VB2018 presentation: The wolf in sheep's clothing - undressed

Posted by   Martijn Grooten on   Oct 22, 2018

In recent years, we have seen a trend of commercial spyware being sold to governments. This is a very controversial subject, not least because of the frequent use of this spyware against opposition targets. However, there is general agreement that the malware tends in most cases to be well written.

There are exceptions though. At VB2018 in Montreal, CSIS researchers Benoît Ancel and Aleksejs Kuprins presented their research into a spyware seller that a fellow operator in this space described as a "criminal of the worst kind".

Whether this applies to the ethics of the company in question is something one should decide for oneself; the VB2018 presentation, however, suggests that it may be a very accurate description of the service that the company offers.

We have uploaded the video of Benoît and Aleksejs's talk to our YouTube channel. Their presentation slides are also available here (PDF).

twitter.png
fb.png
linkedin.png
hackernews.png
reddit.png

 

Latest posts:

In memoriam: Dr Alan Solomon

We were very sorry to learn of the passing of industry pioneer Dr Alan Solomon earlier this week.

New paper: Nexus Android banking botnet – compromising C&C panels and dissecting mobile AppInjects

In a new paper, researchers Aditya K Sood and Rohit Bansal provide details of a security vulnerability in the Nexus Android botnet C&C panel that was exploited in order to gather threat intelligence, and present a model of mobile AppInjects.

New paper: Collector-stealer: a Russian origin credential and information extractor

In a new paper, F5 researchers Aditya K Sood and Rohit Chaturvedi present a 360 analysis of Collector-stealer, a Russian-origin credential and information extractor.

VB2021 localhost videos available on YouTube

VB has made all VB2021 localhost presentations available on the VB YouTube channel, so you can now watch - and share - any part of the conference freely and without registration.

VB2021 localhost is over, but the content is still available to view!

VB2021 localhost - VB's second virtual conference - took place last week, but you can still watch all the presentations.

We have placed cookies on your device in order to improve the functionality of this site, as outlined in our cookies policy. However, you may delete and block all cookies from this site and your use of the site will be unaffected. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to Virus Bulletin's use of data as outlined in our privacy policy.