Tag: conference
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VB2019 presentation: Building secure sharing systems that treat humans as features not bugs
There are certain paradigms that continue to permeate information security: Humans are the weakest link in security. Always assume breach. Privacy is dead. And along with these paradigms goes the tendency to lock down data. But rather than making our systems more secure this actually weakens our defences by curtailing innovation and collaboration. Andrea Limbago…
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VB2019 presentation: Attor: spy platform with curious GSM fingerprinting
Attor is a newly discovered cyber-espionage platform, use of which dates back to at least 2014 and which focuses on diplomatic missions and governmental institutions. The modular malware searches specifically for TrueCrypt ‑protected hard drives and the processes of specific VPN applications, suggesting a special interest in security-focused users. The most notable plug-in is one…
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VB2019 paper: The cake is a lie! Uncovering the secret world of malware-like cheats in video games
With more than 2.5 billion gamers around the world, the video gaming industry has overtaken all other entertainment categories in size and revenue. But in tandem with the boom in video gaming has arisen a growing illegal economy: that of video game cheats and hacks. Gaming communities are riddled with messages complaining about the increasing…
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VB2019 paper: Rich headers: leveraging the mysterious artifact of the PE format
When analysing malware, especially if it’s new and rare, researchers look for every possible clue that could give them details on the context and perhaps help them find similar samples. One such clue could be what has been called ‘rich headers’, an undocumented chunk of data inside PE files. In a paper presented at VB2019…
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VB2019 paper: Medical IoT for diabetes and cybercrime
It is estimated that between 8% and 9% of the population worldwide suffers with some form of diabetes. People with type 1 diabetes typically have to measure their blood glucose levels several times a day and adjust their treatment according to the results. Traditionally, this has been done by means of the person pricking their…
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VB2019 paper: King of the hill: nation-state counterintelligence for victim deconfliction
Past Virus Bulletin conference papers (co-)written by Juan Andrés Guerrero-Saade, such as those on fourth-party collection or false flags , have become legendary and continue to be cited across the industry. At VB2019 in London, ‘JAGS’ was back. Now Research Tsar at Chronicle , he looked at an interesting use case for threat intelligence: nation-state…
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The VB2020 call for papers – how it works
We recently opened the call for papers for VB2020 , which is to take place 30 September to 2 October in Dublin, Ireland. The deadline for the call for papers is Sunday 15 March . We are often asked how the selection procedure works, and since we believe in transparency, and since an explanation of…
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VB2019 presentation: Targeted attacks through ISPs
In 2019 we saw an increase in the number of targeted malware infections spread via ISPs and service providers. Some notable cases included the installation of digital certificates in the target’s browser, which would help the attackers to distinguish and decrypt traffic, and the spread of malware via HTTP 307 redirects by the StrongPity group.…
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VB2019 presentation: A deep dive into iPhone exploit chains
One of the biggest security stories of 2019 was the use of advanced iOS and Android exploit chains against China’s Uighur minority, first uncovered by Google ’s Project Zero with more details supplied by Volexity . In a last-minute presentation at VB2019 in London, John Bambenek of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign discussed details…
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VB2019 paper: Catch me if you can: detection of injection exploitation by validating query and API integrity
Any web app that relies on some kind of user input is potentially vulnerable to some kind of command injection, be it MySQL, NoSQL or OS command injection. Indeed, OWASP lists this as one of the topmost security risks. In a paper presented at VB2019 in London, Prismo Systems researchers Abhishek Singh and Ramesh Mani…