VB Blog

Paying a malware ransom is bad, but telling people never to do it is unhelpful advice

Posted by   Martijn Grooten on   Apr 26, 2016

The current ransomware plague is one of the worst threats the Internet has seen and it is unlikely to go away any time soon. But telling people to never pay the ransom is unhelpful advice.

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VB2015 paper: VolatilityBot: Malicious Code Extraction Made by and for Security Researchers

Posted by   Martijn Grooten on   Apr 22, 2016

In his VB2015 paper, Martin Korman presented his 'VolatilyBot' tool, which extracts malicious code from packed binaries, leveraging the functionality of the Volatility Framework.

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VB2016 programme announced, registration opened

Posted by   Martijn Grooten on   Apr 21, 2016

We have announced 37 papers (and four reserve papers) that will be presented at VB2016 in Denver, Colorado, USA in October. Registration for the conference has opened; make sure you register before 1 July to benefit from a 10% early bird discount.

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New tool helps ransomware victims indentify the malware family

Posted by   Martijn Grooten on   Apr 15, 2016

The people behind the MalwareHunterTeam have released a tool that helps victims of ransomware identify which of more than 50 families has infected their system, something which could help them find a tool to decrypt their files.

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It's fine for vulnerabilities to have names — we just need not to take them too seriously

Posted by   Martijn Grooten on   Apr 13, 2016

The PR campaign around the Badlock vulnerability backfired when it turned out that the vulnerability wasn't as serious as had been suggested. But naming vulnerabilities can actually be helpful and certainly shouldn't hurt.

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Throwback Thursday: The Number of the Beasts

Posted by   Helen Martin on   Apr 7, 2016

The Virus Bulletin Virus Prevalence Table, which ran from 1992 until 2013, gave users a regular snapshot of what was really going on in the virus (and later malware) world, recording the number of incidents of each virus reported to VB in the preceding month. In August 2000, Denis Zenkin, a self-confessed virus prevalence table junkie, shared his findings following a study of the virus prevalence tables over the preceding few years, allowing him to determine the top ten viruses of the period, the top viruses by type and the viruses of the year.

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Paper: All Your Meetings Are Belong to Us: Remote Code Execution in Apache OpenMeetings

Posted by   Martijn Grooten on   Mar 30, 2016

Security researcher Andreas Lindh recently found a vulnerability in Apache OpenMeetings that could allow remote code execution on a vulnerable server. Andreas reported the vulnerability to the OpenMeetings developers and, once it had been patched, he wrote up the details.

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Throwback Thursday: 'In the Beginning was the Word...'

Posted by   Helen Martin on   Mar 24, 2016

Word and Excel’s internal file formats used to be something in which few were interested – until macro viruses came along and changed all that. In 1996, Andrew Krukov provided an overview of the new breed of viruses.

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VB2016 Call for Papers Deadline

Posted by   Martijn Grooten on   Mar 18, 2016

You have until the early hours (GMT) of Monday 21 March to submit an abstract for VB2016! The VB2016 programme will be announced in the first week of April.

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How broken is SHA-1 really?

Posted by   Martijn Grooten on   Mar 15, 2016

SHA-1 collisions may be found in the next few months, but that doesn't mean that fake SHA-1-based certificates will be created in the near future. Nevertheless, it is time for everyone, and those working in security in particular, to move away from outdated hash functions.

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Bank's Twitter account hacked to send phishing messages

Important lessons for companies engaging in social media.
Important lessons for companies engaging in social media. Last week, the Twitter account of the Bank of Melbourne was hacked and used to send direct messages containing phishing… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2011/09/bank-s-twitter-account-hacked-send-phishing-messages/

Outlook spam phishes for SMTP credentials

Login details would give spammers access to legitimate mail servers.
Login details would give spammers access to legitimate mail servers. A phishing scam has been identified that targets users of Microsoft Outlook and tries to obtain SMTP login… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2011/06/outlook-spam-phishes-smtp-credentials/

Canada new hotbed for cybercriminal activity

Country's IP addresses less likely to be scrutinized.
Country's IP addresses less likely to be scrutinized. Security firm Websense has reported a significant increase in cybercrime originating in Canada. Hitherto, Canada and… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2011/05/canada-new-hotbed-cybercriminal-activity/

Scammers take advantage of Epsilon data breach

Trojan hidden as security tool for affected customers.
Trojan hidden as security tool for affected customers. Scammers are currently taking advantage of the data breach that affected email security provider Epsilon recently, by… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2011/04/scammers-take-advantage-epsilon-data-breach/

