Virus Bulletin - September 2007

Editor: Helen Martin

Technical Consultant: John Hawes

Technical Editor: Morton Swimmer

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

2007-09-01

Abstract

AV is alive and well (comment); The life cycle of bots (feature); Friendly whitelisting and other innovations: a response (opinion); Viva Las Vegas! (conference report); OpenOffice security and viral risk (technical feature); BitDefender Total Security 2008 (product review)

Comment

AV is alive and well

'Both the disease and the cure now differ significantly from their original forms.' David Emm, Kaspersky Lab.

David Emm - Kaspersky Lab, UK

News

Unsafe computing in abundance

Reports and statistics on unsafe computing.

Malware prevalence report

July 2007

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.

Feature

The life cycle of bots

Having spent a lot of time thoroughly analysing how bots work – studying the overall bot ‘ecosystem’ as well as the individual files, Luis Corrons has noted that they've achieved a certain level of autonomy, in such a way that they almost have a life of their own. We are still a little way from Skynet, but it is only a matter of time...

Luis Corrons - Panda Security, Spain

Opinion

Friendly whitelisting and other innovations: a response

Chief Security Officer for Bit9, Ian Poynter continues the conversation started last month by Dr Vesselin Bontchev about whitelisting as an endpoint security technology, and explores some of the questions he raised.

Ian Poynter - Bit9 Inc. , USA

Conference report

Viva Las Vegas!

VB sent roving reporters (aka anti-virus miscreants) Andrew Lee and David Perry to the Nevada desert for five days of non-stop hardcore computer security at the Black Hat Briefings and hacker convention DEFCON 15. Andrew Lee reports on Black Hat, and David Perry rounds up the fun and games (and serious business) at DEFCON.

Andrew Lee - ESET , UK & David Perry - Trend Micro, USA

Technical feature