Malware Analysis

Posts discussing malware analysis techniques.

To analyse the cna12 MySQL attacks, I had to install MySQL Express Server as the attacks were prematurely exiting when connecting to Dionaea. Extracting the binary files from the libpcap files was annoying, so I decided to change Dionaea so that it would automatically extract the binary files used in the cna12 attacks. Continue Reading

Certain memory conditions have to be met before malware can unpack code and run it — the memory has to be writeable to unpack code to it, and executable to be able to execute it. The question is, can we use Win32 API calls to detect malware creating these conditions, and subsequently not only detect and identify unpacked code, but also find the original entry point? Continue Reading

Seeing an increase in MySQL attacks hitting your network and interested in knowing more about them? This post follows on from the previous post which discussed how to run a Cuckoo Sandbox analysis of a MySQL attack.

This post starts analysing the results and notices an issue with a particular malware trait and Cuckoo (v0.4.2). Awfully gripping stuff — I was on the edge of my seat, but then that could be because my table was too far away from my chair. Continue Reading

It’s nice to use dynamic analysis to corroborate the findings from static analysis, but what if you face an SQL attack? What if the attack caused the MySQL server to drop an executable file and pass control to it, or if the attack was exploiting a remote code execution vulnerability? I developed a Cuckoo package, misql.py, to allow me to dynamically analyse some of the effects of MySQL attacks. Continue Reading

Seeing an increase in MySQL attacks hitting your network and interested in knowing more about them? If so, then these posts are for you. They have all the fun involved from noticing an increase in traffic to extracting malware from a packet capture and analysing it. If you like the thrills and spills of scripting information processing tasks, then read on as this post will show you how to extract the binary files from the MySQL commands.
Continue Reading

Seeing an increase in MySQL attacks hitting your network and interested in knowing more about them? If so, then these posts are for you. They have all the fun involved from noticing an increase in traffic to extracting malware from a packet capture and analysing it. If you like the thrills and spills of scripting information processing tasks, then read on as this post will show you how to script the gathering of information from packet captures. Continue Reading

Seeing an increase in MySQL attacks hitting your network and interested in knowing more about them? If so, then these posts are for you. They have all the fun involved from noticing an increase in traffic to extracting malware from a packet capture and analysing it. If you like the thrills and spills of scripting information processing tasks, then read on. If you’d rather I just got to the point and presented information about the attacks, then you can probably skip this first post. Continue Reading