Virus Bulletin - March 2010


Editor: Helen Martin

Technical Consultant: John Hawes

Technical Editor: Morton Swimmer

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

2010-03-01


Comment

Why flash web pages are like collateralized debt obligations

‘We're wasting more time than ever dealing with malware that is more hostile than ever.’ John Levine, Taughannock Networks.

John Levine - Taughannock Networks, USA

News

HMRC addresses security

Security to be prioritized to prevent future data losses.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Microsoft tackles Waledac

Software giant wins court order to take down botnet command and control centres.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Mcafee growth plan unveiled

Three to four acquisitions planned per year.

Helen Martin - Virus Bulletin, UK

Malware prevalence report

January 2010

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

Doin’ the eagle rock

If a file contains no code, can it be executed? Can arithmetic operations be malicious? In W32/Lerock we have a file that contains no code, and no data in any meaningful sense. All it contains is a block of relocation items. Peter Ferrie untangles the mystery.

Peter Ferrie - Microsoft, USA

BackDoor.Tdss.565 and its modifications (aka TDL3)

New BackDoor.Tdss rootkits are sophisticated pieces of malware. Alexey Tkachenko and Artem Baranov detail the BackDoor.Tdss.565 rootkit - which presented surprises within minutes of the start of its analysis.

Alexey Tkachenko - Doctor Web, Russia & Artem Baranov - Doctor Web, Russia

Conference report

The 26C3 Congress of the Chaos Computer Club

Morton Swimmer reports on the information fest at the 26th Congress of the Chaos Computer Club.

Morton Swimmer - Trend Micro, USA

Tutorial

Memory analysis - examples

Following last month's introduction to memory analysis, Ken Dunham walks through the process using Haxdoor as an example.

Ken Dunham - iSIGHT Partners, USA

Product review

CA Internet Security Suite Plus 2010

The VB test team took a closer look at CA's latest product for the home market. John Hawes has the details.

John Hawes - Virus Bulletin, UK

Comparative review

VBSpam comparative review

VB is delighted to report that, for the first time, all 16 of the products in this month's test earned VBSpam certification. Martijn Grooten has all 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

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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…

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