Book Image

Learning Malware Analysis

By : Monnappa K A
5 (1)
Book Image

Learning Malware Analysis

5 (1)
By: Monnappa K A

Overview of this book

Malware analysis and memory forensics are powerful analysis and investigation techniques used in reverse engineering, digital forensics, and incident response. With adversaries becoming sophisticated and carrying out advanced malware attacks on critical infrastructures, data centers, and private and public organizations, detecting, responding to, and investigating such intrusions is critical to information security professionals. Malware analysis and memory forensics have become must-have skills to fight advanced malware, targeted attacks, and security breaches. This book teaches you the concepts, techniques, and tools to understand the behavior and characteristics of malware through malware analysis. It also teaches you techniques to investigate and hunt malware using memory forensics. This book introduces you to the basics of malware analysis, and then gradually progresses into the more advanced concepts of code analysis and memory forensics. It uses real-world malware samples, infected memory images, and visual diagrams to help you gain a better understanding of the subject and to equip you with the skills required to analyze, investigate, and respond to malware-related incidents.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

6. I/O Processing


While discussing the driverscan plugin, I had mentioned that driverscan gets module information from the DRIVER_OBJECT structure. Are you wondering what the DRIVER_OBJECT structure is? This will become clear soon. In this section, you will understand the interaction between the user-mode and kernel-mode components, the role of the device driver, and its interaction with the I/O manager. Typically, a rootkit consists of a user-mode component (EXE or DLL) and a kernel mode component (device driver). The user-mode component of the rootkit communicates with the kernel-mode components, using a specific mechanism. From a forensics standpoint, it is essential to understand how these communications work and the components involved. This section will help you understand the communication mechanism and lays the foundation for the upcoming topics.

Let's try to understand what happens when a user-mode application performs input/output (I/O) operations, and how it is processed at a high...