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This year's gathering of the Association of Anti Virus Asia Researchers (AVAR 2007) was held in Seoul at the end of November, from the 28th to the 30th. Approximately 220 researchers from around the world attended the conference.

The hot topics at the conference included security in online games; botnet tracking and mitigation; packers; and generic and heuristic detection. Vincent Weafer from Symantec gave an impressive keynote speech, and Eugene Kaspersky from Kaspersky Lab highlighted the rise of cybercrime.

Randy Abrams from ESET gave a presentation on understanding heuristics, which was so brilliant that it moved the audience deeply. The native Korean speakers also played an important role in the conference. HongSeok Kim from Microsoft gave a presentation on Windows Vista security, and Dong-Ryun Lee from KISA demonstrated botnet mitigation efforts in Korea.

Xiaodong (Dennis) Tan, Security Researcher from Websense Security Labs, gave a presentation about "Anti-unpacker tricks in Malicious Code" to an appreciative audience.

The 2007 conference provided a great opportunity to make friends with anti-virus researchers from all over the world, and to learn more about specific threats targeting Asia.