The worst part about going to a mega-conference like Virus Bulletin 2009 is the vast amount of stuff there to see and do, all the food that you overeat and the late nights you spend drinking too much beer with other professionals in your field. The best part is… well… pretty much the same things.When you’re trying to choose presentations and tracks and find the right room that they’re in it’s hard to get an overall view of the conference: what were the big stories?
Here’s our compilation of the news headlines from the VB 2009 conference. It’s not like being there, but, maybe you can take your laptop to a brew pub, read these and pretend you’re in Geneva. Prost!
“Koobface, Twitter Attacks Growing More Sophisticated”
Attacks and scams aimed at Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites are continuing to evolve.
Ivan Macalintal, Trend Micro senior threat analyst
“Penis pill spam: The hard figures”
Male enhancement pill spammers selling unlicensed prescription medication, including Viagra, are largely connected with partnerka, the Russian affiliate of spam and malware distributors. Samosseiko found 124,000 “Canadian pharmacy” sites and estimates the groups make $1,600 each day per spam run.
Dmitry Samosseiko, Sophos
“Up To 9 Percent Of Machines In An Enterprise Are Bot-Infected “
Bot infections in enterprises have grown from 5-7 percent last year to 7-9 percent this year according to a study of 600 botnets. Most of the bots were little-known varieties.
Erik Wu, Damballa
“Internet companies face up to ‘malvertising’ threat”
Internet providers needs to make more of a coordinated effort to protect Internet users from malvertising.
Eric Davis, head of Google’s anti-malvertising team
“In search of a standard for displaying security threat levels”
Anti-malware vendors should create a standard way of assigning computer and Internet threat levels.
Bryan Lu, Fortinet project manager
“Hijacking Windows System Restore for cybercrime profits”
Creators of the Win32/Dogrobot malware have created a sophisticated rootkit technique to hijack Windows System Restore. They use it to steal billions of dollars in gaming credentials and virtual property in China.
Chun Feng, Microsoft anti-virus researcher
(Podcast) “VB 2009: Stefan Tanase on Web 2.0 Threats and Anti-Social Networking”
Digital Underground podcast Dennis Fisher interviews Stefan Tanase, senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab about social networking site threats as well as Web 2.0 privacy and security concerns.
Stefan Tanase, Kaspersky Lab senior security researcher
As you’ve probably figured out, I didn’t get to go. Maybe I can bum the conference proceedings from somebody then watch the Youtube videos on my laptop in the Dunedin House of Beer.
Tom Kelchner