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

5. Putting it All Together: Analyzing a Malware Executable


Once you have an understanding of the dynamic analysis tools and steps involved in dynamic analysis, these tools can be used together to glean maximum information from the malware sample. In this section, we will perform both static and dynamic analysis to determine the characteristics and behavior of a malware sample (sales.exe).

5.1 Static Analysis of the Sample

Let's start the examination of the malware sample with static analysis. In static analysis, since the malware sample is not executed, it can be performed on either the Linux VM or the Windows VM, using the tools and techniques covered in Chapter 2, Static Analysis. We will start by determining the file type and the cryptographic hash. Based on the following output, the malware binary is a 32-bit executable file:

$ file sales.exe
sales.exe: PE32 executable (GUI) Intel 80386, for MS Windows
$ md5sum sales.exe
51d9e2993d203bd43a502a2b1e1193da sales.exe

The ASCII strings extracted...