Malware Analysis Guide: Types & Tools
Malware analysis is the method of analysing and figuring out the conduct and intentions of a potentially malicious binary. But before understanding, it is important to discuss what malware is itself.
The intensity of cyber attacks has increased rapidly in the previous years. While the attacks have mostly damaged financial sectors, these attackers have also victimised government, military, health, private and public sectors.
These cyber attacks extract sensitive information from a user or an organisation by targeting them and spreading malicious executables via email, USB, illegitimate websites etc. These malicious executables are known as malware.
To protect against these attacks, it is important for organisations to have trained malware analysts who have the skillset and the right tools to identify any malware in their infrastructure, limit its exploitation impact, and eradicate it from the network.
Basics first, let’s start with the introduction of malware before diving deep into malware analysis.
Malware
Malware is Malicious Software or program that intends to exploit a computer and its user. Malware sometimes also acts as a benign program but behind the scenes, it performs harmful operations on the victim’s computer.
In today’s modern digital world, malware creation and propagation are in high demand since the internet makes every user an easy target for attackers. Malware is typically used by malicious entities all around the world to compromise the sensitive data of internet users. In many cases, this goal is achieved without even the victim’s knowledge.
Malware typically performs the following activities after gaining control of a victim’s computer:
- Interfering with computer tasks and operations
- Stealing critical data such as personal, banking and financial data.
- Unauthorised administrator control to the victim’s system
- Monitoring users’ activity without their consent
- Generating spam emails from victim accounts.
- Exploiting victims’ endpoints as a part of a botnet and conducting distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDOS).
- Encrypting and restricting access to a user’s own data and holding it for ransom.
Types of malware
Malware is more of a generalised term for malicious programs; this malware is categorised based on their behaviour and functionality. We have covered this topic in details around different types and examples here:
What are the different types of Malware? Examples of malware
The most common types of malware include computer viruses, computer worms, Ransomware, Keyloggers, Trojan horses, spyware and other examples of malicious software. Others include Fileless Malware, Spyware Adware, Rootkits, Bots, RAM scraper, and Mobile Malware. Malicious code examples below show how this code is embedded in various forms of computer programs, mainly:
- ActiveX controls
- Java applets
- Plugins
- Pushed content
- Third-party library components
- Scripting languages
Malware Analysis
Malware analysis examines and understands the behaviour and functionality of a piece of malware or malicious software. Malware analysis helps security professionals understand how a particular piece of malware works, identify its attack vectors and vulnerabilities, detect anomalies in its behaviour, and ultimately neutralise it to prevent attacks on computer systems and networks.
Some of the most commonly used tools for malware analysis include reverse engineering tools, sandboxing solutions, network traffic analyzers, and debugging platforms like Ollydbg and IDA Pro.
There are also several methodologies that malware analysts follow while performing malware analysis. Some of these methodologies include static code analysis, dynamic code analysis, and behavioral analysis. To perform such in-depth analysis, the professionals who do this as part of their job are known as malware analysts or incident responders. Malware analysts constantly need to stay up-to-date with the latest developments in the infosec and digital forensics, as well as develop their skillsets in the different tools and techniques used for malware analysis.
Benefits of malware analysis
For an organisation, the main benefits of malware analysis include:
- Detect and understand the behaviour of all malware in the organisation’s infrastructure
- Limit the exploitation impact of malware and eradicate it from the network
- Gain a deeper understanding of how malware works, its attack vectors and vulnerabilities for incident response process
- Detect malicious activity and patterns that may indicate an impending attack
- Develop better security policies and practices to help incident response teams against future attack protection.
