Virus Bulletin - March 2012


Editor: Helen Martin

Technical Consultant: John Hawes

Technical Editor: Morton Swimmer

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

2012-03-01


Comment

Why you need to hack yourself

'Companies and governments need to hack themselves first.' Jeremiah Grossman, WhiteHat Security.

Jeremiah Grossman - WhiteHat Security, USA

News

Certification group announced

Collaboration aims to promote the benefits of formal cybersecurity training and certification.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Advanced stealth techniques used to avoid detection

Damballa reports on stealth techniques used by six malware families to evade detection.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Malware prevalence report

January 2012

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 analyses

Not ‘Mifeve’-ourite thing

MATLAB may not be the first platform that comes to mind when talking about viruses, but with its vast collection of mathematical functions it lends itself to all kinds of problem-solving mischief. Peter Ferrie details the MLS/Mifeve virus.

Peter Ferrie - Microsoft, USA

DroidDream mobile malware

DroidDream is a fully fledged mobile bot once a mobile device is rooted, with the ability to install applications of choice, navigate to websites, add bookmarks to the browser, manipulate text and voice messages, and communicate with a remote command and control server. John Foremost takes a closer look.

John Foremost - Independent researcher, USA

Addendum

Addendum to ‘Static analysis of mobile malware’

Addendum.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Spotlights

What is DMARC and should you care?

In early February, a new security project known as DMARC (Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) hit the headlines. The project involves some of the best known companies on the Internet and attempts to reduce email-based abuse by solving a couple of long-standing issues related to email authentication protocols. John Levine - who is, among other things, the designated liaison between DMARC and MAAWG - has all the details.

John Levine - Taughannock Networks, USA

NCSC: public-private cooperation is key

The Dutch National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) was officially opened in January. Wout de Natris looks at how the Dutch government aims to achieve a safe, open and stable information society, with a focus on public-private cooperation.

Wout de Natris - De Natris Consult, The Netherlands

Comparative review

VBSpam comparative review March 2012

This month's VBSpam test saw a deterioration in most products' performance compared to the previous test. Martijn Grooten has the details.

Martijn Grooten - Virus Bulletin, UK

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.