McAfee: Hackers take advantage of open source techniques

Security firm McAfee said hackers are mimicking the tricks of open-source software groups, learning the techniques that have led to the success of Linux and Apache to improve their destructive software.

This is most evident through the rapid increase of "bot" software lines, often used by hackers to take control of a user's computer. Dave Marcus, director of security and communications research at Avert Labs at McAfee, said that unlike past viruses, "bot" software is often written by a group of authors, collaborating. together and use the same tools and techniques as open source programmers.

" For the past year and a half, we have found that" bot "software is developed based on open source tools and in the open source software development style, " he said.

The current generation of "bot" software has grown to the point that open source software development tools have become perfectly suited to them. For example, the guys writing Agobot malware are using open source Concurrent Versions System software to manage projects with hundreds of source code files.

McAfee researchers have described hackers taking advantage of these open source techniques in a number of new journals published July 16. Named Sage, the first issue of this magazine has a post on the cover page titled " Bid for the advancement of open source ". Mr. McAfee expects to publish a number of Sage magazines every six months.

He said McAfee is seeking to attract public attention to the trend of taking advantage of this open source code to educate users and has no intention of seeking to discredit open source software. He said: " We think open source antivirus products are very good. We never really ranked them on par with our products, but we are always the most enthusiastic supporters. for open source antivirus software ".

However, Mr. Marcus does not agree with security experts who distribute malicious software samples. He said: " We have not attacked open source activities, we talk about the whole form of exposure and that it will be used to develop destructive software ."

However, there are also security experts who disagree with Mr. Marcus. Mr. Stefano Zanero, Secure Network SRL's technology manager, said that the full disclosure model serves legitimate researchers and helps software vendors respond more quickly. " Studies are based on published information, not on secrets, " he said.