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)

Static analysis

So, up to this point we've learned tools and tricks for identifying potentially unwanted binaries on our host, we've used various available tools to gather information about our binaries, and we're ready for the next phase of our methodology. Static analysis consists of analyzing a binary when it's not running. We'll use tools to disassemble a binary, which will give us a glimpse of how the binary is interacting with the processor, memory, shared libraries, and other aspects that may benefit our analysis. Static analysis is typically a safe form of analysis because the binary isn't being executed. However, there are some caveats to that in that, sometimes, obfuscation techniques are designed to falsify the output of static analysis techniques and tools. And the tools are only as good as the binary allows. As we'll see in later...