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New Alureon Rootkit Takes Malware To New Level
Trailrunner7 writes "A new version of the venerable Alureon malware has appeared, and this one includes some odd behavior designed to prevent analysis and detection by antimalware systems. However, this isn't the typical evasion algorithm, as it uses some unusual encryption and decryption routines to make life much more difficult for analysts and users whose machines have been infected. Alureon is a well-known and oft-researched malware family that has some rootkit-like capabilities in some of its variations. The newest version of the malware exhibits some behavior that researchers haven't seen before and which make it more problematic for antimalware software to detect it and for experts to break down its components."
Why can't the system be installed on ROM? At the very least, it will boot clean every time...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
A new version of well-known Alureon is out which has odd things to make it hard to analyze. It's odd, and is not normal and makes it's hard to analyze. It's well known and is a rootkit.The new version is odd and makes it hard to analyze.
We got that after the first sentence, how about actually providing some fscking detail.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
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Summary says: "The newest version of the malware exhibits some behavior that researchers haven't seen before"
The article says: "In 1999, a new virus, Win32/Crypto, was discovered... Today, in 2011, variants of Win32/Alureon are bringing this old-school technique back to life... Another interesting tidbit is that an initial version of this obfuscator first arrived in our lab in the first half of 2009."
That's kinda stretching the definition of "haven't seen before", which may be true in a technical sense (because they haven't seen THIS EXACT MALWARE before, but they've certainly seen lots like it).
New Alureon Rootkit Takes Malware To Same Level As Before, but With More Obscurity.
Once you have root access, is there really "another level" to take it to?
Something is happening that is new, but we can't describe how or why it is new. We're like Roy Scheider in Jaws: "You're going to need a bigger boat." And you're like Robert Shaw: you just get to work trying to catch the thing. Even though it is big, it's bad, it's silent, it runs deep, you don't have the tools to properly track, capture, kill or otherwise defeat the thing, and you will be dead in 15 minutes at the end of the movie anyway. So just run around and panic. Because rootkits are scary, and strange new exotic rootkits are scarier. Your best bet is to strap on your scuba gear and go hide on the ocean bottom and pee while the real men take care of business. Oh, almost forgot: "Boo!"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"We're closely monitoring Alureon to ensure that our users are always protected. In fact, Alureon has been part of the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) since April 2007."
I am putting my full faith and hope in to the Microsoft security team to eliminate it with their latest Malicious Software Removal tool.
I have given up on being paranoid about viruses, and I am much happier now!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Only for major major updates, and it wasn't a pain in the ass. You unplugged the chip and stuck the new one in. Back then it was pretty common for users to hack their Amigas anyways, so it wasn't that big of a deal to open her up and swap it in. The pain the ass was expanding the chip memory by soldering lines to a new socket. I was 12 when I had to do this for my Amiga 500. Worked fine.
The problem with this is that DRM software is also intentionally hard to analyse. And for a commercial OS vendor it's not a good idea to disallow DRM on installed software.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I hear that the new version has some behaviors that make it harder to detect and also more difficult to analyze.
"We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
You think this is saddos in their Mom's basement? Hacked machines and botnets are big business nowadays. This is the "Russian Mafia" or equivalent, paying big money for infected machines,
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
I also happen to be a PC technician, and I find it tiresome to hear people tirade about how bad Windows is, or how "clueless" users are. Software vulnerabilities are a fact of life, and it's unrealistic to expect average users to tell a fake warning from a real one when they can look pretty much identical.
Here's a car analogy. If I paint a phony detour sign that looks exactly like a real detour sign, stick it up in the middle of a road, and traffic starts diverting down a street of my choice, does that make the drivers stupid or "clueless"?
Even with the best available antivirus software and every available patch, 0-day drive-by exploits will come along, and people will get burned. My approach is to assume that problems will occur, and focus on how to quickly and easily recover from such incidents.
My impression is that the internet ecosystem is becoming so lethal that standalone boxes (especially windows) are on their way out. Even hosted blogs and web sites have a hard time defending against the constant onslaught of spam and exploits. Are we in the last days of the open internet, before moving to a more closed environment where only large server clouds will be able to survive?
Down modded by said mouth breathing, mother's basement dwelling losers.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I get that this makes it a little bit harder to figure out what the program is about to do (hint: allow it to decode, breakpoint & step), but isn't the point to simply identify that the malware is present? Unless the malware is capable of executing encrypted code on the chip, the code that decrypts the remaining payload code must be stored in plain machine code.
The machine code that initiates the brute force will be identifiable, and a signature can be made. Nothing to see here folks. The shitty encryption system doesn't even use asymmetric keys, and the very fact that it only takes 255 tries for it to brute-force one of its "chunks" is laughable. I mean -- I wrote better cipher systems when I was 12... Are they trying to avoid breaching US encryption export laws?!
Who cares how good it is at hiding its payload if the code that decodes the payload has a fingerprint...
P.S. What really scares the shit out of me is new processor tech that enables public key crypto at the machine instruction level. Not only will the "good" guys use it to "protect" their code from their user's prying eyes, the malware writers will use this to actually design code that has no fingerprints. Each copy will be indistinguishable from pseudo random noise -- So much for "signatures" at that point.
P.P.S. Once you know malware has executed on the system, it's time for a full wipe, BIOS re-flash, and OS re-install -- There is no "removing" malware.
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