AnAttacker’sDayintoHumanVirology-BlackHatBriefings.pdfVIP

An Attacker’s Day into Human Virology Axelle Apvrille, Guillaume Lovet March 2012 1 Introduction The Anti-Virus industry has obviously taken much vocabulary from medicine. Viruses, infection, replication, anomaly, behaviour are typical words which have a related mean- ing in biology and computer science. Several researchers have already tried to draw a parallel between both worlds - humourously or not. Commonly, the human body is compared to a computer [Kor09], like in Science Fiction novels, but other comparisons exists: for instance, [Gla98] compares a computer to a human cell. Anti-virus prac- tices such as anomaly detection have also been compared to or inspired by biology [KSA95, GTA06]. In this paper, we wish to focus on attack scenarios of biological and computer viruses. How much did biological viruses actually invent and how many 0-days could they be attributed? In this paper, after some reminders on medical virology (section 2) and the immune system (section 3), we speak for the voiceless, biological viruses, and give them credit for their inventions (section 4). We also compare cures for humans or computers (section 6). On the other hand, a few devilish ideas have arisen from computer science (section 5). They fortunately do not apply to human cases, or should we say they do not apply yet when considering the advances in cybernetics? (see section 7). 2 Medical virology background As defined by [Wike], viruses are “small infectious agents that can replicate only inside the cells of other organisms”. They are at the frontier between living and non-living organisms [Hun93]. They consist of two or three parts: genes made from either RNA or sometimes DNA (long molecules that carry genetic information or instructions), a protein coat protecting these genes and optionally, an envelope of fat surrounding them. Many