Practical Malware Analysis

Kristina Savelesky | Updated 30 January 2018

General Description

The purpose of this independent study was to evaluate a potential curriculum that could be developed into a Special Topics or regular Informatics course as part of the Information Assurance and Cybersecurity track. The topics covered in such a course include technical skills such as malware analysis and general reverse engineering tools and techniques, as well as soft skills such as doing technical work in a collaborative environment and presenting findings to semi- and non-technical audiences. These skills are essential and often required for students wishing to enter the Cybersecurity industry as part of a team of Incident Responders, Penetration Testers, Digital Forensic Investigators, or general Security Engineers.

Learning Objectives

• Understand the attacker mindset and how to utilize this perspective in various scenarios
• Communicate technical information to non-, semi-, and fully-technical audiences
• Work on technical challenges in a collaborative environment
• Acquire foundational knowledge of malware, analysis tools, and techniques
• Be able to properly perform basic static and dynamic analysis of samples
• Become familiar with advanced tools and techniques used in static and dynamic analysis
• Detect and defeat anti-reverse engineering techniques employed by attackers
• Be exposed to special topics in malware analysis for further development

Resources

• Textbook - required - Practical Malware Analysis by Michael Sikorski and Andrew Honig