Criminals make routine security tests

By Dave Nixon

Cyber-criminals are beginning to bear a resemblance to the legal software industry to such a degree that they even pre-test malware applications for effectiveness before releasing them.

That is in accordance with PandaLabs, which has identified forums on which criminals connect with one another to progress with development of applications which can be used to test their creations against known security products.

In a blog, the company scrutinized numerous malware-testing applications it has found to be in use recently, including the principally useful KIMS, Scanlix, and Multi-AVs Fixer. Either tool can inform a malware author whether their application would be identified by one or more of a large range of anti-virus products.

The main shortcoming of these is that they need a full copy of the security programs to be in attendance locally, an arduous task given that this means having 15 or more programs installed at any one time in order to cover the field.

Testing a malicious application against security products is valuable for any malware author, mainly because even fairly basic applications have to try to disable security to have any likelihood of working. But carrying out testing application-by-application is bound to be hugely time-consuming.