The malware sandbox that I've previously discussed on this blog has made for a lot of useful Snort rules - but it's also helped get me some excellent speaking slots around the world this year. This time, I've just wrapped up a presentation titled "Malware Mythbusting" at Ruxcon, Australia's premier technical security conference.

The premise of the talk was simple: there's a lot of hype surrounding malware, and if you're someone tasked with keeping a network secure, there's generally not a lot of good information about the nature of the threat. Can I cut off China and Russia and make all the C&C servers go away? Are spambots really a major threat, or has garden-variety malware moved on? Are the people writing malicious software a bunch of evil geniuses, or can a little bit of diligence and attention locate heaps of nasty behavior on the network?

While I don't claim to have all the answers - no one does - I hope to have done a reasonable job of answering some of these questions during this talk. For those of you who didn't have the chance to make it down here - and for those who did that want to take a closer look at some of the data presented - I've made my slides available here. As I noted in the talk, if you have questions that it left unanswered, or if you're interested in working with us on malware research, drop the VRT a line - we're happy to collaborate with anyone who has good ideas. After all, at the end of the day, we're all on the same team here, and anything that can be done to clean more malicious software from the Internet is a good thing, regardless of the source.