Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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VB2019 paper: Never before had Stierlitz been so close to failure (or: what is a Soviet super-spy doing in a popular bundleware for Mac?)
Over the years, many ‘potentially unwanted applications’ have plagued macOS in the same way they have plagued other platforms. Though anti-virus isn’t ubiquitous on Macs, detecting such PUAs usually isn’t a difficult problem. However, there are exceptions. One such exception is a popular yet unnamed piece of ‘bundleware’ that was analysed by Sophos researcher Sergei…
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Parting thoughts 5: bringing the good news
At the end of this month, I will step down as Editor of Virus Bulletin. Before doing so, I have been sharing some ‘parting thoughts’ in five blog posts, based on my experience working in the IT security industry. This is the final post in the series, the previous ones were: ‘ cybersecurity as a…
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Parting thoughts 4: the big picture
At the end of this month, I will step down as Editor of Virus Bulletin. Before I do so, I will share some ‘parting thoughts’ in five blog posts, based on my experience working in the IT security industry. Last week, Microsoft published a report on what it calls ‘GALLIUM’, an attack targeting telecom providers…
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Parting thoughts 3: taking security seriously
At the end of this month, I will step down as Editor of Virus Bulletin. Before I do so, I will share some ‘parting thoughts’ in five blog posts, based on my experience working in the IT security industry. ‘Cyber terror threat!’ was the headline of a press release a security vendor’s marketing team sent…
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VB2019 paper: Exploring the Chinese DDoS landscape
China has long been a hotbed of DDoS activities, with several groups operating in this space and attacks being performed that are criminal in nature but also that are in line with the country’s geopolitical interests. In a paper presented a VB2019 in London, Intezer researcher Nacho Sanmillan explored the Chinese DDoS threat landscape. In…
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Parting thoughts 2: the need for education in security
At the end of this month, I will step down as Editor of Virus Bulletin. Before I do so, I will share some ‘parting thoughts’ in five blog posts, based on my experience working in the IT security industry. Education has long been an important part of security: from security evangelists giving security advice in…
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VB2019 paper: Absolutely routed!! Why routers are the new bullseye in cyber attacks
Given their prominent position on home and corporate networks and their often poor standard of security, one might be forgiven for being surprised that massive attacks against routers didn’t really take off until a few years ago. The game changer in this space is generally seen to be the Mirai IoT botnet which, together with…
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VB2020 call for papers – now open!
In the October 1990 edition of Virus Bulletin ( pdf ), then a printed monthly magazine sent to subscribers around the world by post, the very first Virus Bulletin conference was announced. Today, we open the call for papers for VB2020 , the 30th Virus Bulletin conference, which is to take place in Dublin, 30…
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VB2019 paper: Operation Soft Cell – a worldwide campaign against telecommunication providers
In June this year, Cybereason published a blog post on Operation Soft Cell, a targeted attack against telecom providers around the world. The actors behind the operation are particularly interested in Call Detail Records (CDR) for specific high-value users, which give them valuable metadata on their communication and location. Prior to publishing their blog post,…
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