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Malware Conference News

Thank You Letter to Dr. Anthony Arrott and Prof. Arun Lakhotia

Malware 2016
Outstanding Contribution Award

and

Thank you

Presented to

Dr. Anthony Arrott and Prof. Arun Lakhotia

In recognition to their contributions to
the Field of Information and Systems Security
and their devotion in making the Malware Conference truly world class.

Malware Conference 2016 Best Paper Award

 Malware Conference 2016 Best Paper Award

Presented to

Dr. WILLIAM CASEY and Mr. AARON SHELMIRE ANOMALI

of the

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING INSTITUTE, CARNEGIE-MELLON UNIVERSIOTY

Pittsburg, Pennsylvania,  USA

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Saturday, October 29, 2016

Dear Attendee                 

On behalf of the Malware Conference Program Steering Committee, the chairs of the Technical Program Committee, and myself, we want to thank you for attending the 11th  Annual  International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Software (MALCON 2016), that recently took place at the Waldorf Astoria El Conquistador Hotel & Resort, Fajardo, Puerto Rico.

We hope that you found the conference informative and worthwhile. The primary goal of this conference was to bring together researchers from Academia, practitioners from industry, and government officials in an environment of "intimacy and candor" , which will encourage and allow an open dialogue, under one intimate roof to discuss the issues facing our industry today. In my private conversations with many of you this idea of open discussions where egos are left at the door, and in-depth discussions are held, really worked. You commented in private: "this is the best conference I have attended in many years",  "it is truly a different kind of conference where learning through discussions is really possible", "I loved the opportunity to engage and learn from the audience". We are so delighted that indeed this was the feedback that we received, and we want to thank you for taking the time to communicate such to the organizers of the conference.

We believe that our diverse and dynamic group of speakers and panelists provided in-depth insight, as well as, actionable and practical tools in the anti-malware community efforts to contain the exponential increase of Malware in the wild both in the traditional computer & network infrastructure, as well as in the emerging Smartphone eco-system.

Your presence helped to make this event a great success and your enthusiasm and positive spirit helped make our time together both productive and fun.  We wish you all the best and hope that you continue to be engaged with the Malware Conference in the future.  Stay tuned for upcoming events by visiting www.malwareconference.org.

In order to make next year’s conference even more successful we request that you fill out this post-event survey.   We thank you in advance for your comments and suggestions and we assure you that each will be given consideration so that future conferences and events will be even more successful. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO COMPLETE THE SURVEY

Finally, many of you showed interest in becoming involved with the conference. If you would like to become a member of the program committee for the 12th International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Malware (MALCON 2017), please send me an email, and enclose you CV at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Sincerely,

Dr. Fernando C. Colon Osorio,
Wireless System Security Research Laboratory (WSSRL)and Founder and General Program Chair

Malware Conference

429 Lakeside Avenue,

Marlboro, MA  01752

PROGRAM

El Conquistador Hotel & Resort

1000 El Conquistador Avenue, Fajardo, Puerto Rico, USA

7:15 am to 8:45 am

Breakfast and Registration

8:45 am to 9:00 am

Welcome, Conference Goals, and Introductions

Dr. Fernando C. Colon Osorio

Wireless Systems Security Research Laboratory

9:00 am to 10:15 am

Keynote -

Dmitri Vitaliev, Director at Equalit.ie and
Information Technology and Services Consultant

Biography: Dmitri is the founder and director of eQualit.ie with over a decade of experience working on digital security and privacy technology within the human rights and independent media sector. He has led and participated in missions to over 40 countries, and is a recognized expert on technology training and organizational security. He is the author of the Digital Security and Privacy for Human Rights Defenders manual and was a founding member and coordinator of the NGO-in-a-Box Security Edition project. He has helped to create worldwide networks of trainers, developed curricula for various security programs and is also a regular contributor to technology publications. But his real job is bringing up two kids and trying to be more at home.

