Researchers up evilness ante with GPU-assisted malware
Computer scientists have developed proof-of-concept malware that evades traditional security defenses by running on a PC's graphics processor.
The prototype taps a PC's GPU to decrypt, or “unpack,” a malicious payload from a file just prior to being run on a targeted machine. Self-unpacking techniques are a common way to defeat signature-based anti-virus scanning because they allow authors to make small changes to the compression or encryption every day or so without altering the core attack code. Up until now, the unpacking had to be performed by a PC's CPU, which places practical limits on the types of packing that can be used.
“Implementing the self-unpacking functionality of a malware binary using GPU code can pose significant obstacles to current malware detection and analysis systems,” the scientists wrote in a research paper scheduled to be presented next month at the IEEE's International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Software.
