Book Image

Cuckoo Malware Analysis

Book Image

Cuckoo Malware Analysis

Overview of this book

Cuckoo Sandbox is a leading open source automated malware analysis system. This means that you can throw any suspicious file at it and, in a matter of seconds, Cuckoo will provide you with some detailed results outlining what said file did when executed inside an isolated environment. Cuckoo Malware Analysis is a hands-on guide that will provide you with everything you need to know to use Cuckoo Sandbox with added tools like Volatility, Yara, Cuckooforcanari, Cuckoomx, Radare, and Bokken, which will help you to learn malware analysis in an easier and more efficient way. Cuckoo Malware Analysis will cover basic theories in sandboxing, automating malware analysis, and how to prepare a safe environment lab for malware analysis. You will get acquainted with Cuckoo Sandbox architecture and learn how to install Cuckoo Sandbox, troubleshoot the problems after installation, submit malware samples, and also analyze PDF files, URLs, and binary files. This book also covers memory forensics – using the memory dump feature, additional memory forensics using Volatility, viewing result analyses using the Cuckoo analysis package, and analyzing APT attacks using Cuckoo Sandbox, Volatility, and Yara. Finally, you will also learn how to screen Cuckoo Sandbox against VM detection and how to automate the scanning of e-mail attachments with Cuckoo.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
Cuckoo Malware Analysis
Credits
About the Authors
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Automating e-mail attachments with Cuckoo MX


Have you ever heard about CuckooMX? It is a project by Xavier Mertens, you can read it at http://blog.rootshell.be/2012/06/20/cuckoomx-automating-email-attachments-scanning-with-cuckoo/.

CuckooMX automatically sends all the e-mail attachments to Cuckoo Sandbox, obviously, so that it can be analyzed whether the attachments—of types such as PDF, MS Office, ZIP, or other executable files—contain malware or not.

Here is a figure that might help us get a better picture of what CuckooMX does:

In the preceding figure, we can see that CuckooMX performs these tasks:

  1. It captures the e-mail flow at MTA (Message/Mail Transfer Agent) level.

  2. Extracts MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) attachments.

  3. If it finds any PDF, MS Office, ZIP, or other executable files attached to the e-mail, that file is submitted to Cuckoo Sandbox.

  4. If Cuckoo found nothing interesting and it is likely safe, it will send the attachments back to the MTA.

  5. If suspicious files are found...