Malware Trends: Emerging Formats and Delivery Techniques

The attackers actively use techniques to disguise malware files as legitimate, including reliable distribution channels, stolen certificates, hiding malicious files in legitimate applications, or using system tools to deploy malicious activity.

At VirusTotal, we have explored the evolution of these and other techniques. In fact, it was surprising to realize that excel and compressed formats are becoming less popular for malware delivery while OneNote and Javascript are the most rapidly growing formats in 2023.

During this talk, we will analyze the evolution of these types of techniques, showing some examples of how they are being implemented and providing tools for monitoring them.