Linux Software & Blog
Ryan M.
Posts by Ryan M.
Signature Updates: Month In Review
Jul 24th
Since I will be busy this coming week with other priorities, I am posting an early month in review blog on signature updates.
In the last 3 weeks we have not seen a whole lot of action on in-the-wild malware, most of what is propagating at the moment are variants of already detected content. That is however not to say there has not been new signatures extracted, allot of this months signatures have come from account level compromises on vulnerable e107, wordpress and joomla installations along with user submissions. There is not a whole lot of ground breaking malware threats, More >
The other side: who uses rfxn.com projects?
Jul 24th
In one of my usual A.D.D. moments I decided to aggregate some data on project downloads and daily update queries to the rfxn.com server, to get a picture of who exactly is using the projects. Although this information is not terribly important, I do find it interesting. I need to stress that none of the listed organizations, agencies or businesses in any way endorse, sponsor or represent the opinions expressed on this site, they are simply users of my projects. That said, lets have a look at who uses the projects.
The basics: 1,808 Unique Networks across 117 Countries
Top 10 Usage Networks: GNAX More >
Projects: The personal costs
Jul 20th
When you do open source development, especially as an independent developer, there is a constant struggle that must be balanced between that of work and personal obligations. As any open source developer will tell you, 99% of the time, the projects we develop fall strictly into the realm of personal time, no matter how much they may apply to our work field. It is difficult to justify the time that is required in maintaining one let alone a series of active projects when you also work a full-time job while trying to have some semblance of a life.
So, when you More >
Bot Networks: Jacking the Jackers
Jul 6th
One of the more interesting parts of my malware hunting routine is when I notice new command & control hubs for bot networks in the source of ircbot malware content. I am not the type to just look and not play, I always dive into these networks and poke around. When it gets really fun is when the attackers get lazy thinking they are untouchable and leave open their irc networks with a series of simple administrator nick names that can be used to control the bots on the network.
So, what I sometimes do is sign into these irc networks, More >
Signatures For The Masses
Jun 26th
Today I found the time and energy, despite how tedious it was, to go over the last two weeks worth of malware submissions and missed edge IPS data from when I was away. This resulted in a total of 126 new signatures (67 MD5 / 59 HEX) which brings LMD to a total of 2,471 signatures (894 MD5 / 1577 HEX). This now also gives the project a unique distinction among anti-virus and malware detection offerings, as the single largest project, commercial or open source, detecting Linux malware.
To further illustrate the lapse in coverage by other vendors, we can turn More >
