Utilizing rootkits to address the vulnerabilities exploited by malware

M.Sc.Anyone who uses a computer for work or recreational purposes has come across one or all of the following problems directly or indirectly (knowingly or not): viruses, worms, trojans, rootkits and botnets. This is especially the case if the computer is connected to the Internet. Looking at the statistics in [1] we can see that although malware detection techniques are detecting and preventing malware, they do not guarantee a 100% detection and or prevention of malware. Furthermore the statistics in [2] show that malware infection rates are increasing around the world at an alarming rate. The statistics also show that there are a high number of new malware samples being discovered every month and that 31% of malware attacks resulted in data loss [3], with 10% of companies reporting the loss of sensitive business data [4][5]. The reason for not being able to achieve a 100% detection and / or prevention of malware is because malware authors make use of sophisticated techniques such as code obfuscation in order to prevent malware from being detected. This has resulted in the emergence of malware known as polymorphic and metamorphic malware. The aforementioned malware poses serious challenges for anti-malware software specifically signature based techniques. However a more serious threat that needs to be addressed is that of rootkits. Rootkits can execute at the same privilege level as the Operating System (OS) itself. At this level the rootkit can manipulate the OS such that it can distribute other malware, hide existing malware, steal information, hide itself, disable anti-malware software etc all without the knowledge of the user. It is clear from the statistics that anti-malware products are not working because infection rates continue to rise and companies and end users continue to fall victims of these attacks. Therefore this dissertation will address the problem that current anti-malware techniques are not working. The main objective of this dissertation is to create a framework called ATE (Anti-malware Technique Evaluator) that can be used to critically evaluate current commercial anti-malware products. The framework will achieve this by identifying the current vulnerabilities that exist in commercial anti-malware products and the operating system. The prior will be achieved by making use of two rootkits, the Evader rootkit and the Sabotager rootkit, which were specifically developed to support the anti-malware product evaluation. Finally an anti-malware architecture we called External Malware Scanner (EMS), will be proposed to address the identified vulnerabilities