Hunting high-impact, advanced malware is a difficult task. It becomes even harder and more time-consuming when defenders focus on low-detection or zero-detection samples. Every day, a huge number of files are sent to platforms like VirusTotal, and the relevant ones often get lost in all that noise. Identifying malware with low or no detections is a particularly challenging process, especially when the malware is new, undocumented, and built largely from scratch.
When threat actors avoid publicly available libraries, known GitHub code, or code borrowed from other malware families, they create previously unseen samples that can evade detection and make hunting them significantly harder. In these cases, the threat actors carefully craft both the code and the network communication to minimize noise and keep the malware as inconspicuous as possible.
Read more…
Source: Trend Micro
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- HP patches severe code execution bug in enterprise printers
November 23, 2017
HP has issued firmware patches to fix a security flaw which allowed attackers to perform remote code execution attacks on enterprise-grade printers. FoxGlove Security researchers issued an advisory disclosing the technical details of the bug, CVE-2017-2750, earlier this week. The team tested out HP’s PageWide Enterprise Color MFP 586 and the HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M553 models, and found they ...
- Google security report finds phishing to be biggest threat
November 14, 2017
In an effort to better understand how users accounts get ‘hijacked,’ Google collaborated with the University of California at Berkeley to investigate how the black markets responsible for obtaining and selling user credentials operate. The study took place from March 2016 to March 2017 and the research focused primarily on tracking several large black markets trading ...
- The nasty future of ransomware: Four ways the nightmare is about to get even worse
October 31, 2017
2017 has been the year of ransomware. While the file-encrypting malware has existed in one form or another for almost three decades, over the last few months it’s developed from a cybersecurity concern to a public menace. The term even made it into the dictionary in September. In particular, 2017 had its own summer of ransomware: while incidents ...
- Hackers Take Aim at SSH Keys in New Attacks
October 19, 2017
SSH private keys are being targeted by hackers who have stepped up their scanning of thousands of servers hosting WordPress websites in search of private keys. Since Monday, security researchers said they have observed a single entity scanning as many as 25,000 systems a day seeking vulnerable SSH keys to be used to compromise websites. “What ...
- US-CERT study predicts machine learning, transport systems to become security risks
October 19, 2017
The Carnegie-Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute has nominated transport systems, machine learning, and smart robots as needing better cyber-security risk and threat analysis. That advice comes in the institute’s third Emerging Technology Domains Risk Survey, a project it has handled for the US Department of Homeland Security’s US-CERT since 2015. The surveys are cumulative, meaning any ...
- Newly Discovered Iranian APT Group Brings State-sponsored Cyber Espionage into Focus
October 17, 2017
State-sponsored cyber espionage has been rising steadily in recent years. Whether it’s high-profile attacks such as North Korea’s hack of Sony in 2014, China’s alleged hack of the US’s Office of Personnel Management in 2015, or Russia’s alleged hack of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, the stories are mounting. Iran has also been in the cyber espionage news, with major ...