 

Topic: Privacy, Security and the Future of Our Society  

 

10:15 to 10:30 am

Break

10:30 am to 12:00 pm

Session Chair: Prof. Arun Lakhotia

Session 1 - Mobile Malware, Defense Strategies & Mechanisms

1570297790: Reverse Engineering with Bioinformatics Algorithms Over a Sound Android Covert Channel by Sergio Vargas and Eleazar Aguirre, Instituto Politécnico Nacional Centro de Investigación en Computación, Mejico


1570297288: Dissecting Developer Policy Violating Apps: Characterization and Detection    by Su Mon Kywe and Yingjiu Li, Singapore Management University, Singapore; Jason Hong, Carnegie Mellon University, USA; Yao Cheng, Singapore Management University, Singapore


1570297243: Impact of Base Transceiver Station Selection Mechanisms on a Mobile Botnet Over a LTE Network    Asem Kitana and Issa Traore, University of Victoria, Canada; Isaac Woungang, Ryerson University, Canada

 

12:00 pm to 1:30 pm

Lunch & Affinity Group Discussions

Broad Spectrum Malware Group

Targeted Attacks Group

Measurement Group

Mobile Malware Group

 

 


01:30 pm to 03:30 pm

Panel Moderator:

Randy J. Jordan, FBI

Topic: "The Insider Threat: our weakest link. What can we do about it?, and what are the limits before we in fringe on the privacy of individuals?"

Panelists:

Anthony Arrott, CheckVR, USA

Luke T. Jones, Air Force Academy, USA

Paul Black, PhishLabs, Inc.

Dimitri Vitaliev, Equalit.ie

Description: It is universally agreed amongst "Security Professionals" that the most significant weakest links in  the cyber security chain are:

1. System complexity - if Windows XP is estimated to have 40 Million  lines of code, and Windows 10 even a higher number, then,

a. the ability to proof the correctness of the code is NOT possible, and

b. the number of defects present in most modern systems increases with the increased complexity of the system. Said complexity leads to incremental defects, and therefore, increased  vulnerabilities that can be exploited. Bottom line is that increase functionality results in higher security risks; and

2. Humans.

In the past a lot of emphasis has been applied to item # 1. However,  often the efforts to deal with vulnerable humans is less defined, with limited number of tools available to address the problem.

This difficulty, and the corresponding  tension between Privacy and Security is a critical issue that must be addressed. The panelist will have an opportunity to discuss the limits that must be present when organizations infringe on its members privacy.

03:30 pm to 03:45 pm

Break

03:45 pm to 05:00 pm

Session Chair: Anthony Arrott

Session 2 - Broad Spectrum Malware, Defense Strategies & Mechanisms

1570294110: Reconstructing packed binaries with dynamic binary instrumentation by David Korczynski, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

1570289540: CARDINAL - Similarity Analysis to Defeat Malware Compiler Variations by Luke T Jones, United States Air Force Academy & Chthonian Cyber Services, USA; Andrew Sellers, US Air Force Academy, USA; Martin Carlisle, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

1570289001: Automatic Extraction of Malicious Behaviors    by Khanh-Huu-The Dam, IRIF, University Paris Diderot and Tayssir Touili, CNRS and University Paris 13, France

 

 

El Conquistador Hotel & Resort

1000 El Conquistador Avenue, Fajardo, Puerto Rico, USA

07:00 am to 8:00 am

Breakfast and Registration

08:00 am to 10:15 am

 

Session Chair: Prof. Arun Lakhotia

Session 3 - Mobile Malware, Detection & Thwarting

 

1570297970: SigPID - Significant Permission Identification for Android Malware Detection by Lichao Sun, Zhiqiang Li, Qiben Yan, Witawas Srisa-an and Yu Pan, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA

1570300232: Native Malware Detection in Smartphones with Android OS Using Static Analysis, Feature Selection and Ensemble Classifiers by Salvador Morales-Ortega, P.J. Escamilla-Ambrosio, A. Rodríguez-Mota and L.D. Coronado-De-Alba, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Centro de Investigación en Computación. Mejico

1570293916: On the Effectiveness of Application Characteristics in the Automatic Classification of Malware on Smartphones by Matthew Ping and Spiros Mancoridis, Drexel University, USA

10:15 pm to 10:30 am

Break

10:30 pm to 12:30 pm

 