Major email service provider suffers data breach

Financial institutions among affected customers.
Financial institutions among affected customers. Email service provider Epsilon, which carries out email marketing for many major companies, has admitted it has fallen victim to a… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2011/04/major-email-service-provider-suffers-data-breach/

Dutch most protected Europeans online

Bulgarians most likely to have become infected; financial losses most prevalent among Latvians.
Bulgarians most likely to have become infected; financial losses most prevalent among Latvians. For the occasion of Safer Internet Day on 8 February, Eurostat, the EU's statistical… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2011/02/dutch-most-protected-europeans-online/

Phishing for different markets

Scam emails trying to steal CO2 emission credits and World-of-Warcraft accounts.
Scam emails trying to steal CO2 emission credits and World-of-Warcraft accounts. Two unrelated phishing campaigns seen doing the rounds recently show that it's not just real money… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2011/01/phishing-different-markets/

Malicious applications target Orkut

Visitors to infected social network profiles redirected to phishing sites.
Visitors to infected social network profiles redirected to phishing sites. Users of the social networking site Orkut have found themselves targeted by malicious applications that… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2010/11/malicious-applications-target-orkut/

Dutch banks report huge increase in online fraud

Users warned against phishing and becoming money mules.
Users warned against phishing and becoming money mules. Figures on online crime released by the association of Dutch banks (NVB) show a significant rise in indicents of online… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2010/10/dutch-banks-report-huge-increase-online-fraud/

Project Honey Pot 'celebrates' billionth spam message

Facebook about to become most phished organization.
Facebook about to become most phished organization. Few people would celebrate receiving a billion spam messages, but those at Project Honey Pot must have been a little proud when… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2009/12/project-honey-pot-celebrates-billionth-spam-message/

Webmail data leak hype deflated

Rumoured phishing explosion grabs headlines, reality much more mundane.
Rumoured phishing explosion grabs headlines, reality much more mundane. This week has seen some major news organisations picking up on the story of tens of thousands of sets of… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2009/10/webmail-data-leak-hype-deflated/

VB announces latest VBSpam certification results

Two products achieve top level VBSpam Platinum award.
Two products achieve top level VBSpam Platinum award. Virus Bulletin has announced the results of its second comparative review of anti-spam products, revealing two top-level… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2009/07/vb-announces-latest-vbspam-certification-results/

DKIM usage shows significant growth

US banks urged to use authentication method
US banks urged to use authentication method In a report on its website, Internet giant Cisco states it has been seeing almost 700,000 non-spam messages that contain valid DKIM… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2009/06/dkim-usage-shows-significant-growth/

Digital attacks encroach on real world

Car park flyers trick victims to malicious site.
Car park flyers trick victims to malicious site. The online arena of scams and phishing took a worrying step into the real world last week, as researchers heard of a scam starting… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2009/02/digital-attacks-encroach-real-world/

MS report finds phishing revenues overhyped

Huge earnings may be myth, say researchers.
Huge earnings may be myth, say researchers. A report from Microsoft analysing the potential income of phishers claims that the amounts taken from duped victims of online scams may… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2009/01/ms-report-finds-phishing-revenues-overhyped/

CastleCops closes down

Security community project comes to an end.
Security community project comes to an end. Well-known volunteer group CastleCops, which ran campaigns to identify and bring down spamming and phishing operations for over five… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2009/01/castlecops-closes-down/

Twitter hit by phishing and hacks

Popular micro-blog site latest target of link spammers.
Popular micro-blog site latest target of link spammers. The latest social networking craze, micro-blogging service Twitter, has joined the likes of MySpace and Facebook in being… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2009/01/twitter-hit-phishing-and-hacks/

Sarkozy bank account raided by cybercrooks

Hackers steal from French president - phish suspected.
Hackers steal from French president - phish suspected. French president Nicolas Sarkozy has had his funds stolen from his bank account, apparently after a phishing email tricked… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2008/10/sarkozy-bank-account-raided-cybercrooks/

Ham disguised as spam

Webshop makes mass-mailing look like phishing scam.
Webshop makes mass-mailing look like phishing scam. An email addressed to 'Dear customer', in which a user is asked to check their account details, using a link that does not lead… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2008/10/ham-disguised-spam/

Researchers urge anti-phishing companies to share data

Estimate over $300 million lost annually because data is not shared.
Estimate over $300 million lost annually because data is not shared. Researchers have revealed malicious websites are often active for longer than they ought to be due to a lack of… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2008/10/researchers-urge-anti-phishing-companies-share-data/

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