Introduction to Malware Reverse Engineering is an innovative approach developed by Attack Research to analyze and understand malware rapidly. In this two-day course, students will learn how to be effective in understanding the inner workings of malware without any in-depth knowledge of assembly or development. The course brings together topics that apply to basic reverse engineering as well as malware triage, incident response, and indicator of compromise development. The course starts simple and high level and ramps up to becoming more technical and hands-on over time.

Students learn a range of techniques ranging from basic malware analysis methods and how to deal with sophisticated attackers to anti-analysis techniques. This is achieved with hands-on exercises, using many common and uncommon tools for malware analysis and analyzing examples from a wide range of complexity. The students are also presented with real-world scenarios that Attack Research has encountered over decades of experience from incident response, breach assessments, and red team engagements. This then presents information from an attacker’s perspective that is unique compared to other reverse engineering courses.

Like all Attack Research courses, this class is a combination of lecture, anecdotes, and hands-on exercises that help students retain the information. Each exercise is presented as challenge and then demonstrated for in-depth understanding. Every student will walk away knowing something new and useful.

Please note that this class is an introductory course and NOT for advanced reverse engineers or malware developers.

Target Audience

• Detection and Response Staff

• System Administrators

• Junior Reverse Engineers

• IT Security Consultants

• Security Software Developers

• Others with interests in:

• Basic Reverse Engineering

• Malware and Malware Triage

• Indicator of Compromise Development

• Incident Response

• Malware Analysis Tools and Products

Course Outline

• Malware Overview

• Tools, Books, and Information Sources

• File Formats

• Dynamic Analysis

• Static Analysis

• Instrumentation

• Anti-Virus Evasion

• Case Studies and Example Samples

• Defeating Anti-Analysis

Course Instructor Bio

This course is taught by a highly experienced member of Attack Research staff. Instructors have over 10 years of experience implementing, supporting, securing, and compromising large and complex multi-platform environments. Instructors are currently engaged in senior-level penetration testing of highly secured UNIX and Windows networks and frequently research, develop, and deploy custom tools and techniques during engagements.

Introduction to Malware Reverse Engineering instructors also bring a wealth of knowledge gained from performing incident response on compromised systems in the field including analysis of attacker tools and techniques. Many of the topics covered in the course are taken directly from instructors' case studies and represent real-world events.

Student Requirements

Students must bring their own machines capable of running VMware. Students are provided with a VMware Virtual Machine with all the tools and exercise files necessary for this course.

Students must have:

• A concept of computer processor architecture.

• An understanding of network and communication protocols.

• An understanding of software process flow and some coding practices.

• Familiarity with Windows at the GUI and command line.

Course Background

Introduction to Malware Reverse Engineering is a class that was built from our Rapid Reverse Engineering course, which has been taught at BlackHat and has been well received. The content was reviewed and tailored for individual customer training to aid in their reverse engineering program. It was then expanded to fit multiple clients and has been presented at many customer sites with great reviews, prompting Attack Research to offer the class publicly.

Students Provided With

Students leave the class with full documentation and the entire custom and non-custom toolsets, as well as the custom tools that they design and build in the class. Students walk away from AR training sessions not only with the usual training materials, but with a wealth of knowledge for both attacking and defending networks.

AR employs a very hands-on approach to teaching by having the students spend approximately 50% of class time performing practical exercises in a lab environment designed to simulate real-world enterprise networks. This type of class structure has been a proven success in retention of skills learned as well as student engagement.