Malware persistence is a crucial aspect of cyber threats that often goes unnoticed by unsuspecting users. In the realm of cybersecurity, it refers to the ability of malicious software to establish a foothold on a targeted system, allowing it to maintain its presence over an extended period. This persistence is achieved through various covert techniques, […]
Read more "Malware Persistence Locations: Windows and Linux"I wrote several times about code obfuscation on my personal blog over the past 10 years, but this time I’d like to underline a different aspect of it, and a novel (at least for the best of my knowledge) approach to deal with deobfuscation. First of all let me remind that code obfuscation is not […]
Read more "Program Synthesis for Deobfuscation"After serveral months (actually 15) from the Cybersecurity Observatory launch (you can find it HERE) I experienced a huge increment of classified Malware from the end of January 2021. The following picture shows how the average samples frequency is just more than twice if compared to the beginning of the month and to the past […]
Read more "Malware Family Surface 2021 (Q1)"Once upon a time the Malware, the main actor in the entire infection chain. A single file, once executed it was able to perform the tasks it was designed for, forcing the target machine into victim by taking control or simply execuritying desired (sometime priviledged) commands. In 2010, during my PhD studies, I was already […]
Read more "Malware Delivery Platforms in 2020"Nowadays malware authors use a lot of techniques to hide malicious payloads in order to bypass security products and to make malware analyst life harder and fun. There are many tools that you can use to extract content from malware and there is not a standard process, you can use different tools, different techniques and […]
Read more "How To Unpack Malware: Personal Notes"Advanced and Persistent Threats are often inoculated by emails or by exploiting exposed vulnerabilities. Since vulnerability exploitation follows specific waves, it depends on vulnerability trends, the email vector become one of the most (ab)used and stable way to inoculate Malicious and unwanted software. A common way to attack victims is to make her open an […]
Read more "Tracking PhishingKits for Hunting APT Evolution"According to the Yoroi annual cyber security report (available HERE), to Cyber Threat Trends (available HERE) and to many additional resources, Microsoft Office files (Word documents and Excel spreadsheet) are one of the most used malware loaders in the current era. Attackers lure victims, by seducing them to open a specially crafted Office document, which […]
Read more "How to Reverse Office Droppers: Personal Notes"If you are a security researcher or even a passionate about how attackers implement phishing you will find yourself to look for phishing kits. A phishing kit is not a phishing builder, but a real implementation (actually re-implementation) of a third party website built to lure your victim. Initially attackers use a phishing builder to […]
Read more "Introducing PhishingKitTracker"After six months from Cyber Threats Trends launch it’s time to check its main findings. When I decided to develop my own Cyber Threats Observatory I was not sure about its effectiveness and I was even more skeptical about the real usage from international cybersecurity communities. Fortunately many students, researchers and professionals used such a […]
Read more "Cyber Threats Trends 6 Months Of Findings"Hi Folks, today I want to share a quantitative analysis on a weird return-match by Upatre. According to Unit42 Upatre is an ancient downloader firstly spotted in 2013 used to inoculate banking trojans and active up to 2016. First discovered in 2013, Upatre is primarily a downloader tool responsible for delivering additional trojans onto the […]
Read more "Is upatre downloader coming back ?"