Bulletin

An indispensable source of reference for anyone concerned with computer security, the Bulletin is the forum through which leading security researchers publish the latest security research and information in a bid to share knowledge with the security community. Publications cover the latest threats, new developments and techniques in the security landscape, opinions from respected members of the industry, and more. The Bulletin archives offer informative articles going back to 1989. Our editorial team is happy to hear from anyone interested in submitting a paper for publication.

The curse of Necurs, part 1

The Necurs rootkit is composed of a kernel-mode driver and a user-mode component. The rootkit makes use of some very powerful techniques, but fortunately it also has some chinks in its armour. Peter Ferrie describes its strengths and weaknesses.

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Tofsee botnet

The spam botnet Tofsee can be divided into three components: loader, core module and plug-ins. Ryan Mi describes how the components communicate with the C&C server, and how they work with one another.

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Back to VBA

Gabor Szappanos (Sophos)

Last month’s issue of Virus Bulletin featured a detailed analysis of the Polarbot (a.k.a. Solarbot) trojan. The article covered just about everything you could ever want to know about it – except for one thing: how does a computer end up being…

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Not Expir-ed yet

Expiro is a file infector that resurfaces from time to time, demonstrating more skills on each new appearance – infecting a service that gives a unique vantage point on traditional malicious activities; running the malware at computer restart without…

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Greetz from academe: Censored

John Aycock highlights an ACSAC paper that looks at the issue of detecting web content modifications.

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ProxyCB, a spam proxy under the radar

Kyle Yang (Fortinet)

ProxyCB is a trojan that acts as a proxy server to send spam via the HTTP, HTTPS or SMTP protocol. Wei Wang and Kyle Yang take a detailed look at its installation process, how it bypasses UAC, and the final payload loading process, before dissecting…

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BYOT: Bring Your Own Target

Gabor Szappanos (Sophos)

The author of Simbot doesn’t take anything for granted: all the necessary components for the malware’s execution are bundled and dropped onto the system, including the relevant vulnerable application for exploitation and regular Windows system…

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Solarbot botnet

Solarbot, a.k.a. Dapato or Napolar, is a traditional botnet that has been around for a while. It is used for spreading other malware and often comes with built-in DDoS and proxy modules. He Xu takes a closer look.

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A short visit with a virus

Last month, Peter Ferrie described a Windows virus that turns Java class files into droppers for the virus, and concluded that it would be a simple matter to reverse that: for a virus writer to create a Java class file that turns Windows files into…

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Making the case for incident response

‘There is a shift occurring in the security space around incident response. It’s becoming clear that no organization is completely safe.' Tim Armstrong

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