Bulletin

Number of mobile malware samples approaches 10k

McAfee reports a striking increase in the number of malware samples seen since the start of the year.

Malicious attachments peak mid-week

FireEye reports a weekly pattern in the number of malicious email attachments in circulation.

Andromeda botnet

Neo Tan (Fortinet)

The Andromeda botnet recruits its bots thanks to four key elements - compromised websites, an exploit kit, a downloader and a mailing engine - linked by four sequential phases. Neo Tan takes a closer look.

Like a bat out of hell

A polymorphic batch file appears to be a holy grail to some virus writers, perhaps because of how insanely difficult it is to produce one. In spite (or perhaps because) of the challenges, one virus writer has managed it with BAT/Lymer. Peter Ferrie…

evilMule in kernel mode – an analysis of the network functionality of Sirefef

Chun Feng (Microsoft)

Win32/Sirefef (a.k.a. ZeroAccess) is one of the most prevalent threats in the wild today. Its main component is a kernel-mode driver, which implements a kernel-mode P2P file distribution system to deploy new malware components and upgrade existing…

AV: Mind the gap

‘Has AV run its course and is it time to move on?’ Chad Loeven, Silicium Security

Malware design strategies for circumventing detection and prevention controls – part one

Aditya Sood and Richard Enbody discuss some of the different techniques that are used by present-day malware to circumvent protection mechanisms.

Mobile banking vulnerability: Android repackaging threat

Seolwoo Joo (AhnLab)

From a security point of view, Android's openness is one of its down sides. Researchers Seolwoo Joo and Changyeon Hwang show how a repackaged mobile banking app can be used to steal users' banking credentials.

Flashback cash

Flashback botnet estimated to have generated $10,00 per day.

Religion riskier than pornography

Symantec threat report suggests religious sites more likely to be infected than pornographic sites.