OMG, undetectable Trojans are coming to get us! At least that’s what a story in The Register says, referring to Limbo 2.
Or else we’ve just found further evidence of the “AV software is for catching unknown threats” myth.
Malware authors selling “guaranteed undetected” Trojans is not news; it’s been happening since developing Trojans was first motivated by money. The Trojan authors test their creations against freely available AV scanners, and if it’s undetected at that moment, it qualifies as “undetected.” However, that doesn’t mean that they will always remain detected. Or that another type of security product won’t detect it, such as a firewall or network intrusion prevention system.
One amusing example of malware for sale included an end-user license agreement that promised violators would be reported to AV companies so your botnet could be dismantled.
But I digress.
The point is that “undetectable Trojans” implies that some novel method of storing the malware code on the system is being employed, such that security software (and likewise the operating system) is incapable of seeing it. Limbo 2 does no such thing. It’s a simple PWS-Banker Trojan as far as security software is concerned. I find it disappointing that a security company would describe it otherwise–that smacks of FUD to me.
In other news, this will be my last post for the Avert Labs blog. As of next week, I’ll be the Director of Research for West Coast Labs. Thank you all for reading and commenting on my posts throughout the years. Hearing your opinions has been the most entertaining part of being a blogger!

July 25th, 2008 at 20:03
Good luck at your new position! The blog is great and your posts have been a joy to read.
July 28th, 2008 at 01:30
There’s still many PWS-Banker McAfee cannot be detected.
–
I also found x1000 varaints of Swizzor.gen everyday.
McAfee detections:0%
July 28th, 2008 at 05:39
Congrats on your new role. Hope you have fun there.
July 29th, 2008 at 08:51
There has to be an union against virus development to bust those douchebags.
August 1st, 2008 at 02:53
First of all Congratilations!
I hope someone will continue writing in the blog in the same manner that you did. It’s a pity losing that kind of posts.
No more comments, just Congrats and good luck!
Regards.
August 31st, 2008 at 18:52
Here is an example of the word m o d e l getting deleted from a posting: word m o d e l without space between each letter follows here: model
August 31st, 2008 at 18:57
This above string, on some pages, results in the word, “model” getting deleted mysteriously–not here apparently. I have seen this off and on over the last 9 or 10 years actually, using reply boxes such as this. I have the image of this behavior documented in a Wordpad doc. If this is malware at work, it is subtle enough to escape multiple kinds of scans.