Chapter 6: Advanced Dynamic Analysis – Looking at Explosions
In action movies, it's often the case that when the hero walks away from an exploding object, they don't even bother to look back to see the destruction it is causing. Unfortunately for malware analysts, we don't tend to be quite as cool as action heroes, and our job requires that we closely observe the destruction being caused.
To this point, we've mostly worked with the static gathering of metadata on files from an advanced perspective. In this chapter, we'll begin executing our malware and observing the behaviors. This will allow an analyst to validate the data they have recovered from static analysis, as well as uncover Tools, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) that may not be apparent during the static analysis of a sample.
After we cover each of these topics, you'll also have the opportunity to try your luck against a real-world piece of malware – NetWalker Ransomware...