Encoder for Android: сomplete software anatomy

Until recently, based on the results of surveys and personal experience, I had the impression that users believe that the value of data stored on a device greatly exceeds the cost of the device itself. Why until recently? Well, the current US dollar exchange rate means that I haven’t seen such surveys among new iPhone users :).

Read full article →


Avian influenza. Review of *nix vulnerabilities in 2015

According to cvedetails.com, more than 1,305 vulnerabilities have been found in the Linux core since 1999. Sixty-eight of these were in 2015. Most of them don't cause many problems (they are marked as Local and Low), and some may cause problems only if they are attached to certain applications or OS settings. In reality these numbers are not that big, but the core is not the entire OS. There are also vulnerabilities found in GNU Coreutils, Binutils, glibs and, of course, user applications. Let's take a look at the most interesting of the bunch.

Read full article →


The Children of CryptoLocker, Part 2. TeslaCrypt, TorLocker, TorrentLocker

Previous part: The Children of CryptoLocker, Part 1

The first examples of malware that encrypts files and then demands money for decryption appeared a long time ago. Just remember Trojan.Xorist with its primitive encryption algorithm based on XOR, or Trojan.ArchiveLock written in PureBasic, which used regular WinRAR for encryption and Sysinternals SDelete for deleting encrypted files, and demanded as much as five thousand dollars for decryption. However, it was CryptoLocker that established the bad trend among virus writers to use the latest achievements in cryptography as quite stable encryption algorithms. Today, we will investigate several encryption-based trojans which emerged after the notorious spread of CryptoLocker on the internet (or at the same time).

Read full article →


The Children of CryptoLocker, Part 1. Critroni, CryptoWall, DirCrypt

The first examples of malware that encrypts files and then demands money for decryption appeared a long time ago. Just remember Trojan.Xorist with its primitive encryption algorithm based on XOR, or Trojan.ArchiveLock written in PureBasic, which used regular WinRAR for encryption and Sysinternals SDelete for deleting encrypted files, and demanded as much as five thousand dollars for decryption. However, it was CryptoLocker that established the bad trend among virus writers to use the latest achievements in cryptography as quite stable encryption algorithms. Today, we will investigate several encryption-based trojans which emerged after the notorious spread of CryptoLocker on the internet (or at the same time).

Read full article →