Race to Zero, what?

There’s been considerable stink lately about the Race to Zero contest that is to be held at Defcon. I, for one, am a bit perplexed by this. This article from ZDNet Australia is what finally made my eyes cross in confusion/aggravation.

I don’t know at what point the collective “wisdom” became that signature-based AV was ever intended to be about defending against every threat ever devised, before it was ever devised. Signature-based scanners are intended to detect and clean known threats. If you modify a known threat, it’s not really “known” anymore, is it? Now it’s a variant of a known threat.

It’s certainly desirable to have protection against all threats, known and not-yet-known. This is what things like firewalls, Intrusion Prevention Systems, Data Leakage Prevention and all those other wonderful security products are intended to do, in concert with AV. Most AV software now also includes proactive static detection like Generic and Heuristic detection, along with more dynamic detection like emulation or behavioral detection. Many AV programs now also include broader security functionality like a firewall or IPS.

Generic and Heuristic detection is certainly better at picking up unknown threats than simple signature-based scanning, but there are three things that limit it. For one, it’s still reactive, basing detection on known bad techniques. Secondly, it’s static – obfuscation can still muck up the detection, if it causes the file to deviate from the known bad technique. Finally, there’s still a need for these detections not to be false-prone. Heuristics and generics essentially cover known “really, really bad” techniques. The threshold of badness must be quite high to make it into AV products. Consider how many commercial products and widely used administration tools blur those lines, and you may come to appreciate what a very fine line it is.

It’s not clear from what I’ve seen whether the contest’s judges intend to use the most paranoid settings available within the various products, but their description does seem to indicate they’ll only use the static detection, rather than running it real-time through the products. This does not accomplish a full testing of the products capability, it only tests one component. The results they get will not be what an average user will get.

The contest organizers and participants are playing with fire in order to prove what we already know: Signature-based scanners are meant to protect against known threats. That doesn’t mean that AV is dead, or that it’s useless. The industry is evolving, and its products with it. AV is intended to be one tool in a complete security arsenal. Defense in depth is where it’s at, if you’re really looking to protect your network.