gunter ollman Archives

Are you old enough to remember the demise of the ubiquitous CompuServe and AOL CD’s that used to be attached to every computer magazine you ever brought between the mid-80’s and mid-90’s? If you missed that annoying period of Internet history, maybe you’ll be able to watch the death of desktop antivirus instead.

65,000 AOL CD’s as art

Just as dial-up subscription portals and proprietary “web browsers” represent a yester-year view of the Internet, desktop antivirus is similarly being confined to the annuls of Internet history. It may still be flapping vigorously like a freshly landed fish, but we all know how those last gasps end.

To be perfectly honest, it’s amazing that desktop antivirus has lasted this long. To be fair though, the product you may have installed on your computer (desktop or laptop) bears little resemblance to the antivirus products of just 3 years ago. Most vendors have even done away from using the “antivirus” term – instead they’ve tried renaming them as “protection suites” and “prevention technology” and throwing in a bunch of additional threat detection engines for good measure.

I have a vision of a hunchbacked Igor working behind the scenes stitching on some new appendage or bolting on an iron plate for reinforcement to the Frankenstein corpse of each antivirus product as he tries to keep it alive for just a little bit longer…

That’s not to say that a lot of effort doesn’t go in to maintaining an antivirus product. However, with the millions upon millions of new threats each month it’s hardly surprising that the technology (and approach) falls further and further behind. Despite that, the researchers and engineers that maintain these products try their best to keep the technology as relevant as possible… and certainly don’t like it when anyone points out the gap between the threat and the capability of desktop antivirus to deal with it.

For example, the New York Times ran a piece on the last day of 2012 titled “Outmaneuvered at Their Own Game, Antivirus Makers Struggle to Adapt” that managed to get many of the antivirus vendors riled up – interestingly enough not because of the claims of the antivirus industry falling behind, but because some of the statistics came from unfair and unscientific tests. In particular there was great annoyance that a security vendor (representing an alternative technology) used VirusTotal coverage as their basis for whether or not new malware could be detected – claiming that initial detection was only 5%.

I’ve discussed the topic of declining desktop antivirus detection rates (and evasion) many, many times in the past. From my own experience, within corporate/enterprise networks, desktop antivirus detection typically hovers at 1-2% for the threats that make it through the various network defenses. For newly minted malware that is designed to target corporate victims, the rate is pretty much 0% and can remain that way for hundreds of days after the malware has been released in to the wild.

You’ll note that I typically differentiate between desktop and network antivirus. The reason for this is because I’m a firm advocate that the battle is already over if the malware makes it down to the host. If you’re going to do anything on the malware prevention side of things, then you need to do it before it gets to the desktop – ideally filtering the threat at the network level, but gateway prevention (e.g. at the mail gateway or proxy server) will be good enough for the bulk of non-targeted Internet threats. Antivirus operations at the desktop are best confined to cleanup, and even then I wouldn’t trust any of the products to be particularly good at that… all too often reimaging of the computer isn’t even enough in the face of malware threats such as TDL.

So, does an antivirus product still have what it takes to earn the real estate it take up on your computer? As a standalone security technology – No, I don’t believe so. If it’s free, never ever bothers me with popups, and I never need to know it’s there, then it’s not worth the effort uninstalling it and I guess it can stay… other than that, I’m inclined to look at other technologies that operate at the network layer or within the cloud; stop what you can before it gets to the desktop. Many of the bloated “improvements” to desktop antivirus products over recent years seem to be analogous to improving the hearing of a soldier so he can more clearly hear the ‘click’ of the mine he’s just stood on as it arms itself.

I’m all in favor of retraining any hunchbacked Igor we may come across. Perhaps he can make artwork out of discarded antivirus DVDs – just as kids did in the 1990’s with AOL CD’s?

— Gunter Ollmann, CTO — IOActive, Inc.

Throughout the second half of 2012 many security folks have been asking “how much is a zero-day vulnerability worth?” and it’s often been hard to believe the numbers that have been (and continue to be) thrown around. For the sake of clarity though, I do believe that it’s the wrong question… the correct question should be “how much do people pay for working exploits against zero-day vulnerabilities?”

The answer in the majority of cases tends to be “it depends on who’s buying and what the vulnerability is” regardless of the questions particular phrasing.

On the topic of exploit development, last month I wrote an article for DarkReading covering the business of commercial exploit development, and in that article you’ll probably note that I didn’t discuss the prices of what the exploits are retailing for. That’s because of my elusive answer above… I know of some researchers with their own private repository of zero-day remote exploits for popular operating systems seeking $250,000 per exploit, and I’ve overheard hushed bar conversations that certain US government agencies will beat any foreign bid by four-times the value.

But that’s only the thin-edge of the wedge. The bulk of zero-day (or nearly zero-day) exploit purchases are for popular consumer-level applications – many of which are region-specific. For example, a reliable exploit against Tencent QQ (the most popular instant messenger program in China) may be more valuable than an exploit in Windows 8 to certain US, Taiwanese, Japanese, etc. clandestine government agencies.

More recently some of the conversations about exploit sales and purchases by government agencies have focused in upon the cyberwar angle – in particular, that some governments are trying to build a “cyber weapon” cache and that unlike kinetic weapons these could expire at any time, and that it’s all a waste of effort and resources.

I must admit, up until a month ago I was leaning a little towards that same opinion. My perspective was that it’s a lot of money to be spending for something that’ll most likely be sitting on the shelf that will expire in to uselessness before it could be used. And then I happened to visit the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History on a business trip to Albuquerque.

Museum: Polaris Missile

Museum: Minuteman missile part?

For those of you that have never heard of the place, it’s a museum that plots out the history of the nuclear age and the evolution of nuclear weapon technology (and I encourage you to visit!).

Anyhow, as I literally strolled from one (decommissioned) nuclear missile to another – each laying on its side rusting and corroding away, having never been used, it finally hit me – governments have been doing the same thing for the longest time, and cyber weapons really are no different!

Perhaps it’s the physical realization of “it’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it”, but as you trace the billions (if not trillions) of dollars that have been spent by the US government over the years developing each new nuclear weapon delivery platform, deploying it, manning it, eventually decommissioning it, and replacing it with a new and more efficient system… well, it makes sense and (frankly) it’s laughable how little money is actually being spent in the cyber-attack realm.

So what if those zero-day exploits purchased for measly 6-figured wads of cash curdle like last month’s milk? That price wouldn’t even cover the cost of painting the inside of a decommissioned missile silo.

No, the reality of the situation is that governments are getting a bargain when it comes to constructing and filling their cyber weapon caches. And, more to the point, the expiry of those zero-day exploits is a well understood aspect of managing an arsenal – conventional or otherwise.

— Gunter Ollmann, CTO – IOActive, Inc.

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The Demise of Desktop Antivirus

Exploits, Curdled Milk and Nukes (Oh my!)