Black Hat promises new exploit techniques, Stuxnet insight

05.11.2010
The Black Hat security conference will kick off in Abu Dhabi on Monday with new information revealed about the Stuxnet malicious software program along with other cutting-edge research.

Tom Parker, director of security consulting services at Securicon, will be among the speakers at the conference, located for the first time in the United Arab Emirates. Parker has taken a deep look at Stuxnet, a piece of malicious software that caused widespread concern because it targeted Siemens SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems.

Stuxnet has generated a lot of hype and speculation, including whether it was created by some country's intelligence services as well as varying opinions on its sophistication, Parker said. Much of that speculation, Parker said, has been spawned by a problem facing the computer security community: How can certain malware be attributed to a specific person or group?

The methods used to analyze malware, such as sandboxes to test it in a controlled environment and reverse engineering tools, aren't great for figuring out who actually created the code. Attribution is important, as then it would allow a country being targeted to make more informed decisions on how to counteract the attack.

"We don't have that level of scientific research yet in the cybersecurity domain and that's what we really need to start building consensus around," Parker said.

At Black Hat, Parker plans to release an open-source tool called "Blackaxon" that analyzes the programming styles of code. Just as authors of books have their own distinct styles and patterns, the same goes for malware authors. His analysis shows that probably at least five different people wrote parts of Stuxnet.