Malware Analysis Crash Course

This course provides a rapid introduction to the tools and methodologies used to perform malware analysis on executables found on Windows systems using a practical, hands-on approach. Students will learn how to find the functionality of a program by analyzing disassembly and by watching how it modifies a system and its resources as it runs in a debugger. Students will learn how to extract host and network-based indicators from a malicious program. Students will be taught about dynamic analysis and the Windows APIs most often used by malware authors. Each section is filled with in-class demonstrations and hands-on labs with real malware where the students practice what they have learned.

What You Will Learn:

• Hands-on malware dissection
  
• How to create a safe malware analysis environment
  
• How to quickly extract network and host-based indicators
  
• How to perform dynamic analysis using system monitoring utilities to capture the file system, registry, and network activity generated by malware
  
• How to debug malware and modify control flow and logic of software
  
• To analyze assembly code after a crash course in the Intel x86 assembly language Windows internals and APIs
  
• How to use key analysis tools like IDA Pro and OllyDbg
  
• What to look for when analyzing a piece of malware
  
• The art of malware analysis - not just running tools.
  

Software developers, information security professionals, incident responders, computer security researchers, puzzle lovers, corporate investigators, or others requiring an understanding of how malware works and the steps and processes involved in performing malware analysis.

Students must bring their own laptop with VMware Workstation, Server, or Fusion installed (VMware Player is acceptable, but not recommended). Laptops should have at least 20GB of free space. A licensed copy of IDA Pro is highly recommended to participate in ALL labs, but the free version can be used in most cases.