Papers published in March 2015


Editor: Martijn Grooten

Script in a lossy stream

Dénes Óvári describes a PoC file that demonstrates a new way to store data in PDF files.

Dénes Óvári - CSIS, Denmark

 VBSpam comparative review March 2015

This VBSpam test completes six full years of VB's comparative anti-spam testing. Sixteen full solutions and a number of DNS-based blacklists were submitted on this occasion, and all but one of the full solutions achieved a VBSpam award, with seven of them achieving a VBSpam+ award. Martijn Grooten has the details.

Martijn Grooten - Virus Bulletin, UK

VB2014 paper: Leaving our ZIP undone: how to abuse ZIP to deliver malware apps

Both Android and Java malware, delivered via ZIP-based packages, have reached high volumes in the wild, and continue to grow at a rapid rate. In his VB2014 paper, Gregory Panakkal explores the ZIP file format, focusing specifically on APK files as handled by the Android OS. He also explores new malformations that can be applied to APK files to break typical AV engine unarchiving, thus bypassing content scanning, while keeping the APK valid for the Android OS.

Gregory R. Panakkal - K7 Computing, India

Windows 10 patching process may leave enterprises vulnerable to zero-day attacks

Microsoft recently announced its new patch roll-out strategy for the latest incarnation of the Windows operating system. Aryeh Goretsky considers how the Windows 10 patching process might affect both the enterprise and the home user.

Aryeh Goretsky - ESET, USA

Dylib hijacking on OS X

DLL hijacking is a well known class of attack which, until now, was believed only to affect Windows. However, in this paper, Patrick Wardle shows that OS X is similarly vulnerable to dynamic library hijack attacks.

Patrick Wardle - Synack, USA

 

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.