The Big List of Dodgy Apps

[Phil Betts]

Dave Korn wrote on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 5:24 PM::

> I'll try and find some tuits.  If nothing else it
> might save a lot of time just to have the information listed in
> cygcheck.  We probably want to give it the ability to detect that a
> badware exists or is installed by looking for 1) registry keys that
> would indicate it has been installed 2) presence of named executables
> in known (i.e. default install) locations and 3) presence of named
> executables in list of current running tasks. 
> 
>   Anyone can suggest any other useful detection mechanisms?


It seems that most, if not all, of the offenders insert themselves 
(or rather get themselves inserted) into every process's DLL list.

I would think it was possible to have cygcheck do something like 
sysinternals' process explorer does to get the DLL list, but to do it 
only on itself - essentially asking the question "to which DLLs am I 
linked?"  The expected DLLs can be eliminated from all enquiries.  If 
the fingerprint of a known offender is detected, it can be reported as 
such.  Anything else can be reported as a "potential problem".

A database of known offenders' fingerprints can be built up from the
submitted cygcheck output once a problem has been resolved.  It may 
also be worth building up a whitelist of known innocent fingerprints.

I don't know what the sysinternals license was before MS closed-sourced
their apps, but my guess is that it would be necessary to reverse-
engineer their technique.


Phil