Virus Bulletin - February 2010


Editor: Helen Martin

Technical Consultant: John Hawes

Technical Editor: Morton Swimmer

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

2010-02-01


Comment

SSL certificate warnings – nuisance or value?

‘[SSL certificate] warnings are a nuisance for the same reason they may help.’ Chester Wisniewski, Sophos

Chester Wisniewski - Sophos, Canada

News

Researchers paid for Chrome bugs

Google invites security researchers to probe its browser.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Phishing and scams continue to rise

Reports show phishing attacks and 419 scams are on the rise, and users continue to fall for such scams.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Malware prevalence report

December 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.


Malware analysis

Cut the Cutwail

After playing the cat-and-mouse game with AV companies for several months, the author(s) of Pushdo/Cutwail finally decided to change their advanced installer, in doing so changing the communication mechanism between the servers and bots. Kyle Yang reveals the details of the new protocol.

Kyle Yang - Fortinet, USA

Call for papers

Calling all speakers: VB2010 Vancouver

VB is seeking submissions from those wishing to present papers at VB2010 - the 20th Virus Bulletin International Conference in Vancouver.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Feature

Data tainting for malware analysis – part three

In this three-part series Florent Marceau studies the use and advantages of full virtualization in the security field. The third and final part looks at the implementation of the technology.

Florent Marceau - CERT-LEXSI, France

Tutorial

Introduction to advanced memory analysis

Advanced memory analysis allows for rapid assessment of potentially hostile executables in memory. Ken Dunham takes us through the three phases of operation in detail: triage, capture and analysis.

Ken Dunham - iSIGHT Partners, USA

Comparative review

Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11

After the last mammoth VB100 test on Windows 7, this month sees a smaller field of competitors for the less well supported Linux platform. John Hawes reports on a mixed bag of results.

John Hawes - Virus Bulletin

Calendar

Anti-malware industry events

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


 

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