Articles by Paul Baccas

About Paul Baccas

Paul O Baccas joined Sophos in 1997 after studying Engineering Science at Oxford University. Currently, he is employed as a Senior Threat Researcher, SophosLabs UK, with areas of interest including: non-PE malware, spam, data leakage, linux and Mac threats. Paul has published several papers, and was a technical editor for the "AVIEN Malware Defense Guide." He has written articles for security industry journal Virus Bulletin and is a frequent contributor to the Naked Security site.

PDF malware adopts another obfuscation trick in attempt to avoid detection

by Paul Baccas on April 5, 2012 | 6 Comments

SophosLabs researcher Paul Baccas takes a close look at a way in which malware authors attempt to disguise their attacks inside boobytrapped PDF files.

Traffbiz: A new malicious twist on affiliate partnerka schemes?

by Paul Baccas on March 1, 2012 | 2 Comments

Russian web users at risk as Traffbiz spreads affilate web-based malware attacks.

Book review: Ninja Hacking - unconventional penetration testing tactics and techniques

by Paul Baccas on October 25, 2011 | 2 Comments

Senior Threat Researcher Paul Baccas reviews the book "Hacking Ninja: Unconventional penetration testing tactics and techniques".

Targeted malware attack shows how Fast Fingerprinting works

by Paul Baccas on October 24, 2011 | 1 Comment

Technology is helping anti-virus researchers detect malicious Microsoft Office files, by examining if they fail to conform to the OLE2 file format specification.

Sophos experts at VB2011 conference in Barcelona

by Paul Baccas on October 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

This week there is an opportunity to meet members of the SophosLabs and Naked Security teams at the prestigious Virus Bulletin conference.

Troj/PHPShll-B: Malware injects itself into WordPress installations

by Paul Baccas on September 19, 2011 | 9 Comments

Malicious code has managed to inject itself into the PHP code used on some websites running WordPress, meaning that if you visit them when running Internet Explorer you could be exposing yourself to a malware attack.

Is your WordPress installation properly secured?

Morto: RDP worm of death?

by Paul Baccas on August 30, 2011 | 1 Comment

The Morto worm is making the headlines, targeting Windows networks with poorly-chosen weak passwords.

SophosLabs has only received a small number of reports of the worm being seen in the wild.

Troj/DocDrop-S: A preview of a Virus Bulletin conference paper

by Paul Baccas on July 7, 2011 | Leave a comment

SophosLabs expert Paul Baccas gives us a sneak preview of a paper he is presenting at the Virus Bulletin conference in October 2011.

Who ordered spam? New trick in PDF malware uncovered

by Paul Baccas on April 18, 2011 | 4 Comments

SophosLabs researcher Paul Baccas takes a close look at a PDF malware campaign.

What's the deal with the Lizamoon SQL injection?

by Paul Baccas on April 1, 2011 | Leave a comment

There has been a large amount of press in the last few days regarding "Lizamoon", the name being given to an attack which resulted in malicious code being injected into a large number of websites.

Italian law firm knowingly serves up infected web pages

by Paul Baccas on March 24, 2011 | 3 Comments

If you got a call from a legitimate security source informing you that your website was infected, would you take action? I certainly would, which is why I am rather frustrated when we take time to reach out to an organisation about a web infection, and they deliberately choose to do nothing about it.

SophosLabs gives lecture at the University of Birmingham

by Paul Baccas on March 22, 2011 | Leave a comment

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of being invited to lecture Masters' students from the University of Birmingham as part of the Network Security module. The University has its very own train station, so my journey from Oxford was very smooth. Read more…

UK Government Agency wants your email scams - but is it doing it the right way?

by Paul Baccas on February 28, 2011 | 4 Comments

The British public is being urged to forward any email scams it receives to the National Fraud Authority, to help it collect intelligence which might help track down internet fraudsters and bring them to justice.

But is information being collected in the right way?