Virus Bulletin - March 2009


Editor: Helen Martin

Technical Consultant: John Hawes

Technical Editor: Morton Swimmer

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

2009-03-01


Comment

Weathering the storm

'[There is] an indication that IT security budgets are being prioritized even while other business areas are seeing cuts.’ Helen Martin, Virus Bulletin

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

News

Surveillance chief and AV firm accused of corruption

Rumblings of shady deals, bribery and underhand tactics in Chinese AV market.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Hacker in demand

Romanian hacker impresses Italian authorities with intellect.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Malware prevalence report

January 2009

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 four

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 that target the Syser debugger.

Peter Ferrie - Microsoft, USA

Virus analysis

Confounded Conficker

For the last couple of months the worm known as Conficker.B (aka Downadup) has been causing havoc and keeping IT administrators awake at night as well as receiving a lot of attention from AV researchers. Vincent Tiu provides some details about this interesting piece of malware.

Vincent Tiu - Microsoft, USA

Book review

Never mind having fun: are we safe yet?

David Harley reviews Michael Miller's 'Is it safe?' and finds a book that’s largely accurate and well written - a relative rarity for a book on computer security.

David Harley - Eset

Product review

Rising Internet Security 2009

Rising is one of China’s most venerable security firms, having produced its first anti-virus products as long ago as 1991. As the company begins to build a presence outside its home territory, John Hawes takes a detailed look at flagship product Rising Internet Security.

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 - March 2009

Anti-spam news; is there any hope for e-postage? (feature); Anti-spam test - first trial run (comparative review)


 

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