Windows Malware Analysis for Hedgehogs – Beginner Training

Description

This course teaches more than just reverse engineering because as a malware analyst you need a variety of other skills. You will learn how to classify samples into malware types, how to identify malware families and how to determine file verdicts like clean, malicious, potentially unwanted programs, junk, grayware, or corrupt. Additionally, you will learn how malware persists, how to identify malicious autostart entries and clean infected systems.

The course aims to dispel common myths such as “trojan in a detection name means the file is a trojan horse” or “antivirus detection names are a malware classification”.

As a malware analyst with experience working at an antivirus company since 2015, I have trained many beginners in the field. I understand the usual pitfalls and the concepts that you need to grasp to become proficient. I focus on building strong foundations that make you flexible in the face of new malware advancements, rather than providing shortcuts with step-by-step recipes.

I will teach you how to differentiate between different types of files, including installers, wrappers, packed files, non-packed files, hybrid, and native compiled files. You will learn which tools to apply in which situations and how to analyse samples efficiently. To do that I give you example approaches that work for most situations.

This course is ideal for you if you already have some IT background, such as hobby or professional programmers, computer enthusiasts, administrators, computer science students, or gamers with an interest in the inner workings of software or IT security.

If you have a strong interest in the topic but lack the necessary IT background, I recommend that you learn programming first. Please refer to the course requirements for more information.

Tools

All the tools and web services that we use during the course are free:

Ghidra
x64dbg
VirtualBox
SysInternals Suite
PortexAnalyzer CLI and GUI
VirusTotal (without account)
Speakeasy by Mandiant
API Monitor
CyberChef
EXIFTool
Meld
VBinDiff
AnalyzePESig
DnSpy
C# Online Compiler programwiz
TriD
Detect-it-Easy
ReNamer
7zip
Notepad++
HxD
Malpedia
lnk_parser

Requirements

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You should have a strong understanding of at least one programming language, such as Python, C, C++, Java, or C#. This is a crucial requirement for the course, not only because we create small scripts during the course but because reverse engineering needs an understanding of software as foundation. The specific language does not matter, as you cannot learn every language you may encounter during analysis anyways. The concepts of programming must be clear, though.

If you are not there yet, you should not buy this course and start learning C instead. C is great because it is low-level and will integrate well with x86 assembly language.

Additionally, you must be able to read (not write) x86 assembly to understand everything in the course. Without assembly you will only be able to understand two-thirds of the content. So if you consider starting this course right away and learning assembly alongside it, that should work fine.

During this course we look at samples that use the following execution environments:

x86, x64 assembly
.NET
Batch
PowerShell
Nullsoft scripts

However, you do not need to learn all of these languages. Because an analyst encounters new languages all the time, your skillset is rather in using the available documentation, manuals and help provided for those environments and languages. I also show you during the course how to use the documentation for ,e.g., PowerShell.

Out of scope

Malware analysis is a broad field, so there are inevitably topics that I will not teach during this course because they would rather require their own course. Some of these topics are: assembly language, programming, how computers work, URL and website analysis, networks, analysis of malware for other platforms than Windows, mobile malware, IoT malware.

Who this course is for:

ideal for people with some IT experience or IT enthusiasts who are beginners in malware analysis and reverse engineering
entry-level or aspiring malware analysts
computer science graduates
software developers
SOC analysts
hobby programmers