malware evolution and endpoint detection and response

Evolution of Malware and the Next Generation Endpoint Protection against Targeted Attacks

03/05/2023Malware Evolution 2

Index1. Malware volume evolution

2. Malware Eras3. Panda Adaptive Defense

1. What is it2. Features & Benefits3. How does it work4. Successs Story


Malware samples evolution


Malware volume evolution


Malware Eras


1st Era• Very little samples and Malware

families• Virus created for fun, some very

harmful, others harmless, but no ultimate goal

• Slow propagation (months, years) through floppy disks. Some virus are named after the city where it was created or discovered

• All samples are analysed by technicians

• Sample static analysis and disassembling (reversing)


W32.Kriz Jerusalem


2nd Era• Volume of samples starts growing

• Internet slowly grows popular, macro viruses appears, mail worm, etc…

• In general terms, low complexity viruses, using social engineering via email, limited distribution, they are not massively distributed

• Heuristic Techniques

• Increased update frequency


Melissa Happy 99


3rd Era• Massive worms apparition overloads the

internet• Via mail: I Love You• Via exploits: Blaster, Sasser, SqlSlammer

• Proactive Technologies• Dynamic: Proteus• Static: KRE & Heuristics Machine

Learning• Malware process identification by events

analysis of the process:• Access to mail contact list• Internet connection through non-

standard port• Multiple connections through port 25• Auto run key addition• Web browsers hook


I love you Blaster


Sasser


Static proactive technologies

Response times reduced to 0 detecting unknown malware

Machine Learning algorithms applied to classic classification problems

Ours is ALSO a “class” problem: malware vs goodware.


4th Era•Hackers switched their profile: the main motivation of malware is now an economic benefit, using bank trojans and phishing attacks.

•Generalization of droppers/downloaders/EK

•The move to Collective Intelligence

•Massive file classification.

•Knowledge is delivered from the cloud


Banbra Tinba


El salto a la Inteligencia Colectiva

La entrega del conocimiento desde la nube como alternativa al fichero de firmas.

Escalabilidad de los servicios de entrega de firmas de malware a los clientes mediante la automatización completa de todos los procesos de backend (procesado, clasificación y detección).


Big Data arrival

Current working set of 12 TB 400K million registries 600 GB of samples per day 400 million samples stored

Innovation: to make viable the data processing derived from Collective Intelligence strategy, applying Big Data technologies.


5th Era•First massive cyber-attack against a

country, Estonia from Russia. •Anonymous starts a campaign against

several organizations (RIAA, MPAA, SGAE, and others)•Malware professionalization•Use of marketing techniques in spam

campaigns•Country/Time based malware variant

distribution•Ransomware•APTs•Detection by context•Apart from analysing what a process does,

the context of execution is also taken into account…


Reveton Ransomware

03/05/2023 20Malware Evolution

APTs…



- November / December 2013- 40 millions credit/debit cards stolen- Attack made through the A/C

maintenance company- POS

- Unknown author- Information deletion- TB of information stolen

Sony Pictures computer system down after reported hackHackers threaten to release 'secrets' onto web

03/05/2023 23Malware Evolution

Carbanak- Year 2013/2014

- 100 affected entities

- Countries affected: Russia, Ukraine, USA, Germany, China

- ATMs: 7.300.000 US$

- Transfer: 10.000.000 US$

- Total estimated: 1.000.000.000 US$

03/05/2023Adaptive Defense 24

What is Panda Adaptive Defense?The Next Generation Endpoint Protection


Panda Adaptive Defense is a new security model which can guarantee complete protection for devices and servers by classifying 100% of the processes running on every computer throughout the organization and monitoring and controlling their behavior.

More than 1.2 billion applications already classified.

Adaptive Defense new version (1.5) also includes AV engine, adding the disinfection capability. Adaptive Defense could even replace the company antivirus.

