Black Hat conference: Newest Stealth Rootkits
Just when anti-virus vendors think they have a bead on the threat from stealth rootkits, along comes word that a pair of researchers have discovered a new way to hide malicious programs.
Jamie Butler, director of engineering at HBGary Inc., and Sherri Sparks, a PhD student at the University of Central Florida, demonstrated the technique at the Black Hat Briefings here with a chilling warning that anti-virus scanners must "completely revamp" existing rootkit detection technologies.
The proof-of-concept, dubbed Shadow Walker, is a modification of Butler's FU rootkit, a kernel-level program capable of hiding processes and elevating process privileges. The rootkit uses DKOM (Direct Kernel Object Manipulation) to fake out the Windows Event Viewer to make forensics virtually impossible and can also hide device drivers, Butler explained.
With Shadow Walker, Butler and Sparks explore the idea of memory subversion to hide the rootkit in memory with almost no performance impact.
"This is a prototype for a fourth generation of rootkits that would defeat the current rootkit detection technology," said Sparks, who is renowned for her work around offensive/defensive malicious code technologies.
Some existing rootkit defense technologies use behavior detection, integrity detection and signature-based detection to find the stealth programs. Others, like Microsoft Corp.'s Strider Ghostbuster, F-Secure Corp.'s BlackLight and Sysinternals Freeware's RootkitRevealer, search for registry and file system API discrepancies that may indicate the presence of a user-mode or kernel-mode rootkit.
These guys are here showing us that we haven't even scratched the surface where rootkits are concerned.
Internet security practitioners in attendance described the Shadow Walker prototype as "scary."
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