The Importance of Reinstalling After a Virus or Malware Infection

In episode 11, I made some comments about wiping a compromised system rather than trying to clean it. I saw in my twitter feed a bit ago that the 2013 Shmoocon videos were posted. I looked through and one talk stuck out and I wanted to share here, given my comments: Wipe The Drive – Techniques for malware persistence..

Basically, the presenters show why it’s such a bad idea to simply clean a computer after a virus infection. I like to think this is common knowledge, but I meet people daily who so not understand the reasons behind taking this draconian approach.

Defensive Security Podcast Episode 11

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Krebs Swatted: http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/03/the-world-has-no-room-for-cowards/

China: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/03/the_u_s_response_to_chinese_cyberespionage_will_backfire.html

http://www.crn.com/news/security/240150929/new-exploit-evades-all-antivirus-products-for-almost-a-day.htm

http://www.net-security.org/malware_news.php?id=2441

http://m.threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/ramnit-malware-back-and-better-avoiding-detection-031513

http://www.honeynet.org/node/1031

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/03/national-vulnerability-database-taken-down-by-vulnerability-exploiting-hack/

Mandiant report: http://www.mandiant.com/library/M-Trends_2013.pdf

Solutionary report: http://www.solutionary.com/dms/solutionary/Files/SERT/2013GTIR.pdf

Defensive Security Podcast Episode 10

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Interesting Writeup by ESET on sink holing the zortob.b botnet http://www.welivesecurity.com/2013/03/08/sinkholing-trojan-downloader-zortob-b-reveals-fast-growing-malware-threat/
– common phishing emails emanating from it at the rate of 80m per hour Continue reading “Defensive Security Podcast Episode 10”

Defensive Security Podcast Episode 9

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Episode 9 – From Las Vegas
Comments/questions/hate mail to info@defensivesecurity.org
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DDOS attack on Bank of the West masked a $900,000 theft from the account of Ascent Builders. http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/02/ddos-attack-on-bank-hid-900000-cyberheist/

Bible.org- https://isc.sans.edu/diary/When+web+sites+go+bad%3A+bible+.+org+compromise/15250
Site compromised – serving malware, had rudimentary defense against automated analysis

Bit9 update: https://blog.bit9.com/2013/02/25/bit9-security-incident-update/
– kudos to bit9 for transparency and disclosure – hopefully works in their favor

Continue reading “Defensive Security Podcast Episode 9”

Defensive Security Podcast Episode 8

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News:

Burger King & Jeep twitter accounts hacked

Microsoft and Apple hacked with same exploit that hit Facebook

NBC.com’s site is hacked, injecting an iframe directing visitors to a site that served an exploit kit and installed the Citadel trojan. Continue reading “Defensive Security Podcast Episode 8”

Protect Yourself From The Latest Java Zero Day

Brian Krebs is reporting that a new zero day vulnerability and matching exploit are making the rounds, with no patch or fix in sight.

My recommendation is to consider disabling the java browser plugin or implementing no script with a policy to only allow java originating from intranet sites.

Be careful out there!

Defensive Security Podcast Episode 4

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Happy New Year!

In this week’s podcast, I cover an article about the alleged Chinese hacking of Solid Oak due to a lawsuit over China’s improper use of Solid Oak’s software CYBERsitter covered in a Business Week post.

First, a bit of news. Unless you’re still recovering from an egg-nog hangover, you’ve probably heard about the Internet Explorer zero day exploit. Note that it doesn’t impact the latest versions of IE, only 6, 7 and 8. Continue reading “Defensive Security Podcast Episode 4”