Session Chair: Fernando C. Colon Osorio

Session 4 - Offense, Defense, and Malware Provenance

1570297589: On Periodic Behavior of Malware - Experiments, Opportunities and Challenges by Anh Huynh, Wee-Keong Ng and Hoang Giang Do, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

1570289049: A covert data transport protocol by Yu Fu, Jia Zhe, Lu Yu and Richard Ree Brooks, Clemson University, USA

1570293834: Malware Provenance - Code Reuse Detection in Malicious Software at Scale by Jason Upchurch, United States Air Force Academy & University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, USA; Xiaobo Zhou. University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, USA

 

 

12:30 pm to 1:30 pm

Lunch & Affinity Group Discussions

Broad Spectrum Malware Group

Targeted Attacks Group

Measurement Group

Mobile Malware Group

01:30 pm to 03:00 pm

 

 

Session Chair: Richard F. Brooks

Session 5 - Malware: The emergence of New Threats, and the analysis of old friends

 

1570297595: ZoneDroid: Control Your Droid Through Application Zoning by Md Shahrear Iqbal, Queen's University & Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Canada; Mohammad Zulkernine, Queen's University, Canada

1570297781: Advanced Transcriptase for JavaScript Malware by Fabio Di Troia and Visaggio Corrado, Universita degli Studi del Sannio, Italy; Thomas Austin and Mark Stamp, San Jose State University, USA

1570304504: Anti-Analysis Trends in Banking Malware by Paul Black and Joseph Opacki, PhishLabs, USA

 

03:30 pm to 03:45 pm

Break

03:30 am to 05:15 pm

 

Session Chair: Dr. Fernando C. Colon Osorio

Session 6 -Mechanisms & Strategies to Detect Mobile Malware

 

1570294080: DySign: Dynamic Fingerprinting for the Automatic Detection of Android Malware by  ElMouatez Billah Karbab, Mourad Debbabi, and Saed Alrabaee, Concordia University, Canada; Djedjiga Mouheb, University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)

1570299944: Signature Limits: An Entire Map of Clone Features and Their Discovery in Nearly Linear Time by William Casey, Carniege M ellon University and William Casey and Aaron Shelmire, Anomali, USA

1570297648: Function Identification and Recovery Signature Tool by Angel Villegas,  Cisco Systems, Inc., USA

 

05:15 pm to 05:30

 

Closing Remarks - Dr. Fernando C. Colon Osorio, General Program Chair

 

 

El Conquistador Hotel & Resort

1000 El Conquistador Avenue, Fajardo, Puerto Rico, USA

07:00 am to 8:00 am

Breakfast and Registration

08:00 am to 12:15 am

 

 

Penetration Testing Tutorial & Capture The Flag Contest

 

 

Session A: Penetration Testing Tutorial - Assessing Your Overall Security Before the Attackers do.

 

What is Pen-Testing?

Why Perform Pen-Testing?

Pen-Testing Tools And Reporting

Analysis Of CORE IMPACT

Metasploit Framework 3.0

12:15 pm to 01:15 pm

Lunch

01:15 pm to 09:00 pm

 

Session Chair: Dr. Jose A. Morales

3rd Annual Capture The Flag Contest as part of the

11th IEEE Technically Sponsored International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Software (MALCON 2016)

 

First Price (Must capture all 15 flags)

 

$2,000.00 USD

2nd Price

 

Certificate 2nd Place plus $ 150.00

3rd Price

Certificate 3rd Place plus $ 75.00

 

Winners will be announced and prizes awarded at the end of the MALCON 2016 Conference.

All participants in the conference are welcomed to form a team.

