Virus Bulletin - August 2008


Editor: Helen Martin

Technical Consultant: John Hawes

Technical Editor: Morton Swimmer

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

2008-08-01


Comment

The secret life of old malware

'It may even come to pass that an entire class of malware gets forgotten because they are rarely heard of any longer.' Kurt Wismer.

Kurt Wismer - Independent author, USA

News

VB2008 - call for last-minute papers

VB seeks last-minute technical papers for VB2008 in Ottawa.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Neosploit business wound up

Infection kit no longer profitable.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Security companies splash out

New acquisitions for Sophos and Aladdin.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Malware prevalence report

June 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.


Rootkit analysis

‘Yet another Rustock analysis ...’

Lukasz Kwiatek and Stanislaw Litawa take a detailed look at Rustock.C.

Lukasz Kwiatek - ESET, Poland & Stanislaw Litawa - ESET, Poland

Features

The case for AV for Linux: Linux/Rst-B

A high prevalence of Linux/Rst-B seen recently on hacked Linux boxes is not due to ingenious spreading mechanisms or Linux users swapping binaries, but due to a proliferation of infected hacking tools. Billy McCourt has the details of this real, in-the-wild Linux threat.

Billy McCourt - Sophos, UK

Improving heuristics

Heuristic detection can provide valuable assistance to help security analysts in achieving zero-day malware detection. Newaz Rafiq and Yida Mao discuss a novel heuristic detection technique with a high level of accuracy and a high level of adaptability to meet the challenge of new malware.

Newaz Rafiq - Zheng Group, Paretologic, Canada & Yida Mao - Zheng Group, Paretologic, Canada

Comparative review

VB100 August 2008 - Windows XP Service Pack 3

With a new set of samples to measure detection against, a new platform on new hardware and a selection of new products in the mix, John Hawes had his work cut out in this comparative review on Windows XP SP3.

John Hawes - Virus Bulletin

Calendar

Anti-malware industry events

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


Spam Bulletin

Spam Supplement - August 2008

Anti-spam news; Evading CAPTCHA (feature)


 

Latest articles:

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Cryptojacking on the fly: TeamTNT using NVIDIA drivers to mine cryptocurrency

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Fighting Fire with Fire

In 1989, Joe Wells encountered his first virus: Jerusalem. He disassembled the virus, and from that moment onward, was intrigued by the properties of these small pieces of self-replicating code. Joe Wells was an expert on computer viruses, was partly…

Run your malicious VBA macros anywhere!

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