Book Image

Binary Analysis Cookbook

By : Michael Born
Book Image

Binary Analysis Cookbook

By: Michael Born

Overview of this book

Binary analysis is the process of examining a binary program to determine information security actions. It is a complex, constantly evolving, and challenging topic that crosses over into several domains of information technology and security. This binary analysis book is designed to help you get started with the basics, before gradually advancing to challenging topics. Using a recipe-based approach, this book guides you through building a lab of virtual machines and installing tools to analyze binaries effectively. You'll begin by learning about the IA32 and ELF32 as well as IA64 and ELF64 specifications. The book will then guide you in developing a methodology and exploring a variety of tools for Linux binary analysis. As you advance, you'll learn how to analyze malicious 32-bit and 64-bit binaries and identify vulnerabilities. You'll even examine obfuscation and anti-analysis techniques, analyze polymorphed malicious binaries, and get a high-level overview of dynamic taint analysis and binary instrumentation concepts. By the end of the book, you'll have gained comprehensive insights into binary analysis concepts and have developed the foundational skills to confidently delve into the realm of binary analysis.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Analyzing deobfuscation loops

In the previous recipe, we uncovered a loop that's used for deobfuscating parts of our binary in order to evade signature detection. In this recipe, we'll pick up from where we left off and identify other loops serving the same purpose. This is only one technique that is used in polymorphic code, but so far it appears to have been effective against our simple signature detection script.

Getting ready

Before we can continue with our analysis, we need to make sure our virtual machine is ready to go. Perform the following steps to get your lab back to the point where the previous recipe left off:

  1. Open VirtualBox if it's not running already, and start the Ubuntu 64-bit virtual machine...