The 2008 Malware Challenge

John Hering writes "With over 25 papers submitted, the results of the 2008 Malware Challenge are in. Malware has become an ever-present danger in today's connected world: The 2008 Malware Challenge was created to help increase awareness and understanding of the threat associated with malware by challenging contestants to reverse engineer and analyze real world malware from the wild."

Comments

Wow that webpage!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's so fugly it should be classified malware! Also,

"Why GNU/Linux Viruses are fairly uncommon" from Charlie Harvey
http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/evilmalware.html

You want malware,

[Anonymous Coward]

then check out the firmware for the first-generation Zune MP3 player! Shit fucking blows up!

Re:You want malware,

[Anonymous Coward]

For those unaware, apparently, a few hours ago -EVERY- 30GB Zune stopped functioning at around the same time. Mass hysteria on Zune forums all over the internet.

Re:You want malware,

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure you aren't thinking about the iPod?

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/hughes/20155
http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/12/exploding-ipod-dies-gruesome-death

Re:You want malware,

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true. And to think, I was considering buying an Xbox 360 today.

Re:You want malware,

[Anne Thwacks]

Yep, its true, their code is so bad MS cant even get the Y2K bug in the right year!

Re:You want malware,

[Anonymous Coward]

I crawled some french forums and it seems the problem is also present here.
Just my 2 cts. to eliminate the localized version bug...

Re:You want malware,

[IamTheRealMike]

I wager a fine Cuban cigar that it's leap second related.

Re:You want malware,

[retyurecvb]

Victim here, I suppose I really should have put more thought into my purchase. Oh well, c'est la vie. At least now I can finally get rid of this Windows partition.

Re:You want malware,

[pslam]

I bet they've managed to accidentally revoke or break its certificates. Microsoft "accidentally" did that to an MP3 player I worked on in the past (Rio Carbon).

Re:You want malware,

[SpinningCone]

Holy crap you weren't joking. guess somebody put tinfoil in the microwave

So whats the over/under on minutes until this story appears on the slashdot main page? cuz i cant wait to read all those 5, Funny comments about this one.

Re:You want malware,

[Anonymous Coward]

sweet! one less whiny little girl on xbox live to deal with

20 yrs from now...

[retech]

Malware and Botnets will be having challenges to reverse engineer us.

I've already got my Liberty Mutual policy for this... do you?

Re:20 yrs from now...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, in Soviet Russia...

scary stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

i know this stuff has been around for a long time now, but it still scares me how many windows machines out there are probably rooted. luckily i have a very portable eee, since you can't trust anyone else's machine, not even for gmail logins.

Whoa!

[Gazzonyx]

I guess my Christmas present came late this year! I can't wait for this story on slashdot... it's like the ultimate flamebait because it just really happened and we've all been waiting for this headline for years! Gentlemen, I don't know about you, but today my karma is going to take a hit. A merry, albeit belated, Christmas to all!

Trivial

[Nikademus]

It's funny they made a contest for this because it is just so trivial to analyze this if you have a few minutes to lose.

eh?

[MegaFur]

I know that Malware is a superset of computer viruses, but most virus scanners are more like malware scanners these days. I understand that the spirit of the challenge is to reverse engineer code that malware checkers currently don't catch, but isn't this a little like giving away for free that which some company down the street is charging money for? Maybe I'm still not getting it.

Let's just say ...

[thuerrsch]

2008 was another year of malware on the desktop!

Re:Let's just say ...

[El_Oscuro]

But does it run Linux?

Why not link to the actual event site?

[gatekeep]

First of all, this story should probably link to the actual event site.

Secondly, the results have been available since 11/19/08. This is hardly news at this point.

Reverse Engineering Malware is important

[root777]

In the good old days, security analysts could discover and analyze any malicious mobile code with relative ease. Also, malware functionality was easily visible. Hence, there was no need to perform an in-depth analysis of the malware

Today, malware writers are aware of the various forensic techniques, using a virtual machine, aware when some tool is being used to unpack a piece of malware, they conceal network traffic, leave a minimal footprint on the system they are trying to infect, providing remote access (backdoor/trojan), even disabling AV and bypassing firewalls. All this any more where the malware code is increasingly designed to obstruct any form of security/forensic analysis.

Contests like this help documenting the steps taken during a typical malware investigation, makes note of the results and can help others evaluate or repeat the analysis

Link to the winning papers of the malware challenge http://www.malwarechallenge.info/results.html

Re:Reverse Engineering Malware is important

[secshoggoth]

I couldn't have said it better myself...and I ran the challenge!

And maybe link to the actual results

[Anonymous Coward]

Great you guys linked to one person's submission, an also ran paper at that. Here is a link to the actual resultS http://www.malwarechallenge.info/results.html

BTW this new design has slow as all hell javascript (on firefox 3.0.4)

malware makes the world go round

[ezwip]

I have wondered what would happen to many computer stores if malware and viruses were to cease existance. Would the Best Buy geek squad be the only computer store left? Having worked at small mom and pop shops 99% of our business was removing malware. They were already struggling to compete if not for malware they wouldn't stand a chance.

My idea of a Malware Challenge

[slashdime]

installfest