The Latest Threat: A Virus Made Just For You

July 24, 2012 By Ali Loney

1 minute read time

Technology Review – (International) The latest threat: A virus made just for you. The Flashback computer virus gained notoriety earlier in 2012 as the first malware to make headway against Apple’s relatively untouched operating system, Mac OS X, infecting 600,000 victims’ machines at the peak of the outbreak. However, computer scientists and security professionals were more worried about another aspect of the malware. The authors of Flashback used a technique that Hollywood often employs to prevent movie and music files from being copied — they added functions that bound the virus to each infected system. The use of that technique prevented security companies from running the virus in their labs. New research shows that a refinement to the technique could make automated analysis of malware nearly impossible. - 16 -

Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428557/the-latest-threat-a-virus-made-just-for-you/

Tags: security, AppSec Spotlight

Written by Ali Loney

Ali Loney is a Senior UX Designer at Walmart Labs. She is based in Canada and was the former Graphic Designer at Sonatype.