Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Throwback Thursday: BGP – from route hijacking to RPKI: how vulnerable is the Internet?
Yesterday, a ‘ mysterious event ‘ involving BGP, the Internet’s border gateway protocol, led to the traffic to many popular websites being routed for around six minutes. BGP hijacks – the Internet equivalent of changing traffic direction signs – are not very common but occur more often than one would expect for a technology that is…
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Security Planner gives security advice based on your threat model
During the upcoming holiday season, many security professionals will be visiting relatives and, during their visit, being asked to fulfil the role of ad-hoc tech support. Apart from removing the Ask toolbar from their browser, this is a great opportunity to improve the security of their devices more permanently. This is also when one realizes…
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Security Planner gives security advice based on your threat model
During the upcoming holiday season, many security professionals will be visiting relatives and, during their visit, being asked to fulfil the role of ad-hoc tech support. Apart from removing the Ask toolbar from their browser, this is a great opportunity to improve the security of their devices more permanently. This is also when one realizes…
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VB2017 video: Spora: the saga continues a.k.a. how to ruin your research in a week
First discovered at the beginning of the year, the Spora ransomware has become one of of the most prominent ransomware families of 2017, especially in Russia, a region it appears to target. Spora exhibited worm-like behaviour months before the appearance of WannaCry, using .LNK files, a technique previously used by other malware. (Spora’s implementation is…
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VB2017 video: Spora: the saga continues a.k.a. how to ruin your research in a week
First discovered at the beginning of the year, the Spora ransomware has become one of of the most prominent ransomware families of 2017, especially in Russia, a region it appears to target. Spora exhibited worm-like behaviour months before the appearance of WannaCry, using .LNK files, a technique previously used by other malware. (Spora’s implementation is…
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VB2017 paper: Modern reconnaissance phase on APT – protection layer
Targeted attack campaigns involve multiple stages, the first of which consists of collecting information about the target: the reconnaissance phase. It’s an essential part of any campaign and one that often exploits that well known weakest link: the human user. At VB2017 in Madrid, Cisco Talos researchers Paul Rascagneres and Warren Mercer presented a paper…
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VB2017 paper: Modern reconnaissance phase on APT – protection layer
Targeted attack campaigns involve multiple stages, the first of which consists of collecting information about the target: the reconnaissance phase. It’s an essential part of any campaign and one that often exploits that well known weakest link: the human user. At VB2017 in Madrid, Cisco Talos researchers Paul Rascagneres and Warren Mercer presented a paper…
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VB2017 paper: Peering into spam botnets
Spam continues to be an important infection vector for many malware campaigns, but while a lot of attention is paid to the payloads delivered by these campaigns – Andrew Brandt’s VB2017 talk on Trickbot being just one of many examples – few researchers study the botnets used to send the emails. Bucking that trend are CERT…
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VB2017 paper: Peering into spam botnets
Spam continues to be an important infection vector for many malware campaigns, but while a lot of attention is paid to the payloads delivered by these campaigns – Andrew Brandt’s VB2017 talk on Trickbot being just one of many examples – few researchers study the botnets used to send the emails. Bucking that trend are CERT…
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Throwback Thursday: Anti-malware testing undercover
The testing of security products has been a hotly debated topic in the industry for at least the past two decades. It was, for instance, the topic of a popular VB2017 paper by ESET ‘s David Harley and will be the main focus of next week’s AMTSO meeting in Beijing, which Virus Bulletin will attend.…
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