My colleague Aleks Matrosov has come across an interesting if uncomfortable post on a Russian language forum, advertising a "Boot loader for drivers" currently under test that doesn't require a Digital Signature driver, which sounds very much like our old friend TDL4. This metamorphic malware (each build generates a fresh binary) loads before the start of PatchGuard. It's

Win32/Olmarik (also known as TDSS, TDL, Alureon and sundry less complimentary names) has gone through some interesting evolutions in the last couple of years. TDL4 is no exception, with its ability to load its kernel-mode driver on systems with an enforced kernel-mode code signing policy (64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows Vista and 7) and perform

One that will be of most interest to our readers in the UK, I guess. Our friends at Virus Bulletin are holding another "Securing Your Organization in the Age of Cybercrime" seminar, this time on the Open University Campus at Milton Keynes on the 24th May. The full agenda is already available on that page, and

…In fact, while the season for the traditional end of year crystal ball-gazing is pretty much over, I’ll venture a few extra predictions based on recent observations of the support scam business…

…version 1.31 of “Stuxnet Under the Microscope” is now available on the white papers page … Until now Rooting about in TDSS was only available to VB subscribers, but it too is now available on the ESET white papers page.

The paper presents an alternative approach to botnet research, employing “in the lab” experiments involving at-scale emulated botnets.

…poachers turned gamekeeper are not uncommon in the security industry as a whole, and it’s all too common for aspirant virus-writers whose notoriety is not necessarily matched by their technical skill to be hired by companies on the remote borders of malware detection and filtering, but the “real” AV industry goes out of its way to avoid hiring the ethically challenged….

Our friends at Virus Bulletin are hosting a seminar later this month … organized by the security-knowledgeable but vendor-agnostic magazine whose annual conference is one of the major highlights of an anti-malware researcher’s year.

This is an item you may not have seen amid all the speculation about Stuxnet, Iran and Israel.

1) Another Virus Bulletin conference paper has just gone up on the ESET white papers page, by kind permission of the magazine. Large-Scale Malware Experiments: Why, How, And So What? by Joan Calvet, Jose M. Fernandez, our own Pierre-Marc Bureau, and Jean-Yves Marion, discusses how they replicated a botnet for experimental purposes, and what use they