Discover how the internals of malware work and how you can analyze and detect it. You will learn not only how to analyze and reverse malware, but also how to classify and categorize it, giving you insight into the intent of the malware. Malware Analysis and Detection Engineering is a one-stop guide to malware analysis that simplifies the topic by teaching you undocumented tricks used by analysts in the industry. You will be able to extend your expertise to analyze and reverse the challenges that malicious software throws at you. The book starts with an introduction to malware analysis and reverse engineering to provide insight on the different types of malware and also the terminology used in the anti-malware industry. You will know how to set up an isolated lab environment to safely execute and analyze malware. You will learn about malware packing, code injection, and process hollowing plus how to analyze, reverse, classify, and categorize malware using static and dynamic tools. You will be able to automate your malware analysis process by exploring detection tools to modify and trace malware programs, including sandboxes, IDS/IPS, anti-virus, and Windows binary instrumentation. The book provides comprehensive content in combination with hands-on exercises to help you dig into the details of malware dissection, giving you the confidence to tackle malware that enters your environment. What You Will Learn Analyze, dissect, reverse engineer, and classify malware Effectively handle malware with custom packers and compilers Unpack complex malware to locate vital malware components and decipher their intent Use various static and dynamic malware analysis tools Leverage the internals of various detection engineering tools to improve your workflow Write Snort rules and learn to use them with Suricata IDS Who This Book Is For Security professionals, malware analysts, SOC analysts, incident responders, detection engineers, reverse engineers, and network security engineers "This book is a beast! If you're looking to master the ever-widening field of malware analysis, look no further. This is the definitive guide for you." Pedram Amini, CTO Inquest; Founder OpenRCE.org and ZeroDayInitiative

Malware analysis is big business, and attacks can cost a company dearly. When malware breaches your defenses, you need to act quickly to cure current infections and prevent future ones from occurring. For those who want to stay ahead of the latest malware, Practical Malware Analysis will teach you the tools and techniques used by professional analysts. With this book as your guide, you'll be able to safely analyze, debug, and disassemble any malicious software that comes your way. You'll learn how to: –Set up a safe virtual environment to analyze malware –Quickly extract network signatures and host-based indicators –Use key analysis tools like IDA Pro, OllyDbg, and WinDbg –Overcome malware tricks like obfuscation, anti-disassembly, anti-debugging, and anti-virtual machine techniques –Use your newfound knowledge of Windows internals for malware analysis –Develop a methodology for unpacking malware and get practical experience with five of the most popular packers –Analyze special cases of malware with shellcode, C++, and 64-bit code Hands-on labs throughout the book challenge you to practice and synthesize your skills as you dissect real malware samples, and pages of detailed dissections offer an over-the-shoulder look at how the pros do it. You'll learn how to crack open malware to see how it really works, determine what damage it has done, thoroughly clean your network, and ensure that the malware never comes back. Malware analysis is a cat-and-mouse game with rules that are constantly changing, so make sure you have the fundamentals. Whether you're tasked with securing one network or a thousand networks, or you're making a living as a malware analyst, you'll find what you need to succeed in Practical Malware Analysis.

Malware Data Science explains how to identify, analyze, and classify large-scale malware using machine learning and data visualization. Security has become a "big data" problem. The growth rate of malware has accelerated to tens of millions of new files per year while our networks generate an ever-larger flood of security-relevant data each day. In order to defend against these advanced attacks, you'll need to know how to think like a data scientist. In Malware Data Science, security data scientist Joshua Saxe introduces machine learning, statistics, social network analysis, and data visualization, and shows you how to apply these methods to malware detection and analysis. You'll learn how to: - Analyze malware using static analysis - Observe malware behavior using dynamic analysis - Identify adversary groups through shared code analysis - Catch 0-day vulnerabilities by building your own machine learning detector - Measure malware detector accuracy - Identify malware campaigns, trends, and relationships through data visualization Whether you're a malware analyst looking to add skills to your existing arsenal, or a data scientist interested in attack detection and threat intelligence, Malware Data Science will help you stay ahead of the curve.

