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Auto-Detecting Malware? It's Possible
itwbennett writes "If antivirus protectors could collect data from machines and users, including geographic location, social networking information, type of operating system, installed programs and configurations, 'it would enable them to quickly identify new malware strains without even looking at the code,' says Dr. Markus Jakobsson. In a recent article, he outlines some examples of how this could work. The bottom line is this: 'Let's ignore what the malware does on a machine, and instead look at how it moves between machines. That is much easier to assess. And the moment malware gives up what allows us to detect it, it also stops being a threat.'"
If antivirus protectors could collect data from machines and users
This idea stopped being a good one here.
Malware generally moves the same way any other software moves. The user downloads and installs it.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
"If antivirus protectors could collect data from machines and users, including geographic location, social networking information, type of operating system, installed programs and configurations"
Malware writers and credit card phishers would have an immensely easier time.
It is quite mindboggling how bad this idea is. Cookies are not bad enough for you, eh?
This idea is impractical in so many ways. Leaving aside the privacy issues raised by the prerequisite of collecting the kinds of information the author mentions, he makes far too many assumptions (and of course, does not back them up with any hard facts).
Even if his assumptions are partially correct, he fails to factor in how real security software interacts with real users. Modern viruses are very fluid things, and thus modern virus detection is non-deterministic (and so is this author's system as far as I can tell). So in order to catch all viruses a certain level of false positives will inevitably arise. And it doesn't take many false positives before the user starts to ignore the warnings.
It's like saying, if everyone knew what everyone was doing and thinking at any given moment we'd never have any type of crime. However, who wants to be monitored 24/7 and in their head? Likewise, who wants all of their computers information, sensitive or not, to be handed over to McAffee or Symantech or whoever. Not me.
Ave Molech Setting
'Cause that would really solve everything. If everyone switches to linux, the malware writers will just give up and not exploit security holes in linux, right?
(Or is linux just not popular enough among the computer-illiterate to be a good target for attacks?)
How about building a tool in windows that ensures all windows system files are Genuine and then shows what extra crap and drivers startup and lets you choose to either disable or enable them. How about a Registry locker that you lock down your registry while running said tool so you can see if the Malware is trying to re-install itself back onto your computer?
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
You actually think that nobody would start making malware/adware for Linux? Not all adware/malware is installed without knowledge of the user... downloading a smiley pack that has malware in it seems to still be fairly common. I see no reason why someone wouldn't do the same for Linux. It would just have ".rpm" instead of ".exe"
Sure, it wouldn't probably be in one of the good repositories, but since when has availability-from-reputable-sources that stopped people from downloading/installing software?
Problem solved!!
Solved? Are you telling me that users can't install software in Linux?
'Cause that would really solve everything. If everyone switches to linux, the malware writers will just give up and not exploit security holes in linux, right?
Of course not. But Linux is written by users who don't want to be exploited (be they individuals or corporate users). The developers of Linux have a direct motivation to adapt Linux to deal with any new security threats. If trojans become a problem for Linux users, SELinux type solutions or default VM sandboxes or something else will become the norm and applications will be adapted to work well with it.
The core security problem with Windows isn't that it has large market share or inferior technologies. It is that it has so much market share and lock-in that the developers of Windows don't lose significant money even when malware is a large problem for many users. As a result the developer (MS) is not directly motivated to solve the problem. They benefit more financially by expanding into a new market leveraging their existing monopolies or even by introducing features that work to the detriment of their users (like DRM).
The interesting thing about Linux is that the license is designed to avoid any one player from being able to control it, so even if Linux had the same market share next year as Windows does today, developers would still be motivated to solve any new security problems.
Hello,
," which cited data from one that began development in 2006. While I do not claim to understand the system, in a nutshell, it seems to work by generating a hash for files after they are downloaded or when they are to be executed, and sends this to Symantec along with some metadata, such as source IP/host, filename, path specification on the local host, date and time stamp on the file and other useful information, which is sent to Symantec, initially to provide a quick lookup, but more information can be sent if additional analysis is required. Symantec's client software can then display a message saying "Program XYZ.EXE has been seen n time(s) over the course of n day(s)/week(s)/month(s)." along with some suggestions about how safe it is likely to be based on new/unique program files more likely to be untrusted (higher potential for malcode) and older, commonly program files having a higher degree of trust.
