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. Branching And Conditionals


In this section, we will focus on branching instructions. So far, you have seen instructions that execute sequentially; but many times, your program will need to execute code at a different memory address (like an if/else statement, looping, functions, and so on). This is achieved by using branching instructions. Branching instructions transfer the control of execution to a different memory address. To perform branching, jump instructions are typically used in the assembly language. There are two kinds of jumps: conditional and unconditional.

6.1 Unconditional Jumps

In an unconditional jump, the jump is always taken. The jmp instruction tells the CPU to execute code at a different memory address. This is similar to the goto statement in the C programming language. When the following instruction is executed, the control is transferred to the jump address, and the execution starts from there:

jmp <jump address>

6.2 Conditional Jumps

In conditional jumps, the...