The more things change

…the more they stay the same. Greetings from a cloudy Amsterdam, where the European edition of BlackHat is once again being held.

So far we’ve seen a number of very interesting presentations on various topics such as RFID and Windows. I especially liked one presentation about a Windows Vista Bootkit called VBootkit. The idea is to compromise security while the system is in the booting process.

One of the ways Vbootkit does this without being detected is by hooking INT 13, used for HDD reading. Funnily enough Brain, the very first computer virus, did the same. It infected boot sectors and when a program wanted to read the boot sector, Brain would show the original sector.

So I guess the saying is true: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Of course, the particularly bad thing about this attack is that Vista’s kernel protection will make it impossible for AVs to detect it.

Kaspersky researchers have discovered new Mirage Kitten attacks using previously undocumented malware families: NodeRabbit in Node.js and PollCat in JavaScript.

Our experts discovered a new CoolClient backdoor variant with a kernel-mode rootkit driver that hides malicious processes, files, and network connections from security tools and threat analysts.

Kaspersky experts break down a new Armored Likho campaign that poses as a fundraising efforts and delivers a new Still Toolkit aimed at stealing Telegram data and eavesdropping on victims.

Kaspersky researchers reveal previously undocumented malware attributed to Mirage Kitten (UNC1549, Smoke Sandstorm, Nimbus Manticore): NightLedger backdoor, ArcBridge, and BridgeHead tunneling tools.