Malware analysis is the method of knowing the behaviour and meaning of a questionable file or URL.
We perform the malware analysis in static, dynamic or a hybrid of the both.
Technical details are known, such as file names, hashes, embedded strings such as IP addresses, domains, and file header data to ascertain whether that file is ill-disposed. Besides, tools like disassemblers and network analysers aid to discern the malware without indeed running it to gather data on how the malware operates.
However, considering static analysis does not run the code, advanced malware may comprise malicious runtime behaviour evading the controls.
The dynamic analysis contributes to threat hunters and incident responders with more great clarity, enabling them to reveal the exact characteristics of a threat. Automated sandboxing reduces the time it would need to reverse engineer a file to detect the malicious code.
The challenge with dynamic analysis is that cyber attackers are intelligent, and they know sandboxes are out there, so they have become very qualified at identifying them. Malware droppers hide code inside them that may remain dormant until certain conditions fulfil it before running the malicious code – one of the way to deceive a sandbox.
Threat Alerts and Triage
Malware analysis answers provide higher-fidelity alarms first in the attack life cycle. It saves significant time for security engineers.
Initially, distinguish malicious code that is striving to cover, and then can extract numerous indicators of compromise (IOCs) by statically and previously undiscovered code. The hybrid review benefits detect unknown threats.
It reveals Zero-day exploits as the malware analysis is iterative in approach and comprises of many malware analyst strategies.
The intent of the incident response (IR) team is to present root cause analysis, prepare the impact and benefit in remediation and restoration. The malware analysis method aids competence and effectiveness.
Educational or Information Security industry malware researchers perform malware analysis to achieve an understanding of the latest techniques, exploits and means used by adversaries.
Malware analysis can reveal behaviour and artefacts that threat hunters to find a similar activity, such as the path to a particular network link, port or domain. By exploring UTM and proxy logs or SOAR data, teams leverage to find related threats.
The purpose of Malware Analysis
Malware Analysis reveals some of the fantastic things which further aids in building cyber resilience.
The critical benefit of malware assessment is that it helps incident responders and security analysts: