Malware Modification Contest Has Antivirus Vendors Upset

SkiifGeek writes "Race to Zero, a sideline competition being set up at this year's DefCon, already has some Antivirus vendors steaming over the objectives of the contest. They are upset because it is essentially a polymorphism exercise. Entrants are given a set of malware samples which they must then modify to pass through a battery of antivirus scanners without detection while still carrying a viable payload. Even if competitors ignore the published vulnerabilities and weaknesses affecting antivirus vendors, the competition should turn up some interesting results. It may provide technical insight and concepts for further research as similar competitions have done in the past."

Comments

Re:Maybe they should actually fix the problems?

[RiotingPacifist]

hate it to break it to you but your heros an idiot. Everybody knows default deny is a better idea "Enumerating Badness" - sounds like DRM "Penetrate and Patch" - while you spend months trying to figure out how to rework your system to provide the service its meant to & not be exploited, your customers are getting infected. sure go back and fix the problem latter, but 1st you need to protect people. "Hacking is Cool" - Hacking is always going to be cool, just like going on the grass is. "Educating Users" - This still dosent address the dancing pigs problem, if you dont educate users, your just making it harder for them to get their work done. "Action is Better Than Inaction" - A good point on security, but ofc epic fail in real life, if you dont adopt new techniques and benefits of IT, you may not have much of a system to protect in 5 years Marcus sounds like an idiot, hes very good at stating the obvious flaws in IT but really cant offer any solutions