What Dr. Jakobsson has described is a reputation system.
At Virus Bulletin 2009, Symantec gave a presentation on reputation systems: " Using the wisdom of crowds to address the malware long tail
One advantage of this approach is that it quickly allows malcious files encoded using server-side polymorphism to be quickly identified, as well as the sites hosting them. This negates the technique used by the bad guys to constantly modify code to in order to escape detection by anti-virus software.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Dexter is a good dog.
"The insight is: Let's ignore what the malware does on a machine, and instead look at how it moves between machines. That is much easier to assess. And the moment malware gives up what allows us to detect it, it also stops being a threat."
But of course, malware that doesn't actually DO anything isn't a threat. As an administrator, I am worried about the misuse of resources.
Staging a DDOS attack from malware is a problem for me, because it uses my bandwidth inappropriately. Stealing credit card numbers because it is an inappropriate information leak. And so on.
I actually DON'T CARE if someone clicks on the funny cursors package, in exchange for complete information on their browsing habits -- as long as inappropriate information is not leaked. If the user loses the contents of their savings account to a hacker with a trojan? My initial reaction is to laugh, and then feel pity. As long as its not a theft of resources I am controlling.
Which boils down to: malware is defined by what it does. If propagation is an issue (usually network issues), it becomes my concern. Otherwise? I don't care. So, I use behaviour based approaches to malware control. If a new (to this system) piece of software doesn't have access to resources, it can't misuse them.
Simple trojans, viruses and worms? Amusing, but not particularly on my radar. Specific attacks on security frameworks designed to contain software? Definitely, along with root kits.
About the only reason I bother with "malware detection" is to keep Windows users happy(ier). They seem to think that this stuff is somehow important.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
... it depends detection of a significant number of machines being compromised to produce the detection event and response. Meanwhile a significant number of machines have been compromised. The horses are out of those barns by the time the doors are closed.
Rinse and repeat, with a fresh variant of the malware, until "all your horse are belong to us".
Meanwhile, all they're doing is detecting a pattern of distribution of a pattern of data, without any way to differentiate whether the data itself is malware. Surprise: This same pattern occurs with news and with ideas. Do we really want a surveillance system to treat the spread of, say, stories of government corruption, as a malware infection?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Ok now I am almost positive I'm going to incite some flames with this comment, but I'm actually curious about the opinion here.
If this same idea were to be proposed by an open-source anti-malware solution, would you still be so hesitant about it?
How about if the proprietary companies were able to provide concrete evidence of the anonymity of your collected information?
Again, I'm NOT trying to incite a flame war with this, but it just seems so often that people rally a (mostly deserved) hatred and distrust of any and all companies that are proprietary, while having a (possibly detrimental) implicit trust of open-source solutions.
Besides, this could actually be a good idea. After all, we can't cure the common cold, but we can somewhat effectively stop it in it's tracks because we know how it's transmitted from person and can thus take appropriate measures against it. What's more is that the same goes for most all acquired illnesses. I'm not saying mandate the submission of such data, but having it as an option for users could provide anti-malware researchers with a powerful tool in studying them akin to biologic researchers and strain discs.
Oh yes, the smug "users are dumb" argument. ... let's face it, anything at all apart from a badly setup Microsoft box.
Since the same people typically have ADSL modems which are NOT infected with any sort of malware I think the argument is complete rubbish and we're suffering from a platform where "developers are dumb".
Microsoft are waking up to it very slowly, but there are a vast number of third party applications developed by those still asleep at the wheel of the speeding malware trainwreck in progress. Just about any effort Microsoft make at improving security is rendered pointless by those that insist their stuff has to run as Admin or the functionally equivalent "power user". It takes great whopping security holes that should never exist before anything as trivial as clicking on a link could do anything horrible to the computer.
Being smug apologists for broken systems doesn't get us anywhere. With a few good choices you can have a Microsoft based system as immune to being broken by users clicking on things just as if they were on a Mac, Sun, linux, BSD