For Further Information contact:

Dr. Jose A. Morales, CTF Organizer

and/or

Mr. Dan Klinedinst, CTF Organizer

 

To Register, click here

 

 


 

09:00 am to 03:45 pm

 

Culebra Getaway Networking Event - Beach and Snorkel Tour & Day Trip

Details:

 

 

Check in time: 9:00am

• Departing: Lobby, El Conquistador Hotel & Resort, Fajardo Puerto Rico

 

Includes:

• Lunch buffet with options for all

• Beverages, including rum drinks

• Quality snorkeling equipment for all ages

• Floating devices

• Swim platforms where our guest have easy access to the water

• Snorkeling instruction for our beginners

Cost: $ 125.00 pp

Upon departing marina Puerto Del Rey, we head straight out to Culebra along the Cordillera Islands. After about 45 minutes on our high-speed catamaran we arrive at one of Culebra’s beautiful reefs and anchor for about an hour and a half of snorkeling. Depending on water condition our captains may take you to: Luis Pena, Carlos Rosario, or Melones

We then move on to our beach stop, Culebrita, Playa Tortuga or another beautiful beach that will be the best to enjoy the rest of the afternoon. At either location you can swim into the beach or do some more snorkeling. We depart Culebra around 3:00 pm, returning to the marina between 3:45- 4:00pm.

Lunch is served at approximately 11:45-12:00pm, where our guests can enjoy local pastries; build your own sandwiches with fresh baked bread, fresh fruit, our signature pasta salad, chicken salad, coleslaw and cookies.

Important: Be advised that this Snorkeling beach Trip travels by high speed boat in open waters and may not be appropriate for pregnant women, those with recent surgeries, back injuries and children under 3 yrs of age.

If you tend to get seasick, we remind you that you should take an over-the-counter remedy with food at least 1 hour before the voyage.

 

To register and reserve your spot, click here. Seats are limited !!!!!!

 

 

KNOW YOUR

 

ENEMY

RESEARCH   INDUSTRY   PERFORMANCE EVALUATION   THE LAW 

 

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KNOW YOUR

 

ENEMY

RESEARCH   INDUSTRY   PERFORMANCE EVALUATION   THE LAW 

 

NEWSLETTER

 

 

                                    

 

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Your first Issue should arrive within one-(1) week.

RESORT, FAJARDO, PUERTO RICO, USA

                                          ........Malware Conference Steering Committee

 

KNOW YOUR

 

ENEMY

RESEARCH   INDUSTRY   PERFORMANCE EVALUATION   THE LAW 

OCTOBER 18-21, 2016

 

 

EL CONQUISTADOR HOTEL & RESORT, FAJARDO, PUERTO RICO, USA

 

                                    

 

WHY ATTEND? 

MALCON IS A CONFERENCE THAT BRINGS TOGETHER INDUSTRY PRATICTIONERS AND RESEARCHERS, TOGETHER WITH ACADEMICIANS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS IN AN ENVIRONMENT OF

"INTIMACY AND CANDOR"

 

TO UNDERSTAND, ANTICIPATE, AND CREATE DEFENSES AGAINST... 

EMERGING THREATS AND NOVEL ATTACKS

 

                                       

 

WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT?   

Expect three full days of high-quality speakers, content, and engagement in an environment that values "Intimacy and Candor", or as a former keynote speaker, Dennis Batchelder said while speaking about MALCON... 

 
Dennis Batchelder

"In all my years attending conferences, this is the only conference that I have attended where the speaker actually modifies its slides based on the feedback and the honest interactions with the audience"

---  Dennis Batchelder, Founder, Appesteem Corporation 

   

                                     

IMPORTANT DATES   

 

 CALL FOR PAPERS (CFP)

Submission of papers 

 

Research Track

Submissions are Now Closed

Research Track Abstract Deadline

Submissions are Now Closed

Industry Track

Submissions are Now Closed

Notification of Acceptance

September 1st, 2016, 23:59:59 EST

Camera ready paper: 

September 8th, 2016: 23:59:59 EST 

Conference dates

October 18-21, 2016 

 

 

Click Here for a copy of the Call For Papers (CFP)

Click Here to Submit a Manuscript

 

 

 

                                     

 

 

MALCON VIDEOS

 


MALCON 2011 Attendees Comment on DuQu
   
   

 

MALCON 2013 Best Paper Award:

"It's you on photo?: Automatic Detection of Twitter Accounts Infected With the Blackhole Exploit Kit"

Joshua White & Jeanna Matthews, Clarkson Univresity, NY

 

 

MALCON Best Paper Award Gala Dinner Entertaintment - Grupo Folklorico Guateque

   

   

                                   

 

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