Ask HN: Viruses wanted for masters project

by deutronium on 9/1/2009, 8:48 PM with 9 comments

I'm currently undertaking a masters project, involving virus detection using machine learning.

Currently I have three viruses which spread effectively in a virtual environment (KVM VM's and a VDE network, consisting of a number of virtual switches), I'm basically looking for a large number of working viruses to create some very solid results.

If you have any please could you upload them using:

http://drop.io/hidden/oklxql2qoxkhhc/upload

I'll also post my dissertation upon its completion if people are interested.

Thanks for your help!

  • by yan on 9/1/2009, 8:52 PM

    Are you looking specifically for viruses or other types of malware? Have you checked out http://offensivecomputing.net ?

  • by profquail on 9/1/2009, 10:31 PM

    You could also send some emails out to the makers of some anti-virus and malware software (McAfee, Kapersky, LavaSoft, etc.); I'm sure they have plenty of samples they could offer you.

    Also, check out this list of big computer worms on Wikipedia, perhaps you could search around and find copies of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_notable_computer_vi...

  • by dryicerx on 9/2/2009, 12:43 AM

    A suggested alternative is to use span pcap dumps of network environments that have viruses spreading through them (I used a few of them for a earlier project for worm detection), although I can't seem to find those website at the moment. But something to keep in mind. Try searching for Defcon packet dumps.

    A added benefit would be replaying the same test environment repeatedly while tweaking your detectors parameters.

  • by eshi on 9/1/2009, 9:36 PM

    I'm not sure how useful this will be for you, but http://vx.netlux.org/ has a decent collection that's somewhat dated.