Global Security, Safety and Sustainability & e-Democracy. 7th International and 4th e-Democracy, Joint Conferences, ICGS3/e-Democracy 2011, Thessaloniki, Greece, August 24-26, 2011, Revised Selected Papers

Research Article

Cybercrime: The Case of Obfuscated Malware

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  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-642-33448-1_28,
        author={Mamoun Alazab and Sitalakshmi Venkatraman and Paul Watters and Moutaz Alazab and Ammar Alazab},
        title={Cybercrime: The Case of Obfuscated Malware},
        proceedings={Global Security, Safety and Sustainability \& e-Democracy. 7th International and 4th e-Democracy, Joint Conferences, ICGS3/e-Democracy 2011, Thessaloniki, Greece, August 24-26, 2011, Revised Selected Papers},
        proceedings_a={ICGS3 \& E-DEMOCRACY},
        year={2012},
        month={10},
        keywords={Cybercrime Obfuscation Malware Intrusion Detection},
        doi={10.1007/978-3-642-33448-1_28}
    }
    
  • Mamoun Alazab
    Sitalakshmi Venkatraman
    Paul Watters
    Moutaz Alazab
    Ammar Alazab
    Year: 2012
    Cybercrime: The Case of Obfuscated Malware
    ICGS3 & E-DEMOCRACY
    Springer
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-33448-1_28
Mamoun Alazab1,*, Sitalakshmi Venkatraman1,*, Paul Watters1,*, Moutaz Alazab2,*, Ammar Alazab2,*
  • 1: University of Ballarat
  • 2: Deakin University
*Contact email: m.alazab@ballarat.edu.au, s.venkatraman@ballarat.edu.au, p.watters@ballarat.edu.au, malazab@deakin.edu.au, aalazab@deakin.edu.au

Abstract

Cybercrime has rapidly developed in recent years and malware is one of the major security threats in computer which have been in existence from the very early days. There is a lack of understanding of such malware threats and what mechanisms can be used in implementing security prevention as well as to detect the threat. The main contribution of this paper is a step towards addressing this by investigating the different techniques adopted by obfuscated malware as they are growingly widespread and increasingly sophisticated with zero-day exploits. In particular, by adopting certain effective detection methods our investigations show how cybercriminals make use of file system vulnerabilities to inject hidden malware into the system. The paper also describes the recent trends of Zeus botnets and the importance of anomaly detection to be employed in addressing the new Zeus generation of malware.