ANTI-MALWARE.info | The Reference in Independent Anti-Malware Advice and Information
Subscribe | Log in

Blog

The AV community mourns for Klaus Brunnstein

The Viren-Test-Center’s founder passed away in May 2015, at the age of 77 (25/5/1937 – +19/5/2015).

Brunnstein was born in Cologne and later on based in Hamburg. Working at the University of Hamburg, he influenced the computer science education worldwide. He will for sure be remembered by many colleagues, family and friends.
prof_brunnstein_65712w320h200

 A man we all will miss!

Klaus was one of the founders of CARO (the Computer Anti-Virus Research Organization), an organization that was established in 1990 to research and study malware. CARO was planning to create another official and public organization called EICAR, an organization aiming at antivirus research and improving development of security software. It was during the inaugural meeting of EICAR in Brussels, Belgium in 1991 that I’ve met Klaus for the first time.

While talking to Klaus, I got to learn about so many new aspects of viruses and that made me being even more interested in this whole matter. Some of his ideas were very controversial while some others, on the contrary, were even very conservative. His ideas inspired me in a lot of security related topics, events and publications I touched, visited and launched afterwards. At least you could say that, without Klaus and my first encounter with a Trojan horse, back in 1989, I wouldn’t have been into the security industry at all.

I still remember Klaus from his interesting discussions and points of view on a closed security forum. Actually, I still have all of his feedback in my backup system. Some of these old mails range back 19 years! I always stayed in contact with Klaus and I have met him during many security related events like the early EICAR conferences in the nineties.

During one of the latest CARO workshops, I told him about a book that I was writing and he told me that he always would be there in case I needed some advice. For that reason, I asked him, several months ago, to write an opinion chapter about the future of security for my book, called “Cyber Danger” (the German version “Cybergefahr” will be published later this year). I now do realize, that this will most probably be the last words he officially wrote in a book. Klaus will always be remembered as a pioneer. I am greatly saddened to have learned of his death yesterday. He contributed so much to the industry.

Klaus, I still owe you a copy of my book! Somewhere. Sometime.

(more…)

Oct 30, 2015 | Categories: Blog | Tags: , | Comments Off on The AV community mourns for Klaus Brunnstein

Regin, an old but sophisticated cyber espionage toolkit platform

Malware can be named in one breath with Stuxnet & Co.

Regin is one of the latest cyber espionage toolkits targeting a range or organizations, companies and individuals around the world. This malware is very sophisticated and it can mentioned in the same breath with other cyberespionage campaigns like Duqu, Stuxnet, Flame, Uroburos (aka Snake/Turla). First reported about by Symantec[1], Regin kept itself under the radar for years.

As G DATA experts worked on this rootkit for quite a while we also gathered some data. The first Regin version we identified was used in March 2009 and the compilation date is July 2008:

paul@gdata:~/regin$ ./pescanner.py b12c7d57507286bbbe36d7acf9b34c22c96606ffd904e3c23008399a4a50c047
Meta-data
================================================================================
File:    b12c7d57507286bbbe36d7acf9b34c22c96606ffd904e3c23008399a4a50c047
Size:    12608 bytes
Type:    PE32 executable (native) Intel 80386, for MS Windows
MD5:     ffb0b9b5b610191051a7bdf0806e1e47
SHA1:    75a9af1e34dc0bb2f7fcde9d56b2503072ac35dd
ssdeep:
Date:    0x486CBA19 [Thu Jul  3 11:38:01 2008 UTC]
EP:      0x103d4 .text 0/4

Some sources go even back to 2003 but this in unclear at this moment however we can confirm that this campaign appeared at least early 2009.

