Burning malware is like Hercules fighting the nine-headed Hydra. For every head he cuts off, two more grow back in its place. That's the lesson from a new report by Cylance today, and one both enterprise network defenders—and the public at large—should pay attention to.

[ Keep up with 8 hot cyber security trends (and 4 going cold). Give your career a boost with top security certifications: Who they're for, what they cost, and which you need. | Sign up for CSO newsletters. ]

Cyber mercenaries sell malware to oppressive regimes in the Middle East, which then use that malware to attack their own citizens, research from the Citizen Lab suggested earlier this year. The current regimes in Turkey and Egypt compel local ISPs to run Canadian-made Sandvine/Procera deep packet inspection middleboxes that inject the malware into unencrypted HTTP downloads of popular software like Avast, VLC Player and WinRAR. Large numbers of users in Egypt, Turkey and Syria (near the border with Turkey) are affected.

To read this article in full, please click here