Malware Analyst Quiz

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1. In the context of mobile security, what does ‘rooting’ (Android) or ‘jailbreaking’ (iOS) enable?

Full administrative access to the device’s operating system, bypassing manufacturer restrictions

Improved performance and battery life through optimized settings

Automatic updates to the latest mobile operating system version

Enhanced security features beyond what is available through standard configurations

2. Which technique is often used by malware to modify the flow of control within a program without directly modifying its code?

Buffer overflow

API hooking

Registry modification

Code injection

3. During a reverse engineering session with IDA Pro, you encounter a function with heavily obfuscated code that dynamically resolves API calls using a hash algorithm. What technique could you employ to identify the API calls being made, and how would this impact your analysis?

Rewrite the malware code for clearer understanding.

Ignore the obfuscation and focus on other parts of the code to infer the malware’s functionality.

Manually decompile the function and calculate the hashes to match them with known API calls.

Use dynamic analysis tools to execute the malware and monitor API call resolutions in real-time.

4. What is a ‘honeypot’ in the context of cybersecurity?

A vulnerability in software

A type of malware

A decoy system designed to attract and analyze attackers and malware

A secure method for transmitting data

5. You are tasked with analyzing a complex malware sample that employs polymorphic code to evade signature-based detection. What strategies would you employ in IDA Pro to understand and document the polymorphic behavior, and how might this affect your overall analysis process?

Rely on dynamic analysis to understand the malware’s behavior, given the difficulty of analyzing polymorphic code statically.

Attempt to manually reverse-engineer each variant of the polymorphic code.

Focus solely on the static properties of the malware, ignoring its polymorphic nature.

Use IDA Pro’s scripting capabilities to automate the identification and documentation of polymorphic code patterns.

6. What role does ‘cryptographic hashing’ play in malware analysis?

It is used to encrypt the malware payload to ensure that it cannot be analyzed by security tools.

It is used by malware to securely communicate with command and control servers.

Malware uses hashing to compress its code without losing any information.

Hashing is employed to uniquely identify malware samples based on their binary content.

7. What is the primary function of the Import Address Table (IAT) in the context of Windows malware analysis?

To store addresses of the malware’s command and control servers

To list the APIs imported by a PE file for execution

To encrypt the malware payload to evade detection

To keep a log of all malicious activities performed by the malware

8. Scenario: During a reverse engineering session, you identify a piece of malware that decrypts its payload only when a specific condition is met. You discover that the condition involves checking the system’s language setting. Question: How would you manipulate the environment to trigger the payload decryption?

Disconnect the machine from the internet to prevent the check from reaching the C2 server.

Use a debugger to bypass the conditional check completely.

Encrypt the system’s hard drive to secure it from the payload.

Modify the system’s language setting to match the expected condition.

9. Which of the following best describes ‘sandbox evasion’ techniques used by advanced malware?

Detecting the presence of a virtualized environment and altering behavior to avoid detection

Splitting the malware into smaller fragments to evade network-based sandboxes

Encrypting the malware payload to prevent analysis in a sandbox environment

Compressing the malware file to bypass file size limits in sandbox analysis tools

10. Which of the following best describes ‘signature-based detection’?

Identifying malware based on specific patterns or ‘signatures’ found in the code

Using artificial intelligence to predict malware attacks

Detecting malware based on user complaints

Detecting malware based on unusual behavior patterns

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Total 10 Questions

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