Understand malware analysis and its practical implementation Key Features Explore the key concepts of malware analysis and memory forensics using real-world examples Learn the art of detecting, analyzing, and investigating malware threats Understand adversary tactics and techniques Book Description Malware analysis and memory forensics are powerful analysis and investigation techniques used in reverse engineering, digital forensics, and incident response. With adversaries becoming sophisticated and carrying out advanced malware attacks on critical infrastructures, data centers, and private and public organizations, detecting, responding to, and investigating such intrusions is critical to information security professionals. Malware analysis and memory forensics have become must-have skills to fight advanced malware, targeted attacks, and security breaches. This book teaches you the concepts, techniques, and tools to understand the behavior and characteristics of malware through malware analysis. It also teaches you techniques to investigate and hunt malware using memory forensics. This book introduces you to the basics of malware analysis, and then gradually progresses into the more advanced concepts of code analysis and memory forensics. It uses real-world malware samples, infected memory images, and visual diagrams to help you gain a better understanding of the subject and to equip you with the skills required to analyze, investigate, and respond to malware-related incidents. What you will learn Create a safe and isolated lab environment for malware analysis Extract the metadata associated with malware Determine malware's interaction with the system Perform code analysis using IDA Pro and x64dbg Reverse-engineer various malware functionalities Reverse engineer and decode common encoding/encryption algorithms Reverse-engineer malware code injection and hooking techniques Investigate and hunt malware using memory forensics Who this book is for This book is for incident responders, cyber-security investigators, system administrators, malware analyst, forensic practitioners, student, or curious security professionals interested in learning malware analysis and memory forensics. Knowledge of programming languages such as C and Python is helpful but is not mandatory. If you have written few lines of code and have a basic understanding of programming concepts, you’ll be able to get most out of this book.

Master malware analysis to protect your systems from getting infected Key FeaturesSet up and model solutions, investigate malware, and prevent it from occurring in futureLearn core concepts of dynamic malware analysis, memory forensics, decryption, and much moreA practical guide to developing innovative solutions to numerous malware incidentsBook Description With the ever-growing proliferation of technology, the risk of encountering malicious code or malware has also increased. Malware analysis has become one of the most trending topics in businesses in recent years due to multiple prominent ransomware attacks. Mastering Malware Analysis explains the universal patterns behind different malicious software types and how to analyze them using a variety of approaches. You will learn how to examine malware code and determine the damage it can possibly cause to your systems to ensure that it won't propagate any further. Moving forward, you will cover all aspects of malware analysis for the Windows platform in detail. Next, you will get to grips with obfuscation and anti-disassembly, anti-debugging, as well as anti-virtual machine techniques. This book will help you deal with modern cross-platform malware. Throughout the course of this book, you will explore real-world examples of static and dynamic malware analysis, unpacking and decrypting, and rootkit detection. Finally, this book will help you strengthen your defenses and prevent malware breaches for IoT devices and mobile platforms. By the end of this book, you will have learned to effectively analyze, investigate, and build innovative solutions to handle any malware incidents. What you will learnExplore widely used assembly languages to strengthen your reverse-engineering skillsMaster different executable file formats, programming languages, and relevant APIs used by attackersPerform static and dynamic analysis for multiple platforms and file typesGet to grips with handling sophisticated malware casesUnderstand real advanced attacks, covering all stages from infiltration to hacking the systemLearn to bypass anti-reverse engineering techniquesWho this book is for If you are an IT security administrator, forensic analyst, or malware researcher looking to secure against malicious software or investigate malicious code, this book is for you. Prior programming experience and a fair understanding of malware attacks and investigation is expected.

