Category: malware

  • Autorun malware

    There seems to be a lot of confusion out there about this topic, so I’ll try to provide here some high-quality technical information to help users / sysadmins out. What is autorun malware? Autorun malware is malware which uses the autorun feature present in Microsoft Windows as a way to spread itself. This might or…

  • Why prevention (rather than cure) is a must for the malware problem?

    Lately I have seen a movement towards the idea that you can’t prevent security problems, so you should do your best to detect and eliminate them. While I agree with this in the general sense, it is clear that a very strong tendency in malware evolution nowdays is to make it both as stealth as…

  • 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…

  • Living off of the hype

    Disclaimer: I work for a competitor, however this is my personal opinion and does not necessarily represent the views of any of my past or future employers. So tell me, what does F-Secure exactly contribute to the malware fighting effort? Sure, they have a blog and a chief researcher who has an opinion about everything…

  • 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…

  • Mobile malware – hype or not?

    I’m not entirely dead yet, just very busy 🙂 Anyway, I came across this blog posting (Mobile Virus FUD) which in turns references this article about Kaspersky Labs (not the one at heise security as I stated – erroneously – before). Before we continue, a disclaimer: the views and opinions expressed here are my own…