VB2017 paper: VirusTotal tips, tricks and myths

In a surprise

announcement

,

Google

‘s parent company

Alphabet

has introduced

Chronicle

, a threat intelligence offering in which

Google

-owned

VirusTotal

will play an important role.

While it is unclear at the moment what exactly

Chronicle

will do, the use of

VirusTotal

‘s data is certainly interesting, given how important it is as a resource both

for

individual researchers and

for

security companies.

Despite the popularity of the service, there are many persistent myths about

VirusTotal

. In a

paper

presented at VB2017 in Madrid, security researcher Randy Abrams provided an introduction to the service and then busted many of these myths. (Randy presented the paper as an independent researcher, but has since joined

Webroot

as a senior security analyst.)

Results of running a sample through VirusTotal.

You can read Randy’s paper ‘VirusTotal tips, tricks and myths’ in both

HTML

and

PDF

format. We have also uploaded the video of his presentation to our

YouTube

channel.