A comprehensive guide to the threats facing Apple computers and the foundational knowledge needed to become a proficient Mac malware analyst. Defenders must fully understand how malicious software works if they hope to stay ahead of the increasingly sophisticated threats facing Apple products today. The Art of Mac Malware: The Guide to Analyzing Malicious Software is a comprehensive handbook to cracking open these malicious programs and seeing what’s inside. Discover the secrets of nation state backdoors, destructive ransomware, and subversive cryptocurrency miners as you uncover their infection methods, persistence strategies, and insidious capabilities. Then work with and extend foundational reverse-engineering tools to extract and decrypt embedded strings, unpack protected Mach-O malware, and even reconstruct binary code. Next, using a debugger, you’ll execute the malware, instruction by instruction, to discover exactly how it operates. In the book’s final section, you’ll put these lessons into practice by analyzing a complex Mac malware specimen on your own. You’ll learn to: Recognize common infections vectors, persistence mechanisms, and payloads leveraged by Mac malware Triage unknown samples in order to quickly classify them as benign or malicious Work with static analysis tools, including disassemblers, in order to study malicious scripts and compiled binaries Leverage dynamical analysis tools, such as monitoring tools and debuggers, to gain further insight into sophisticated threats Quickly identify and bypass anti-analysis techniques aimed at thwarting your analysis attempts A former NSA hacker and current leader in the field of macOS threat analysis, Patrick Wardle uses real-world examples pulled from his original research. The Art of Mac Malware: The Guide to Analyzing Malicious Software is the definitive resource to battling these ever more prevalent and insidious Apple-focused threats.

Master the fundamentals of malware analysis for the Windows platform and enhance your anti-malware skill set About This Book Set the baseline towards performing malware analysis on the Windows platform and how to use the tools required to deal with malware Understand how to decipher x86 assembly code from source code inside your favourite development environment A step-by-step based guide that reveals malware analysis from an industry insider and demystifies the process Who This Book Is For This book is best for someone who has prior experience with reverse engineering Windows executables and wants to specialize in malware analysis. The book presents the malware analysis thought process using a show-and-tell approach, and the examples included will give any analyst confidence in how to approach this task on their own the next time around. What You Will Learn Use the positional number system for clear conception of Boolean algebra, that applies to malware research purposes Get introduced to static and dynamic analysis methodologies and build your own malware lab Analyse destructive malware samples from the real world (ITW) from fingerprinting and static/dynamic analysis to the final debrief Understand different modes of linking and how to compile your own libraries from assembly code and integrate the codein your final program Get to know about the various emulators, debuggers and their features, and sandboxes and set them up effectively depending on the required scenario Deal with other malware vectors such as pdf and MS-Office based malware as well as scripts and shellcode In Detail Windows OS is the most used operating system in the world and hence is targeted by malware writers. There are strong ramifications if things go awry. Things will go wrong if they can, and hence we see a salvo of attacks that have continued to disrupt the normal scheme of things in our day to day lives. This book will guide you on how to use essential tools such as debuggers, disassemblers, and sandboxes to dissect malware samples. It will expose your innards and then build a report of their indicators of compromise along with detection rule sets that will enable you to help contain the outbreak when faced with such a situation. We will start with the basics of computing fundamentals such as number systems and Boolean algebra. Further, you'll learn about x86 assembly programming and its integration with high level languages such as C++.You'll understand how to decipher disassembly code obtained from the compiled source code and map it back to its original design goals. By delving into end to end analysis with real-world malware samples to solidify your understanding, you'll sharpen your technique of handling destructive malware binaries and vector mechanisms. You will also be encouraged to consider analysis lab safety measures so that there is no infection in the process. Finally, we'll have a rounded tour of various emulations, sandboxing, and debugging options so that you know what is at your disposal when you need a specific kind of weapon in order to nullify the malware. Style and approach An easy to follow, hands-on guide with descriptions and screenshots that will help you execute effective malicious software investigations and conjure up solutions creatively and confidently.