-health-care/

Vulnerabilities play only a tiny role in the security risks that come with mobile phones

Both bad news (all devices were pwnd) and good news (pwning is increasingly difficult) came from the most recent mobile Pwn2Own competition. But the practical security risks that come with using mobile phones have little to do with vulnerabilities.
Last week saw yet another successful edition of Mobile Pwn2Own, the contest in which participants are challenged to attack fully patched mobile devices using previously unknown… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2017/11/vulnerabilities-play-only-tiny-role-security-risks-come-mobile-phones/

VB2017 paper: The (testing) world turned upside down

At VB2017 in Madrid, industry veteran and ESET Senior Research Fellow David Harley presented a paper on the state of security software testing. Today we publish David's paper in both HTML and PDF format.
Few subjects are as hotly debated within the security community as the testing of security software. Virus Bulletin has been at the core of many of these debates, both as a… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2017/11/vb2017-paper-testing-world-turned-upside-down/

VB2017 video: Turning Trickbot: decoding an encrypted command-and-control channel

Trickbot, a banking trojan which appeared this year, seems to be a new, more modular, and more extensible malware descendant of the notorious Dyre botnet trojan. At VB2017, Symantec researcher Andrew Brandt presented a walkthrough of a typical Trickbot in…
Trickbot, first reported a year ago by Malwarebytes researcher Jérôme Segura as the successor of Dyre/Dyreza, has become perhaps the most important banking trojan of 2017. It is… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2017/11/vb2017-video-turning-trickbot-decoding-encrypted-command-and-control-channel/

November

https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2017/11/

Paper: FAME - Friendly Malware Analysis Framework

Today, we publish a short paper in which CERT Société Générale presents FAME, its open source malware analysis framework.
As someone who spends most of his time talking to people who work for security vendors, I am always impressed by the amount of security research that takes place in the real… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2017/11/paper-fame-friendly-malware-analysis-framework/

Ebury and Mayhem server malware families still active

Ebury and Mayhem, two families of Linux server malware, about which VB published papers back in 2014, are still active and have received recent updates.
Whether it is to send spam or to redirect web traffic to malicious payloads, compromised (Linux) web servers are the glue in many a malware campaign. Two such networks of… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2017/10/ebury-and-mayhem-server-malware-families-still-active/

VB2017 paper: Crypton - exposing malware's deepest secrets

Crypton, a tool developed by F5 Networks researchers Julia Karpin and Anna Dorfman, aims to speed up the reverse engineering process by decrypting encrypted content found in a (malicious) binary. The researchers described the tool in a paper which they pr…
Computer scientists are notorious for a specific kind of laziness: the kind of laziness that makes them work really hard in order to avoid some other, often more boring, hard… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2017/10/vb2017-paper/

VB2017 paper: The sprawling market of consumer spyware

For many people, the threat of an abusive partner or ex-partner is very real - and the market for consumer spyware worryingly large. Today, we publish the recording of a presentation on the subject of consumer spyware given at VB2017 by The Daily Beast re…
Nation states, criminals and bored teenagers are the various kinds of adversaries the security community is used to facing, and they are all well understood. There is one type of… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2017/10/vb2017-paper-sprawling-market-consumer-spyware/

Gábor Szappanos wins fourth Péter Szőr Award

At the VB2017 gala dinner, the fourth Péter Szőr Award was presented to Sophos researcher Gábor Szappanos for his paper "AKBuilder – the crowdsourced exploit kit".
Every year, during the Virus Bulletin Conference gala dinner, we celebrate the life and works of Péter Szőr, the brilliant security researcher who passed away so sadly in 2013. We… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2017/10/gabor-szappanos-wins-fourth-peter-szor-award/

VB2017 paper: Walking in your enemy's shadow: when fourth-party collection becomes attribution hell

We publish the VB2017 paper and video by Kaspersky Lab researchers Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade and Costin Raiu, in which they look at fourth-party collection (spies spying on other spies' campaigns) and its implications for attribution.
Of all the possible targets for digital spies, there is one particularly attractive target that doesn't get a lot of attention: that of other espionage campaigns. Yet this kind… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2017/10/vb2017-paper-walking-your-enemys-shadow-when-fourth-party-collection-becomes-attribution-hell/

Didn't come to VB2017? Tell us why!

