Avert Labs: Where 'wild' trojans are harnessed

BANGALORE, INDIA: Welcome to McAfee Avert Lab, Bangalore. The place where 'zoo' as well as 'wild' viruses are virtually caged!

Being one of the top-ranked malware, web, e-mail, vulnerability, intrusion and risk and compliance research organization in the world, the Avert Labs today hosts about eight terabytes of malware samples. These malware samples range from virus to worms and trojans.

Explains Prabhat K Singh, senior director, McAfee AVERT Labs (JPAC), "The 'wild' viruses are samples which are out and affecting the computer users everyday and the 'zoo' viruses are those that are reported from a competitor or a certifier."

Sometimes even the virus writers send them loads of samples.  That is a way to trick the AVERT Labs, Singh dwells adding that virus writers attempt to tie-up with the researchers in this way.

"The samples we get are usually anonymous submission which can be identified based on certain characteristics. However, the cycle of tie up with the researchers in doing his work is gone as we use intelligent and cloud-based technology. Now the researchers can easily bypass this challenge," Singh   notes.

Polymorphic virus attacks

McAfee AVERT Labs has also noted increasing attacks of polymorphic virus in the recent times. "We are seeing the same pattern re-emerging as in the early 90s. I feel its a sort of cycle," Singh says.

According to the AVERT Labs director some kinds of attacks or malicious behavior are noticed in certain times.

"They are dealt within time by security vendors and they are out because the motivation to write such virus won't be there once the security vendors come out with signatures. But the security technologies also change in time and again it will be open to some kinds of previous attacks," he explains.

The AVERT Labs receives about one million samples of viruses annually. "It is not possible to come out with signatures for each submissions. So we categorize the samples based on behavior and others characterization and come out with a signature for a family of samples," adds Singh.

The McAfee Avert Lab acts as a dynamic intelligence agency with more than 270 researchers on five continents anticipating and identifying emerging threats worldwide.

With research teams devoted to malware, potentially unwanted programs, host intrusions, network intrusions, mobile malware and ethical vulnerability disclosure, Avert Labs enjoys a broad view of security.