Dynamic analysis

In static analysis, the focus is on examining the potential malware in a controlled environment. The focus is on examining the actual code or looking for specific file attributes that could be compared to other sources. In dynamic analysis, the focus is on allowing the potential malware to execute within a controlled environment, and observing the behaviors that the program exhibits.

There are several advantages that dynamic analysis affords malware researchers and incident responders. First, allowing the code to execute fully will remove barriers such as encryption, or other obfuscation techniques that are utilized by malware coders. Second, several automated tools can be leveraged for dynamic analysis. This removes the manual process, which can be very labor-intensive as malware continues to increase in complexity. Finally, dynamic analysis is often much faster, as a researcher can monitor how a piece of potential malware works on a system in real time.

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