All your lulz will belong to us

‘Attribution is one of the things in the IT security industry that is dropped on the floor.' Anon

Happy holidays

Happy holidays from the VB team.

Call for papers: VB2012 Dallas

Calling all speakers.

October 2011

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.

Win32/Induc.C: getting noisier in the library

The Induc virus has been spreading successfully around the world since its first appearance in 2009, but back then it didn't contain a malicious payload. However, the latest variant contains a genuinely malicious payload and additional file-infecting and propagation capabilities. Robert Lipovský has the details.

As above, Sobelow

‘Heaven’s Gate' is an undocumented feature used by the 32-bit Windows environment when running on 64-bit versions of Windows, which allows for the transition between 32-bit and 64-bit code. In August 2011, we saw the first virus to make use of it. Peter Ferrie takes a close look at W32/W64.Sobelow.

Mobile botnets for smartphones: an unfolding catastrophe?

The number of users subscribing to the voice, Internet and messaging services of cellular networks is increasing exponentially worldwide and the potential development of cellular botnets poses a serious threat. Hasan Ijaz and colleagues present a functional cellular botnet for Symbian smartphones with an efficient and effective command and control centre.

Book Worm

In 'Worm: The First Digital World War', Mark Bowden writes about the team who worked together to combat the Conficker worm, focusing on some of the principal players in the Conficker Working Group and on their stories over the nine months of Conficker’s activity. Paul Baccas reviews the book.

VB100 Comparative review on Windows 7 Professional

This month's VB100 test saw some major changes and a radical overhaul of the VB100 test methodology - for the first time allowing products to use their 'cloud' look-up systems. John Hawes has all the details.

Anti-malware industry events

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