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)

Dynamic analysis

When we talk about dynamic binary analysis, and include this phase in our methodology, I cannot emphasize enough how cautious we have to be when working through this step. By its very nature, dynamic analysis involves analyzing the binary while it's running. This is why we're using virtual machines and why we'll take extra precautions to make sure that while we're working through dynamically analyzing a binary, we don't infect ourselves. If we follow along exactly as guided in Chapter 1, Setting Up the Lab, we'll also have fresh snapshots of our virtual machines, in the event we either intentionally infect our virtual machine to understand a binary better, or some other malicious result arises from our dynamic analysis. One extra precaution we can take is to disconnect the virtual network adapter in the virtual machine or disable...