You're reading from Mastering Malware Analysis A malware analyst's practical guide to combating malicious software, APT, cybercrime, and IoT attacks

Product type Paperback

Published in Sep 2022

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781803240244

Length 572 pages

Edition 2nd Edition

Concepts

Malware Analysis

Authors (2):

Amr Thabet

Alexey Kleymenov

View More author details

Table of Contents (20) Chapters

Preface

1. Part 1 Fundamental Theory

2. Chapter 1: Cybercrime, APT Attacks, and Research Strategies FREE CHAPTER

3. Chapter 2: A Crash Course in Assembly and Programming Basics

4. Part 2 Diving Deep into Windows Malware

5. Chapter 3: Basic Static and Dynamic Analysis for x86/x64

6. Chapter 4: Unpacking, Decryption, and Deobfuscation

7. Chapter 5: Inspecting Process Injection and API Hooking

8. Chapter 6: Bypassing Anti-Reverse Engineering Techniques

9. Chapter 7: Understanding Kernel-Mode Rootkits

10. Part 3 Examining Cross-Platform and Bytecode-Based Malware

11. Chapter 8: Handling Exploits and Shellcode

12. Chapter 9: Reversing Bytecode Languages – .NET, Java, and More

13. Chapter 10: Scripts and Macros – Reversing, Deobfuscation, and Debugging

14. Part 4 Looking into IoT and Other Platforms

15. Chapter 11: Dissecting Linux and IoT Malware

16. Chapter 12: Introduction to macOS and iOS Threats

17. Chapter 13: Analyzing Android Malware Samples

18. Index

Why subscribe?

19. Other Books You May Enjoy

Packt is searching for authors like you

Kernel mode versus user mode

You have already seen several user-mode processes on your computer (all the applications you see are running in user mode) and learned how to modify files, connect to the internet, and perform lots of activities. However, you might be surprised to know that user-mode applications don't have privileges to do all of this.

For any process to create a file or connect to a domain, it needs to send a request to the kernel mode to perform that action. This request is done through what is known as a system call, and this system call switches to kernel mode to perform this action (if permission is granted). Kernel mode and user mode are not only supported by the OS – they are also supported by the processors through protection rings (or hardware restrictions).

Protection rings

x86 processors provide four rings of privileges (x64 is slightly different). Each ring has lower privileges than the previous one, as shown in the following diagram:

...

The rest of the chapter is locked

You're reading from Mastering Malware Analysis A malware analyst's practical guide to combating malicious software, APT, cybercrime, and IoT attacks

Table of Contents (20) Chapters

Kernel mode versus user mode

Protection rings

Unlock this book and the full library FREE for 7 days

Authors (2)

Personalised recommendations for you