RESPONSE… and forensic information to analyze each attempted attack in detail

VISIBILITY… and traceability of each action taken by the

applications running on a system

PREVENTION… and blockage of applications

and isolation of systems to prevent future attacks

DETECTION… and blockage

of Zero-day and targeted

attacks in real-time without the need for

signature files


Features and benefits

Daily and on-demand reports

Simple, centralized administration from a Web console

Better service, simpler management

Detailed and configurable monitoring of running applications

Protection of vulnerable systems

Protection of intellectual assets against targeted attacks

Forensic report

Protection

ProductivityIdentification and blocking of unauthorized programs

Light, easy-to-deploy solution

Management

Key Differentiators- Categorizes all running processes on the endpoint minimizing risk of unknown malware: Continuous monitoring and attestation of all processes fills the detection gap of AV products.- Automated investigation of events significantly reduces manual intervention by the security team: Machine learning and collective intelligence in the cloud definitively identifies goodware & blocks malware.- Integrated remediation of identified malware: Instant access to real time and historical data provides full visibility into the timeline of malicious endpoint activity.- Minimal endpoint performance impact (<3%)03/05/2023Adaptive Defense 28


New malware detection capability* Traditional Antivirus (25)

Standard Model Extended ModelNew malware blocked during the first 24 hours 82% 98,8% 100%New malware blocked during the first 7 days 93% 100% 100%New malware blocked during the first 3 months 98% 100% 100%% detections by Adaptive Defense detected by no other antivirus 3,30%Suspicious detections YES NO (no uncertainty)

File Classification Universal Agent**

Files classified automatically 60,25% 99,56%Classification certainty level 99,928% 99,9991%

< 1 error / 100.000 files

* Viruses, Trojans, spyware and ransomware received in our Collective Intelligence platform. Hacking tools, PUPS and cookies were not included in this study.

Adaptive Defense vs Traditional Antivirus

** Universal Agent technology is included as endpoint protection in all Panda Security solutions


Adaptive Defense vs Other Approaches

AV vendors WL vendors* New ATD vendors**

Detection gapDo not classify all applications Management of WLs required Not all infection vectors covered

(i.e. USB drives)

No transparent to end-users and admin (false positives, quarantine administration,… ) Complex deployments required Monitoring sandboxes is not as effective as

monitoring real environments

Expensive work overhead involved ATD vendors do not prevent/block attacks

* WL=Whitelisting. Bit9, Lumension, etc ** ATD= Advanced Threat Defense. FireEye, Palo Alto, Sourcefire, etc


How does Adaptive Defense work?

A brand-new three phased cloud-based security model


1st Phase: Comprehensive monitoring of all

the actions triggered by programs on endpoints

2nd Phase: Analysis and correlation of

all actions monitored on customers' systems thanks to Data Mining and Big Data

Analytics techniques

3rd Phase: Endpoint hardening &

enforcement: Blocking of all suspicious or dangerous

processes, with notifications to alert network administrators


Panda Adaptive Defense Architecture


Success Story

Adaptive Defense in figures

+1,2 billion applications already categorized

+100 deployments. Malware detected in 100% of scenarios

+100,000 endpoints and servers protected

+200,000 security breaches mitigated in the past year

+230,000 hours of IT resources saved estimated cost reduction of 14,2M€

Lest’s see an example…



Scenario Description

Concept Value

PoC length 60 days

Machines currently monitored +/- 690

Machines with malware 73

Machines with malware executed 15

Machines with PUP found 91

Executed PUP files 13

Executed files classified 27.942

Concept Value

Malware blocked 160

PUP blocked 623

TOTAL threats mitigated 783


Software vendor distribution over 100% of executable files


Skillbrains Igor Pavilov


Sandboxie Holdings LLC

Eolsoft


Opera SoftwareDropbox Inc.


Vulnerable applicationsVulnerable applications activity:

- … - (22 vulnerable applications in ALL seats = 2074)

Vulnerable applications inventory:- Excel v14.0.7 - v15.0 (279)

- Firefox v34.0 - v36 (178)

- Java v6 – v7 (80)


Top Malware


PUP (Spigot)


Potentially confidential information extraction


+

Thank you

malware evolution and endpoint detection and response

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