I published the following diary on isc.sans.edu: “Spotting the Red Team on VirusTotal!“:
Many security researchers like to use the VirusTotal platform. The provided services are amazing: You can immediately have a clear overview of the dangerousness level of a file but… VirusTotal remains a cloud service. It means that, once you uploaded a file to scan it, you have to consider it as “lost” and available to a lot of (good or bad) people! In the SANS FOR610 training (“Reverse Engineering Malware”), we insist on the fact that you should avoid uploading a file to VT! The best practice is to compute the file hash then search for it to see if someone else already uploaded the same sample. If you’re the first to upload a file, its creator can be notified about the upload and learn that he has been detected. Don’t be fooled: attackers have also access to VirusTotal and monitor activity around their malware! Note that I mention VirusTotal because it is very popular but is not the only service providing repositories of malicious files, they are plenty of alternative services to scan and store malicious files… [Read more]
