What is Reverse Engineering Malware in Cybersecurity?

Reverse engineering malware at a glance

Reverse engineering malware analyses its function and purpose. This procedure can eliminate or defend against malware (Ortolani, 2018).

Malware is typically difficult to evaluate, making reverse engineering tough. Malware reverse engineering usually requires a program. Threat actors utilize obfuscation, encryption, and other tactics to complicate programs. Malware developers may update the code often to make reverse engineering difficult.

What does Reverse Engineering mean?

In software, RE means understanding how a compiled program works and what it can do.

RE can be used for different things, like researching vulnerabilities and compilers, putting together lost source code, and making programs run faster. Malware RE is all about understanding what malware can do and how it works so that threats can be fixed and different malware families can be studied.

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When will you perform malware reverse engineering?

RE can take a lot of time. Most of the time, you won’t start to reverse a piece of malware right away when you are studying it. Instead, you should do a triage analysis of malware by running it in a sandbox, getting strings out of it, and other things. If more information is needed for reverse engineering, this first phase of malware analysis can give it. For example, you can look for certain strings in the disassembler or expect the malware to show a certain ability.

If your goal is to figure out what a piece of malware can do, you won’t be able to do that by analyzing it in a sandbox. The malware’s Command and Control (C2) could go down, the malware could depend on another file for configuration that isn’t on the machine, the malware could be able to get around sandboxes, or the malware might only run in a certain environment. Advanced static malware analysis, which includes RE, is a much better way to reach this goal.

Ways to figure out how a piece of malware works

Reverse engineering: The most obvious way to do this is to figure out how a piece of malware works from the inside out. This obviously takes a lot of time, so it’s better to try something else.

Exploitation techniques: Another thing you can do is pay attention to how a piece of malware is being used. Sometimes you’ll see a piece of malware that uses a new way to exploit a vulnerability or takes advantage of a zero-day vulnerability. In this case, you may only be interested in a certain method of exploitation, so you can limit your analysis to just the exploitation mechanisms and save time.

Encryption methods: Ransomware is a type of malware that is used often these days. Ransomware basically encrypts and locks up the victim’s files so they can’t be opened or read. When making the encryption mechanisms for ransomware, the people who make it often make mistakes. So, if you focus your research on the encryption mechanisms, you might be able to find flaws in how they are put together or keys that are hard-coded or algorithms that aren’t very good.

Obfuscation: Malware will frequently attempt to conceal its true nature and make itself tough to identify. It is possible that you will come across malware that you have encountered in the past without any concealment. In that situation, you might wish to concentrate solely on the process of reverse-engineering the new components.

C&C communication: When looking at malware, this is something that is often done. Analysts often want to find out how a piece of malware on the client and the server on the command and control side talk to each other. The way the malware talks to other programs can tell you a lot about what it can do.

Attribution: It’s hard to see what’s going on in this area. It usually requires a lot of guesswork, knowledge of bad hacking teams, and looking at more than one piece of malware.

Clustering & Categorization: With clustering and categorization, you can get a bigger picture of how malware works when you reverse engineer it. This means looking at a lot of malware at once and doing a broad analysis of a lot of different kinds of malware instead of doing a deep dive into each one.

Malware Reverse engineering steps

Malware Reverse engineering is the process of figuring out how malware works, where it came from, and what it might do. Reverse engineering malware can be a complex and time-consuming process, but it is an important task for security researchers and analysts as it can help identify the methods used by attackers and determine how to mitigate the threat.

Here are the main steps for reverse engineering malware:

1. Obtain the malware sample: This can be done through various methods such as purchasing it from a malware repository or collecting it from an infected system.
2. Static analysis: This involves analyzing the malware without running it. It can be done using tools such as a hex editor or a disassembler to examine the code and identify any strings or patterns that may be relevant.
3. Dynamic analysis: It is when the malware is run in a controlled environment, like a sandbox, and its behavior is watched. Tools like a debugger or a network analyzer can be used to watch what the malware does.
4. Decompile the code: If the malware is compiled, it may be necessary to decompile it in order to more easily analyze the source code.
5. Analyze the code: Once the code is decompiled, it can be analyzed to understand how it functions and what its purpose is.
6. Document the results: Write down the results of the analysis, including how the malware acts, what it can do, and what it might do.
7. Create a report: Create a report detailing the results of the analysis and any recommendations for mitigating the threat.
8. Share findings: Share the findings and report with relevant parties, such as the affected organization or other security researchers.

