Virus Bulletin - February 2009


Editor: Helen Martin

Technical Consultant: John Hawes

Technical Editor: Morton Swimmer

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

2009-02-01


Comment

To run or not to run? That’s the question

'Do media players, Sat Navs, SD cards or external hard drives make legitimate use of AutoRun?' Roel Schouwenberg, Kaspersky Lab, USA.

Roel Schouwenberg - Kaspersky Lab, USA

News

Dismissed employee pleads not guilty to planting malware

Contractor accused of leaving malicious script as parting gift to US mortgage firm Fanny Mae.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Google confesses to human error

Search engine giant apologises for temporarily labelling every site a danger.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Malware prevalence report

December 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.


Technical feature

Anti-unpacker tricks – part three

New anti-unpacking tricks continue to be developed as the older ones are constantly being defeated. In this series of articles Peter Ferrie describes some tricks that might become common in the future, along with some countermeasures. This month's article concentrates on anti-debugging tricks.

Peter Ferrie - Microsoft, USA

Call for papers

VB2009 Geneva: call for papers

Calling all speakers.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Opinion

It’s time for a change

James Wolfe calls for more scientific research, innovation and a change in the methodologies used in the fight against malware.

James Wolfe - Independent researcher, USA

Conference report

CCC 25C3

Upon leaving the 25th Chaos Communication Congress, Morton Swimmer concluded that 2009 is going to be a very interesting year – but not in a good way. Here he provides a full round up of the research presented at the event.

Morton Swimmer - Trend Micro, USA

Comparative review - prologue

VB RAP testing

This month sees the introduction of a new testing format to VB’s bi-monthly VB100 comparative review – RAP testing (Reactive And Proactive) will provide deeper insight into products' ability to keep up with the flood of new malware as well as their proactive detection capabilities. John Hawes has all the details.

John Hawes - Virus Bulletin, UK

Comparative review

VB100 February 2009 - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2

This month sees the VB100's annual visit to the Linux platform, as well as the introduction of a brand new set of tests that will provide deeper insight into products' ability to keep up with the flood of new malware as well as their proactive detection capabilities. John Hawes has all the details.

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 - February 2009

Anti-spam news; Anti-spam testing: frequently given answers (comparative review - prologue)


 

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