Virus Bulletin - May 2008


Editor: Helen Martin

Technical Consultant: John Hawes

Technical Editor: Morton Swimmer

Consulting Editors: Ian Whalley, Nick FitzGerald, Richard Ford, Edward Wilding

2008-05-01


Comment

Online banking call to arms

'Banking organizations have failed to pledge that they will stop sending emails that add to the confusion.' Helen Martin, Virus Bulletin

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

News

Malware gets terms of use

Malware package distributed with EULA.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Grand theft personal information

Scammers exploit release of Grand Theft Auto IV.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Malware prevalence report

March 2008

The Virus Bulletin prevalence table is compiled monthly from virus reports received by Virus Bulletin; both directly, and from other companies who pass on their statistics.


Features

Algorithms for grouping similar samples in malware analysis

Malware researchers are frequently faced with huge collections of files that must be analysed to determine whether or not they are malware. In such situations, grouping the files according to their binary similarity can save time and effort. Víctor Álvarez discusses the algorithms that can be used to make the life of the malware researcher easier.

Víctor M. Álvarez - PandaLabs, Spain

Metamorphic authorship recognition using Markov models

Automated code morphing techniques can make malware recognition difficult. In this article researchers at the University of Lafayette propose a method that can be used to decide whether a binary is a variant of a known item of metamorphic malware by treating the morphing engine as an author.

Mohamed R. Chouchane - University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA, Andrew Walenstein - University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA & Arun Lakhotia - University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA

Opinion

Blended malware defence

It's a well known problem in the security industry that the time taken to get a sample to the vendor, through analysis and finally to distribute detection updates to clients, can still be much longer than it takes for the malware itself to spread. Morton Swimmer describes how the convergence of various security technologies can help accomplish the goal of spreading the cure faster than the disease.

Morton Swimmer - John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY, USA

Product review

eEye Digital Security Blink Professional 4.0

John Hawes takes an in-depth look at the security features of eEye Digital Security's Blink Professional and finds a solid package with impressive breadth of power.

John Hawes - Virus Bulletin, UK

Calendar

Anti-malware industry events

Must-attend events in the anti-malware industry - dates, locations and further details.


Spam Bulletin

Spam Supplement - May 2008

Anti-spam news; Delivering reliable protection against phishing websites (feature)


 

Latest articles:

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