Category: av

  • Everything is grey

    Nothing is black or white these days. Everything is grey (or gray for my US readers). Take for instance this year’s (2008) Virus Bulleting conference. The second larges sponsor (gold sponsor) is a company called ParetoLogic. Now if you look at their products page, you will see something called XoftSpySE Anti-Spyware. If you do a…

  • Race to Zero

    Disclaimer: I work for a security company. This post (and all others, unless marked explicitly otherwise) represent my own opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of my current or past employers. As expected, the announced Race to Zero competition has raised quite some stir, similar to the test performed by ConsumerReports. Here are…

  • Consider the source before ranting

    or else you could look foolish. Full disclosure: I work in the AV industry, however this post (and all of my posts, unless stated otherwise) do not necessarily reflect the opinion of my current or past employers. They are my own personal opinions / views of things. Getting back to the topic: some time ago…

  • Letting competent people do their jobs

    Firs of all – the usual disclaimer applies – this is my personal opinion, blah, blah The first positive comment to my VirusTotal uploader came in which is cool, however it brought up two issues: The fist would be: please don’t use this tool to scan your entire collection, performing a small DoS attack on…

  • Unofficial VirusTotal uploader

    Update: this script has been update and renamed to OVScan. Please use the new version. VirusTotal is a free service offered by Hispasec systems which scans the submitted files with a large number of AV engines (currently more than 30) and shows you the result. Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with them or any other…

  • The emperor is not naked!

    I was reading the SANS journal for this morning (in my time zone :-)), titled Antivirus: The emperor is naked and got a little upset (probably because it’s very hot here and I didn’t had my morning tea yet :-D). If you are like me (eg. lazy) and don’t want go over to read the…

  • How to submit suspected malware samples?

    A quick tip: if you have file(s) which you suspect that are malicious, submit them to any of the following places: VirusTotal VirScan Jotti’s malware scan Virus.Org Rogue File Scanning Service Virus Chief FilterBit NoVirusThanks Beside the fact that these sites will eliminate or enforce your suspicion (based on the number and types of detection…

  • How not to get your application signed by AV

    Disclaimer: these are my own opinions and they do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of any of my current or past employers. There is a class of applications which can be categorized as greyware: programs which can be used for both good and evil. A few examples (in no particular order): nmap, the…