Virus Bulletin is a company - and a conference - with a mission: to further the research in and facilitate the fight against digital threats. To help us in this mission, we want to hear from those who didn't come to Madrid. What is your impression of the …
Last week, hundreds of security researchers from around the world gathered in Madrid for VB2017, the 27th Virus Bulletin International Conference. Every year, we… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2017/10/didnt-come-vb2017-tell-us-why/

Montreal will host VB2018

Last week, we announced the full details of VB2018, which will take place 3-5 October 2018 at the Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth hotel in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Last week, at the end of the very successful 27th Virus Bulletin conference, we announced the location for VB2018, the 28th Virus Bulletin conference, which will take place 3 to 5… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2017/10/montreal-announced-location-vb2018/

VB2017 preview: Beyond lexical and PDNS (guest blog)

In a special guest blog post, VB2017 Silver sponsor Cisco Umbrella writes about a paper that researchers Dhia Mahjoub and David Rodriguez will present at the conference this Friday.
In this special guest blog post, VB2017 Silver sponsor Cisco Umbrella writes about a paper that researchers Dhia Mahjoub and David Rodriguez will present at the conference this… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2017/10/vb2017-preview-beyond-lexical-and-pdns-guest-blog/

Avast to present technical details of CCleaner hack at VB2017

The recently discovered malicious CCleaner version has become one of the biggest security stories of 2017. Two researchers from Avast, the company that had recently acquired CCleaner developer Piriform, will share the results of their investigations at VB…
The recently discovered malicious CCleaner version has become one of the biggest security stories of 2017. It is the story of a mysterious attacker who managed to put a backdoor… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2017/10/avast-present-technical-details-ccleaner-hack-vb2017/

VB2017 preview: Walking in your enemy's shadow: when fourth-party collection becomes attribution hell

We preview the VB2017 paper by Kaspersky Lab researchers Juan Andrés Guerrero-Saade and Costin Raiu on fourth-party collection and its implications for attack attribution.
"We heard you like popping boxes, so we popped your box so we can watch while you watch" Two years ago, Juan Andrés Guerrero-Saade of Kaspersky Lab's GReAT team gave a… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2017/10/vb2017-preview-walking-your-enemys-shadow-when-fourth-party-collection-becomes-attribution-hell/

October

https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2017/10/

VB2017 preview: Offensive malware analysis: dissecting OSX/FruitFly.B via a custom C&C server

We preview Patrick Wardle's VB2017 paper, in which the Synack researcher analyses the mysterious OSX/FruitFly malware by setting up a custom C&C server.
Apart from the odd taxi driver loudly making the claim, the idea that "Macs don't get malware" has become something of the past. Nevertheless, most security researchers focus on… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2017/09/vb2017-preview-offensive-malware-analysis-dissecting-osxfruitfly-custom-cc-server/

VB2017 - information for press

More than 50 security industry experts will present conference papers to their peers at VB2017 next week, and there are several papers on the programme with a certain newsworthiness. There is still time for cybersecurity journalists to apply for a press p…
Next week, security researchers from around the world will gather in Madrid for VB2017, the 27th International Virus Bulletin Conference. More than 50 security industry experts… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2017/09/vb2017-information-press/

VB2017 preview: BPH exposed - RBN never left they just adapted and evolved. Did you?

We preview the VB2017 paper by Dhia Mahjoub (OpenDNS) and Jason Passwaters (Intel471) who combine an actor-centric and a network-centric approach to analysing bulletproof hosting operations.
Running a cybercriminal enterprise isn't all that easy. Try, for instance, setting up a site hosting malware and you'll find that sooner or later the provider will suspend your… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2017/09/vb2017-preview-bph-exposed-rbn-never-left-they-just-adapted-and-evolved-did-you/

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