Virus Bulletin - February 2011


Editor: Helen Martin

Technical Consultant: John Hawes

Technical Editor: Morton Swimmer

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

2011-02-01


Comment

How much malware is really out there?

‘For most people even a single piece of malware is too much – especially if they are currently affected by it.' Robert Sandilands, Commtouch

Robert Sandilands - Commtouch, USA

News

VB seminar: 24 May 2011

VB announces 2nd VB seminar.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Facebook spammers fined

Social network spammers get their comeuppance.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Malware prevalence report

December 2010

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

$$$_+$$+$$__+_$+$$_$+$$$_+$$_$

JJEncode is a JavaScript encoding method that produces files that contain no alphanumeric characters. A demonstration version is freely available from the author’s website, and has already been used in malware. Peter Ferrie describes how it works.

Peter Ferrie - Microsoft, USA

Technical feature

DLL hijacking

There are a few good reasons for taking another look at DLL hijacking - including the fact that we don't learn from our mistakes. Aleksander Czarnowski takes an in-depth look at the DLL hijacking story.

Aleksander P. Czarnowski - AVET INS, Poland

Tutorial

Introduction to hostile Java analysis

Fraudsters have abused Java to obfuscate attacks, hinder research and response, and maximize profits. Security experts need an understanding of common Java-based attacks and their implications in order to respond to emerging threats in the wild. Ed Jones presents an introduction to hostile Java analysis.

Ed Jones - Independent researcher, USA

Call for papers

VB2011 Barcelona

Virus Bulletin is seeking submissions from those who would like to present at VB2011 in Barcelona.


Feature

The top 10 spam, malware and cybersecurity stories of 2010

Spam, malware and general security topics all hit the headlines in 2010. Terry Zink takes a look back at the biggest newsmakers of the year.

Terry Zink - Microsoft, USA

Comparative review

VB100 Comparative review on Ubuntu Linux 10.04 LTS

This month's VB100 test on Ubuntu Linux saw a considerably more modest field of entrants than the Windows-based tests of late, and a strong batch of performances. John Hawes has the details.

John Hawes - Virus Bulletin

Calendar

Anti-malware industry events

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


 

Latest articles:

Nexus Android banking botnet – compromising C&C panels and dissecting mobile AppInjects

Aditya Sood & Rohit Bansal provide details of a security vulnerability in the Nexus Android botnet C&C panel that was exploited to compromise the C&C panel in order to gather threat intelligence, and present a model of mobile AppInjects.

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

TeamTNT is known for attacking insecure and vulnerable Kubernetes deployments in order to infiltrate organizations’ dedicated environments and transform them into attack launchpads. In this article Aditya Sood presents a new module introduced by…

Collector-stealer: a Russian origin credential and information extractor

Collector-stealer, a piece of malware of Russian origin, is heavily used on the Internet to exfiltrate sensitive data from end-user systems and store it in its C&C panels. In this article, researchers Aditya K Sood and Rohit Chaturvedi present a 360…

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!

Kurt Natvig wanted to understand whether it’s possible to recompile VBA macros to another language, which could then easily be ‘run’ on any gateway, thus revealing a sample’s true nature in a safe manner. In this article he explains how he recompiled…

We have placed cookies on your device in order to improve the functionality of this site, as outlined in our cookies policy. However, you may delete and block all cookies from this site and your use of the site will be unaffected. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to Virus Bulletin's use of data as outlined in our privacy policy.