- Echo Flips Malware’s own systems to attack themselves – like fighting fire with fire but smarter
- Echo uses Malwares update channel to push out a digital self -destruction
- Georgia Tech’s tool makes Botnet Cleanup almost automatically
Malware infections, especially those associated with Botnets, continue to cause major damage to corporate systems that are often not discovered until it is too late.
Techxplore reports that researchers at Georgia Tech have developed a tool called Echo that turns the tables by using Malware’s own infrastructure to remove it.
Echo utilizes a key feature in many malware strains: built-in remote update mechanisms. By identifying and reusing these mechanisms, ECHO can implement a custom payload that disables malware from the inside.
A self -dispensing agent toward botnet
Botnets – a network of infected computers controlled by malicious actors – has long released a serious cyber security threat. They can lock workflows, postpone sensitive data and inflict financial losses.
Usually, removing the botnet’s is a dull, manual process that can take days or even weeks. Echo aims to change it. In testing, it successfully neutralized 523 out of 702 Android Malware tests and achieved a 75% success rate.
The idea of hijacking Malware’s communication channels is not brand new. In 2019, Avast and French authorities cooperated to run Retadup Botnet in Latin America. Although successful, the effort was difficult to reproduce.
“This is a really good approach, but it was extremely labor intensive,” said Brendan SaltaFormaggio, associate professor at Georgia Tech. “So my group met and realized that we have the research to make this a scientific, systematic, reproducible technique rather than a disposable, human -driven, miserable effort.”
Echo works by first mapping how malware implements code. It then analyzes whether these implementation channels can be recycled to carry a new, benign payload that disables the original infection.
Once validated, this remedy code is tested and implemented. The process reduces the botnet response time significantly and limits potential damage.
The tool, which is now open on GitHub, is not intended to replace traditional security solutions, but to supplement them.
“We can never achieve a perfect solution, but we can raise the bar high enough for an attacker that it would not be worth it for them to use malware in this way,” explained SaltaFormaggio.
Organizations using antivirus, EPP, and other malware protection tools can turn to repeat to streamline the remedy when a violation is detected.
