Which malware type can change code and signature patterns with each iteration?

Antivirus (AV) and anti-malware products are among the oldest and most mature defenses against cyber attacks we have, yet new malware samples seem to make it past legacy AV solutions every day. If you monitored the top AV engines Signature-based AV software can also miss well-known threats. The industry sees anywhere from 300,000 to 1 million new malware variants each day. However, criminals aren't making millions of new worms, Trojans, or viruses. There are probably thousands, not hundreds of thousands, of truly unique malware families. So, where do these millions of variants come from? The answer is malware evasion techniques. Over time, malware authors have developed hundreds of techniques to make their malware look "new again" to evade security controls. In the second of a two-part post, I'll cover seven high-level evasion techniques cybercriminals use to hide malware from you and your security software, and explain some of the ways we can still detect them. Here, in part 1, I'll outline four basic malware obfuscation methods. 1. Packers A packer is a program that compresses an executable to make it smaller. It wraps the compressed executable in the code necessary to decompress itself at runtime. The act of compression changes the way the executable file looks. Signature-based detection relies on malware researchers or automated systems finding a pattern in a known malware file, such as a hash or the number of binary patterns, to create a unique identifier for that mal...

Problem Collections are one of the most used data types in programming. Nonetheless, a collection is just a container for a group of objects. Various types of collections. Most collections store their elements in simple lists. However, some of them are based on stacks, trees, graphs and other complex data structures. But no matter how a collection is structured, it must provide some way of accessing its elements so that other code can use these elements. There should be a way to go through each element of the collection without accessing the same elements over and over. This may sound like an easy job if you have a collection based on a list. You just loop over all of the elements. But how do you sequentially traverse elements of a complex data structure, such as a tree? For example, one day you might be just fine with depth-first traversal of a tree. Yet the next day you might require breadth-first traversal. And the next week, you might need something else, like random access to the tree elements. The same collection can be traversed in several different ways. Adding more and more traversal algorithms to the collection gradually blurs its primary responsibility, which is efficient data storage. Additionally, some algorithms might be tailored for a specific application, so including them into a generic collection class would be weird. On the other hand, the client code that’s supposed to work with various collections may not even care how they store their elements. Howeve...

What is a polymorphic virus? There are several similarities between biological viruses and computer viruses. While biological viruses invade cells to survive and propagate, computer viruses piggyback on files in a computer’s system to thrive and spread. Both types of viruses can also manipulate and corrupt their host’s code to make copies of themselves. A subset of computer viruses called polymorphic viruses carries another characteristic from their biological counterpart's arsenal: mutation. Think of how frequently the influenza virus mutates or the growing number of novel coronavirus variants — the alterations sometimes help the diseases evade biological defenses. Similarly, polymorphic viruses mutate to change their code while usually retaining their core function. The difference between a mutating biological virus and a polymorphic PC virus is that the former mutates naturally while someone programs the latter with What does a polymorphic virus do? Like a regular computer virus, a polymorphic virus corrupts data and slows down system resources, sometimes leading to computer malfunctions like The polymorphic engine, also known as a mutation engine, modifies the malware’s decryption procedure every time it replicates, making its new state challenging for conventional antivirus software to identify. For a movie example, think of a polymorphic virus as the T-1000 from Terminator 2, shapeshifting to hide its identity while never losing its core function. Polymorphic virus v...

This problem has been solved! You'll get a detailed solution from a subject matter expert that helps you learn core concepts. See Answer See Answer See Answer done loading Question:6.) The type of malware analysis that involves inspecting program code, file metadata, and resources without executing the program is called analysis. 7.) A type of malware that mutates and rewrites (re-code) itself completely at each iteration and may change behavior as well as appearance is called _ malware. 8.) The major risk of Dynamic analysis is that 6.) The type of malware analysis that involves inspecting program code, file metadata, and resources without executing the program is called analysis. 7.) A type of malware that mutates and rewrites (re-code) itself completely at each iteration and may change behavior as well as appearance is called _ malware. 8.) The major risk of Dynamic analysis is that the malware code can accidentally _during analysis. 9.) Reverse engineering with decompilers produces code while disassemblers produce code Previous question Next question

Before we start it’s probably best to explain some things: Signature – A pattern of bytes used by an antivirus to identify malicious executables, this could be a string, parts of a function, or a hash. Crypting – This is the most common way of evading antivirus detections, it works by encrypting the malicious executable so the antivirus cannot match the malicious code to existing signatures. Payload – The malicious executable which is encrypted to evade detections, this is attached to the stub in some way (stored as a resource, added after then end of file, appended to a new or existing section). Stub – A simple program responsible for decrypting the payload and executing it in memory. Due to the payload being encrypted, antiviruses will attempt to generate signatures to match the stub’s code, but because the stub is small and simple it can be easily modified to evade existing signatures. ## Polymorphism Polymorphism is a solution to a problem mainly found with worms/botnet: When an AV adds a new signature that detects the malicious executable, the infected file will be quarantined, leaving the malware running in memory until reboot. If a botmaster is running a botnet with thousands of bots, each time the stub is detected he’s likely to lose a few hundred bots, his only choice: To keep updating the bots with a new stub before the previous one is detected (which for large botnets can be every few hours), leaving the hacker with very little free time. A solution to this woul...

