Malicious software, or malware, plays a part in most computer intrusion and security incidents. Any software that does something that causes harm to a user, computer, or network can be considered malware, including viruses, trojan horses, worms, rootkits, scareware, and spyware. While the various malware incarnations do all sorts of different things (as you’ll see throughout this book), as malware analysts, we have a core set of tools and techniques at our disposal for analyzing malware.
alware analysis is the art of dissecting malware to understand how it works, how to identify it, and how to defeat or eliminate it. And you don’t need to be an uber-hacker to perform malware analysis.
With millions of malicious programs in the wild, and more encountered every day, malware analysis is critical for anyone who responds to computer security incidents. And, with a shortage of malware analysis professionals, the skilled malware analyst is in serious demand.
That said, this is not a book on how to find malware. Our focus is on how to analyze malware once it has been found. We focus on malware found on the Windows operating system—by far the most common operating system in use today—but the skills you learn will serve you well when analyzing malware on any operating system. We also focus on executables, since they are the most common and the most difficult files that you’ll encounter. At the same time, we’ve chosen to avoid discussing malicious scripts and Java programs. Instead, we dive deep into the methods used for dissecting advanced threats, such as backdoors, covert malware, and rootkits.