Malware reverse engineering analysis techniques

Now, let’s take a look at some methods that can be used to analyze malware.

• First, use something called static analysis. This is how malware or binaries are looked at without running them. It can be as easy as reading the file’s metadata. It can be anything from decompiling or disassembling malware code to symbolic execution, which is like running a binary file in a virtual environment instead of a real one.
• On the other hand, dynamic analysis is the process of looking at a piece of malware while it is running in the real world. In this case, you usually look at how the malware acts and what happens as a result of what it does. You use tools like process monitor and sysmon to find out what a piece of malware leaves behind when it is run.
• When looking at malware, you may want to automate things to save time and speed up the process. But be careful, because sometimes things get missed when you try to do things in a general way with automated analysis.
• If a piece of malware has things like anti-debugging routines or anti-analysis mechanisms, you may want to do a manual analysis. You need to make sure you have the right tools for the job.

Static vs. dynamic malware analysis

Static analysis examines the code or its metadata, such as timestamps or file hashes. Static analysis helps comprehend what malware does without causing damage.

Executing malware to watch its behavior called dynamic analysis (Difference Between, 2018). This can be done in a virtual computer or sandbox. Dynamic analysis identifies how malware operates when executing (Sowells, J. 2019).

Static and dynamic analysis have pros and cons. Static analysis is less likely to destroy a system, but it’s difficult to comprehend what malware does without running it. Dynamic analysis can cause system damage, but it can reveal how malware works.

Are Malware Analysis and Reverse Engineering the Same?

Reverse engineering and analyzing malware are two important parts of the field of cybersecurity. Both terms are often used to mean the same thing, but they actually mean two different things.

Reverse engineering is the process of putting something back together again to figure out how it works.

This works for hardware, software, and any other kind of system. Often, reverse engineering is used to make a copy of a product or a version that works with it.

On the other hand, malware analysis is the process of studying malware to figure out what it does and why. Then, this information can be used to come up with ways to stop or get rid of malware.

So, reverse engineering and analyzing malware are both important tools for security, but they are not the same. The goal of reverse engineering is to figure out how something works, while the goal of malware analysis is to figure out what something does.

How does reverse engineering help hackers?

Hackers often use reverse engineering to find holes in systems and devices.

Hackers will often get a copy of the software or hardware they want to break into. They will take it apart and look for ways to get around security features or take advantage of weaknesses.

Reverse engineering can also be used to make illegal copies of software or hardware that is protected by a patent. In some cases, hackers may even make new versions of products that have already been made that have more features or work better.

Why is it unethical to reverse engineer?

One of the most common ways that reverse engineering is used in an unethical way is to make “malware clones.” A malware clone is just a copy of an existing piece of malware that has had its code slightly changed so that anti-virus software can’t find it. This is wrong because it lets the person who made the clone spread their own version of the malware without making their own original strain.

Creating “trojanized” versions of legitimate software is another unethical way that malware is often used. This is done by adding malicious code to a legitimate piece of software, like a game or a utility program. When the trojanized software is run, it will do something bad, like steal passwords or delete files. As with malware clones, this is considered unethical because it lets the person who made the trojanized software spread their own version of the software without making the original strain.

Last but not least, “botnets” are another unethical way to use reverse engineering to make malware. A botnet is a group of computers that are controlled by a remote attacker and have malware on them. The attacker can use the botnet to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, send spam emails, or even steal private information.

Malware reverse engineering jobs look at and try to figure out how malware works. This knowledge can be used to make protections against the malware or to stop the people who made it. Hackers also use reverse engineering to figure out how malware works so they can take advantage of its flaws. Even though there are many good things about reverse engineering, it also raises some ethical concerns.