Many security products rely on file signatures in order to detect malware and other malicious files. The technique involves reading or scanning a file and testing to see if the file matches a set of predetermined attributes. These attributes are known as the malware’s ‘signature’. Malware signatures, which can occur in many different formats, are created by vendors and security researchers. Sets of signatures are collected in databases, some of which may be public and shared while others are contained in proprietary databases exclusive to a particular vendor. Some security solutions rely entirely on this kind of technology for detection purposes, although there are various drawbacks in doing so. In this post, we’ll explore how malware file signatures are created, explain how they work, and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. How Are Malware Signatures Created? In order to create a signature for a particular malware file or family of files, a security analyst needs one or more (the more the better) samples of the file to work from. Such samples may be gathered ‘in the wild’ from infected computers, sourced from the MalShare is one of several malware repositories available to researchers Once a vendor has a set or ‘corpus’ of files to work with, they begin to examine the files for common characteristics. These characteristics can involve factors such as file size, imported or exported functions, data bytes at certain positions (‘offsets’), sectional or whole-file The...

What is a polymorphic virus? There are several similarities between biological viruses and computer viruses. While biological viruses invade cells to survive and propagate, computer viruses piggyback on files in a computer’s system to thrive and spread. Both types of viruses can also manipulate and corrupt their host’s code to make copies of themselves. A subset of computer viruses called polymorphic viruses carries another characteristic from their biological counterpart's arsenal: mutation. Think of how frequently the influenza virus mutates or the growing number of novel coronavirus variants — the alterations sometimes help the diseases evade biological defenses. Similarly, polymorphic viruses mutate to change their code while usually retaining their core function. The difference between a mutating biological virus and a polymorphic PC virus is that the former mutates naturally while someone programs the latter with What does a polymorphic virus do? Like a regular computer virus, a polymorphic virus corrupts data and slows down system resources, sometimes leading to computer malfunctions like The polymorphic engine, also known as a mutation engine, modifies the malware’s decryption procedure every time it replicates, making its new state challenging for conventional antivirus software to identify. For a movie example, think of a polymorphic virus as the T-1000 from Terminator 2, shapeshifting to hide its identity while never losing its core function. Polymorphic virus v...

Before we start it’s probably best to explain some things: Signature – A pattern of bytes used by an antivirus to identify malicious executables, this could be a string, parts of a function, or a hash. Crypting – This is the most common way of evading antivirus detections, it works by encrypting the malicious executable so the antivirus cannot match the malicious code to existing signatures. Payload – The malicious executable which is encrypted to evade detections, this is attached to the stub in some way (stored as a resource, added after then end of file, appended to a new or existing section). Stub – A simple program responsible for decrypting the payload and executing it in memory. Due to the payload being encrypted, antiviruses will attempt to generate signatures to match the stub’s code, but because the stub is small and simple it can be easily modified to evade existing signatures. ## Polymorphism Polymorphism is a solution to a problem mainly found with worms/botnet: When an AV adds a new signature that detects the malicious executable, the infected file will be quarantined, leaving the malware running in memory until reboot. If a botmaster is running a botnet with thousands of bots, each time the stub is detected he’s likely to lose a few hundred bots, his only choice: To keep updating the bots with a new stub before the previous one is detected (which for large botnets can be every few hours), leaving the hacker with very little free time. A solution to this woul...

Many security products rely on file signatures in order to detect malware and other malicious files. The technique involves reading or scanning a file and testing to see if the file matches a set of predetermined attributes. These attributes are known as the malware’s ‘signature’. Malware signatures, which can occur in many different formats, are created by vendors and security researchers. Sets of signatures are collected in databases, some of which may be public and shared while others are contained in proprietary databases exclusive to a particular vendor. Some security solutions rely entirely on this kind of technology for detection purposes, although there are various drawbacks in doing so. In this post, we’ll explore how malware file signatures are created, explain how they work, and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. How Are Malware Signatures Created? In order to create a signature for a particular malware file or family of files, a security analyst needs one or more (the more the better) samples of the file to work from. Such samples may be gathered ‘in the wild’ from infected computers, sourced from the MalShare is one of several malware repositories available to researchers Once a vendor has a set or ‘corpus’ of files to work with, they begin to examine the files for common characteristics. These characteristics can involve factors such as file size, imported or exported functions, data bytes at certain positions (‘offsets’), sectional or whole-file The...

Antivirus (AV) and anti-malware products are among the oldest and most mature defenses against cyber attacks we have, yet new malware samples seem to make it past legacy AV solutions every day. If you monitored the top AV engines Signature-based AV software can also miss well-known threats. The industry sees anywhere from 300,000 to 1 million new malware variants each day. However, criminals aren't making millions of new worms, Trojans, or viruses. There are probably thousands, not hundreds of thousands, of truly unique malware families. So, where do these millions of variants come from? The answer is malware evasion techniques. Over time, malware authors have developed hundreds of techniques to make their malware look "new again" to evade security controls. In the second of a two-part post, I'll cover seven high-level evasion techniques cybercriminals use to hide malware from you and your security software, and explain some of the ways we can still detect them. Here, in part 1, I'll outline four basic malware obfuscation methods. 1. Packers A packer is a program that compresses an executable to make it smaller. It wraps the compressed executable in the code necessary to decompress itself at runtime. The act of compression changes the way the executable file looks. Signature-based detection relies on malware researchers or automated systems finding a pattern in a known malware file, such as a hash or the number of binary patterns, to create a unique identifier for that mal...