Book Image

Mastering Malware Analysis - Second Edition

By : Alexey Kleymenov, Amr Thabet
5 (2)
Book Image

Mastering Malware Analysis - Second Edition

5 (2)
By: Alexey Kleymenov, Amr Thabet

Overview of this book

New and developing technologies inevitably bring new types of malware with them, creating a huge demand for IT professionals that can keep malware at bay. With the help of this updated second edition of Mastering Malware Analysis, you’ll be able to add valuable reverse-engineering skills to your CV and learn how to protect organizations in the most efficient way. This book will familiarize you with multiple universal patterns behind different malicious software types and teach you how to analyze them using a variety of approaches. You'll learn how to examine malware code and determine the damage it can possibly cause to systems, along with ensuring that the right prevention or remediation steps are followed. As you cover all aspects of malware analysis for Windows, Linux, macOS, and mobile platforms in detail, you’ll also get to grips with obfuscation, anti-debugging, and other advanced anti-reverse-engineering techniques. The skills you acquire in this cybersecurity book will help you deal with all types of modern malware, strengthen your defenses, and prevent or promptly mitigate breaches regardless of the platforms involved. By the end of this book, you will have learned how to efficiently analyze samples, investigate suspicious activity, and build innovative solutions to handle malware incidents.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Part 1 Fundamental Theory
4
Part 2 Diving Deep into Windows Malware
10
Part 3 Examining Cross-Platform and Bytecode-Based Malware
14
Part 4 Looking into IoT and Other Platforms

Other script languages

In this chapter, we covered the most common examples of languages used nowadays. But what if you encounter something more exotic that you don’t have a ready step-by-step tutorial for? Or what if a new script language becomes increasingly popular, is available on lots of systems, and is, therefore, misused by malicious actors? Don’t panic – we have summarized the ideas that will help you successfully analyze any new threat.

Where to start

Here is what you should do when analyzing a new threat:

  1. Identify the language. There are multiple ways to do this, as follows:
    • Look at the file extensions used
    • Use the file tool
    • Search for the header signature online
    • Check strings as they may give additional clues
  2. If the script requires some particular OS, make sure that you have a proper VM image set up.

If the script language is compiled, search for tools such as decompilers or disassemblers to make static analysis possible.

    ...