An Open Source detection tool provided by G DATA

We identified the use of an encrypted virtual file system. In the version mentioned above, the file system is a fake .evt file in %System%\config. The header of the virtual file system is always the same:

typedef struct _HEADER {
uint16_t SectorSize;
uint16_t MaxSectorCount;
uint16_t MaxFileCount;
uint8_t FileTagLength;
uint16_t crc32custom;
}

During our analysis, the checksum was a CRC32. A generic approach to detect the infection could be a detection of the existence of a virtual file system on the infected system by checking the custom CRC32 value at the beginning of the file system.
Download the python script by going to the original G DATA article (link see below).

regin-detect.py SHA256: 98ac51088b7d8e3c3bb8fbca112290279a4d226b3609a583a735ecdbcd0d7045
regin-detect.py MD5: 743c7e4c6577df3d7e4391f1f5af4d65

And here is the output when a virtual file system is scanned:
paul@gdata:~regin$ ./tool.py security.evt
SectorSize:  1000
MaxSectorCount:  0500
MaxFileCount:  0500
FileTagLength:  10
CRC32custom:  df979328
CRC of the file: df979328
Regin detected

Victims:

So far, victims of Regin were identified in 14 countries:

  • Algeria
  • Afghanistan
  • Belgium
  • Brazil
  • Fiji
  • Germany
  • Iran
  • India
  • Indonesia
  • Kiribati
  • Malaysia
  • Pakistan
  • Russia
  • Syria

Perhaps one of the most publicly known victims of Regin is Jean Jacques Quisquater, a well-known Belgian cryptographer. Kaspersky Lab stated this in their report which you can find at
securelist.com/blog/research/67741/regin-nation-state-ownage-of-gsm-networks/ .

Even more interesting is the fact that Regin seems to be the spyware behind the Belgacom case, a big Belgian Telecom provider hacked in 2013. Belgacom acknowledged the hack, but never provided details about the breach. Ronald Prins from Fox-IT, which helped with the forensics and investigation of the Belgacom case, confirmed on his Twitter page that Regin could possibly be the malware behind the Belgacom case.

The Intercept, a publication of First Look Media, not only connects Regin to Belgacom, but also names the European Union as potential victim in an article published on November 24th.
(more…)

Oct 30, 2015 | Categories: Blog | Tags: , | Comments Off on Regin, an old but sophisticated cyber espionage toolkit platform

The evolution of anti-virus solutions continues – Antivirus is not dead!

Anti-virus has evolved for the last 25 years and will continue to do so for the next 25 years

“Anti-virus is dead” – again. AV has been dying for the last decades. 15 years ago Dr. Alan Solomon, a highly respected security expert and founder of a pioneering anti-virus software company, made the same statement. AV also deceased when the first behavior-based products entered the market. Whenever there are new threats, the failure of AV products is pointed out and their critical illness is claimed. But – surprise, surprise – AV is still there!

Actually, this is exactly what Alan Solomon wanted to point out: AV is and always will be in an evolving state. He showed that the future of anti-virus programs would evolve, from pure signature-based detection to different kinds of technologies like heuristics and behavioral detection and even to more advanced protection methods. And now, with targeted attacks (aka APTs) and nation-state spying as new players in the threat landscape, AV is making another step in its evolution.

AV solutions are an important layer in the defense for enterprises

So what is it about this time? A couple of days ago, it was Brian Dye, Senior Vice President of Information Security at Symantec, who has claimed that anti-virus is dead, during an interview with The Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately though, the headline “AV is dead” has the potential to be misinterpreted by a wide audience, if it is put in another context.
The statement was part of a description of Symantec’s product strategy for business customers. It is nothing new that AV-solutions are a baseline protection against common threats. They are established and therefore only play a minor role when it comes to outlining the strategic aspects of upcoming security solutions for dedicated attacks. And in the complex environment of a company network, a wide range of special protections are at charge. But Dye’s statement never meant to say that AV products are useless. He just said that it needs more than an AV product to protect a company’s IT infrastructure. And this is undoubtedly true. (more…)

Oct 30, 2015 | Categories: Blog | Tags: , | Comments Off on The evolution of anti-virus solutions continues – Antivirus is not dead!

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »