Category: blog
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VB2014 paper: Smart home appliance security and malware
Jeongwook Oh demonstrates how to hack a Samsung smart TV. Over the next few months, we will be sharing VB2014 conference papers as well as video recordings of the presentations. Today, we have added ‘Smart home appliance security and malware’, by HP researcher Jeongwook Oh. The (in)security of the Internet of Things (IoT) is a…
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Virus Bulletin is hiring
VB seeks a Perl Developer / Security Engineer. 2014 has been an exciting year for Virus Bulletin : we went through some personnel changes , made all of our content freely available , and ran our best attended conference thus far. Behind the scenes, we have also been working on some other exciting things such…
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Conference report: VB2014
The biggest and broadest ranging Virus Bulletin conference ever was a great success. There is a Dutch expression that says that you shouldn’t trust a butcher who judges his own meat. Perhaps then, when the Virus Bulletin Editor says that the Virus Bulletin conference was really good, you should take these words with a pinch…
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VB2014 paper: Labelling spam through the analysis of protocol patterns
What do your IP packet sizes say about whether you’re a spammer? Over the next few months, we will be sharing VB2014 conference papers as well as video recordings of the presentations. Today, we have added ‘Labelling spam through the analysis of protocol patterns’ by Bitdefender researchers Andrei Husanu and Alexandru Trifan. Machines sending spam…
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Detekt tool searches PCs for traces of surveillance spyware
Second opinion essential in circumstances under which likely victims operate. Last week, the release of the free ‘ Detekt ‘ tool was announced. Developed by Claudio Guarnieri and released in partnership with organizations including Amnesty International and the Electronic Frontier Foundation , the tool scans Windows computers for traces of government surveillance spyware. The tool…
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Multi-staged, modular Regin tool enables stealthy surveillance
Nation state likely behind campaign that goes back many years. Few terms are misused in a security context as often as the term ‘advanced’, perhaps in part because the industry doesn’t like to admit that most of the threats we’re facing aren’t particularly advanced. Yet for the ‘Regin’ espionage tool, which Symantec wrote about yesterday…
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VB2014 paper: Sweeping the IP space: the hunt for evil on the Internet
Dhia Mahjoub explains how the topology of the AS graph can be used to uncover hotspots of maliciousness. Over the next few months, we will be sharing VB2014 conference papers as well as video recordings of the presentations. Today, we have added ‘Sweeping the IP space: the hunt for evil on the Internet’ by OpenDNS…
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Botconf 2014 preview
Many VB authors and presenters to speak at second botnet-fighting conference. Last year, I attended the first edition of ‘ Botconf ‘ in the French city of Nantes. I really enjoyed the conference, so I am looking forward to the second edition , which will take place in less than two weeks’ time in Nancy,…
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Report: VB100 comparative review on Windows 8.1
40 out of 48 tested products earn VB100 award. If you follow the security news, you may believe that all you have to worry about are nation states using zero-day vulnerabilities to infiltrate networks and computers with stealth malware. The reality is, of course, more complicated, and if this is indeed your biggest worry, your…
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Out-of-band patch released for all Windows versions
Kerberos bug means one set of credentials suffices to rule them all. If you are a Windows systems administrator, the content of this blog post will (hopefully) not come as a surprise. If it does, you should finish reading it quickly and make some time to apply the out-of-band patch MS14-068 to all Windows systems…