The primary motive behind performing malware analysis is to extract information from the malware sample, which can help in responding to a malware incident. The goal of malware analysis is to determine the capability of malware, detect it, and contain it. It also helps in determining identifiable patterns that can be used to cure and prevent future infections. The following are some of the reasons why you will perform malware analysis:
- To determine the nature and purpose of the malware. For example, it can help you determine whether malware is an information stealer, HTTP bot, spam bot, rootkit, keylogger, or RAT, and so on.
- To gain an understanding of how the system was compromised and its impact.
- To identify the network indicators associated with the malware, which can then be used to detect similar infections using network monitoring. For example, during your analysis, if you determine that a malware contacts a particular domain/IP address, then you can use this domain/IP address to create a signature and monitor the network traffic to identify all the hosts contacting that domain/IP address.
- To extract host-based indicators such as filenames, and registry keys, which, in turn, can be used to determine similar infection using host-based monitoring. For instance, if you learn that a malware creates a registry key, you can use this registry key as an indicator to create a signature, or scan your network to identify the hosts that have the same registry key.
- To determine the attacker's intention and motive. For instance, during your analysis, if you find that the malware is stealing banking credentials, then you can deduce that the motive of the attacker is monetary gain.
Threat intelligence teams very often use the indicators determined from a malware analysis to classify the attack and attribute them to known threats. Malware analysis can help you get information about who could be behind the attack (competitor, state-sponsored attack group, and so on).
