Overview: Cryptolocker and Ransomware

Within the past 2 years, in addition to the conventional malware, the so-called Ransomware has spread massively. While in 2014 less than 10 known families/variants roamed in this area, we discovered 15 of those blackmailing apps in 2015. Within the first quarter of 2016 this number has already been exceeded (as can be seen in the table below). Last year, we saw a special form of Ransomware appearing, the so-called Cryptolocker. This special form is feared by users and security responsible people within an organization because it blocks not only the smartphone or tablet – as it is the case with Ransomware – but also all data of the user becomes encrypted on an infected device.

Continue reading “Overview: Cryptolocker and Ransomware”

Our Android Malware Summary for the Year 2015

In 2015 our Mobile-Sandbox analyzed only 25,000 Android applications that were submitted by mostly anonymous users, Anti-Virus-Companies and by our own. In the same time we had a large outage of the system (more than 4 months) due to some hardware defects and missing free time to get the system running again (I still hope to get it available for the public by end of this month).

Most of these malicious applications had been downloaded from Third-Party markets and from potentially infected mobile devices. When looking at the malicious and unwanted applications and the corresponding families, one can see the following distribution of malicious behavior:

Continue reading “Our Android Malware Summary for the Year 2015”

First Book: (Mastering) Python Forensics

Beginning of 2015 PackPub came to Johann and me and ask us if we would like to write a book about Python-based forensic investigations. The idea of writing a book was really interesting for both of us, so we started to work on an agenda and outline. After several discussions with the publisher we created an outline that was acceptable for all of us and less than a year later (since October 2015) the book is available on Amazon and PackPub.

Continue reading “First Book: (Mastering) Python Forensics”

Androguard: A simple step by step guide

Reversing Android applications is something I’m doing very regularly. Thus, I thought writing some small and simple step by step guides for available tools could be helpful for the community, especially for people that are just starting to work on this topic.

Today I will start with Androguard, but I hope that there will be enough time in the future to continue those guides for other tools.

Continue reading “Androguard: A simple step by step guide”