Definition: Malware Analysis - hawkinsw/CS5138 GitHub Wiki

Malware analysis is ...

Jakob: Studying and characterizing the effects and behavior of any piece of software that may potentially compromise the integrity of the system. The software in general may not be malware by intention, but under certain conditions, can have effects that would categorize it as malware. Examples of effects would be to expose "sensitive" (memory from other processes that are normally inaccessible from the malicious process except under fringe conditions not encountered in "normal" use) data, creating a Denial-of-Service (DoS) (damage to system that may be physically catastrophic or just cause system to crash), causing the system to behave abnormally (similar to DoS, but execute code unknown to the user) without detection, or exposing the system to other pieces of malware by broadcasting a "beacon."

Edwin Cervantes: Understanding how a piece of software entered your network, host, etc. that is unwanted and installed without permission. Analyzing should include discovering the entry point, the exploit used, the method of persistence, determining data that was lost, and how to prevent future occurrences of this. With this, hopefully one is able to understand the purpose of the malware.

Kevin T: ... using static and/or dynamic analysis techniques in an attempt to understand the behavior of malware, where malware can be defined as malicious software that threatens the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of data or a system in general. These techniques are often performed by using existing tools or by developing new tools that will aid in the analysis.

Thomas R: the process of examining a digital executable for the presence of malicious instructions (or to learn how known malware works/is identified). These may be inserted by either the original developer (i.e. at compile time) or an adversary (such as during a particularly stealthy man-in-the-middle attack). They might even be unintentional side effects of well-intentioned code, such as a bug that deletes the wrong data. Either way, identifying the behavior of software you execute is an important part of maintaining security and integrity of a machine/network, regardless of who (if anyone) intended for the software to contain malicious instructions.

Analyzing known malware is also useful to assist in recognition of malware in cases where it is uncertain if it is present in the software in question. (e.g. AI-powered "virus" scanners)

Khanh Le: Malware is a computer program which is secretly injected into a system with malicious intents such as stealing data, harming system, etc. Malware analysis is the action of investigating, researching, and understanding such malwares to have a better input for finding an approach to detect and mitigate their dangers

Ned F: Malware analysis is the process of inspecting a suspicious executable, file, or URL with the goal of understanding its purpose and lethality. Malware analysis is performed to undermine the malware's ability to affect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of company processes. It also encompasses reverse engineering any code found in order to fully understand its impact.

Austen B: The examination of a harmful program. This examination may include understanding the intent of the program, discovering the potential damage it can do to one's machine, researching how the malware can infect a system, and identifying its developers. For an analysis of software in this category, one may expect to reverse engineer the binary using applications such as Ghidra or IDA. Malware can take many different forms and do many different things, so analysts must be thorough in their examination to identify answers to the previously mentioned problems.

Sydni-Dee V: Malware analysis is the process of understanding the behavior and purpose of a suspicious file or URL. The output of the analysis aids in the detection and mitigation of the potential threat. (source: https://www.crowdstrike.com/cybersecurity-101/malware/malware-analysis/)

Kevin E: Malware analysis is the understanding of the origin, purpose, function, and possible impacts of a harmful program. By doing malware analysis, we can understand how malware works and how it will, or how it already has affected, an infected system. This can help protect whatever data was affected by the malware and prevent future attacks.

Jacob R: Malware analysis is preforming a process to understand the behavior and purpose of a suspicious file, program, url, etc. Malware is an software that is intended to harm the hosts system. Through this process you can understand how the malware works and what its intended purpose is.

Logan G: Malware analysis is the study or process of determining the functionality, origin and potential impact of a given malware sample such as a virus, worm, trojan horse, rootkit, or backdoor. Malware or malicious software is any computer software intended to harm the host operating system or to steal sensitive data from users, organizations or companies. Malware may include software that gathers user information without permission. (source)

Francesco Abbinante - To me, malware analysis is working to understand the inner mechanisms of a problematic program or a POTENTIAL problematic program. This can be done statically or dynamically. Malware analysis isn't something as concrete as math where there is one way to solve something. It can kind of be seen as an art. Everyone will tackle a threat differently and will look for certain things first in order to start to grasp the functionality of code or of an executable.

Danny H: Malware Analysis a practical way of understanding the individual functions, purposes, origins and potential impacts of different types of malicious software (malware) and code. It involves assessing and learning how each specific sample functions and how its code differs from other types of malware. This includes malware that’s contained within suspicious files and website links. ([source] (https://sectigostore.com/blog/malware-analysis-what-it-is-how-it-works/))

Domas Karvelis: Malware analysis to me is the process of analyzing or studying a program that may inflict damage or be problematic. This includes any sort of key logger, worm, virus or any other sort of software that has an intention to harm. Through malware analysis one can find out how a program or software acts in order to achieve its malicious intent.

Youmin Zhou: Malware is short for “malicious software”, and it is a file or code, typically delivered over a network, that infects, explores, steals, or conducts virtually any behavior an attacker wants. Malware analysis is the process of understanding how malware works and any potential effects. Malware code can be very different, and it is necessary to know the mechanism behind the malware. And because malware comes in so many variants, there are numerous methods to infect computer systems. These can come in the form of Viruses, Worms, spyware, and Trojan. Each type of malware collects information about an infected device without the user's knowledge or authorization.

Kyle Hardison: Malware Analysis refers to the study and practice of understanding the functionality and impact of a malicious computer program. The process of malware analysis can involve static analysis via binary disassembly by using tools like Ghidra or IDA, as well as dynamic analysis by running a known malicious program inside a container such as a virtual machine in order to observe its behavior. Learning how malicious programs operate and propogate allow skilled teams to design and implement best practices in order to reduce the impact of such software.

Austin Richards: Malware is defined as software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner’s informed consent. This is where analysis comes into the picture. Basically, malware analysis is defined as “The process of dissecting malware to understand its core components and source code, investigating its characteristics, functionality, origin, and impact to mitigate the threat and prevent future occurrences.” (Source material: https://www.toolbox.com/it-security/data-security/articles/what-is-malware-analysis-definition-types-stages-best-practices/)

William Powell: Malware Analysis is the study of a malware sample. Whether that be the characteristics or functionality of the malware, tracing back the origin, and looking into the various places where the malware could have a significant negative impact in the connected world. (Source: https://www.toolbox.com/it-security/data-security/articles/what-is-malware-analysis-definition-types-stages-best-practices/)

Nicholas McClorey: I define Malware as any piece of software that is malicious. Malware analysis would be analysis and reverse engineering of that malware.

Meg Jones: ... is the study of malware, whether intentionally created or unintentionally created. Malware is a piece of software that behaves harmfully towards the end user or their device, like exploiting sensitive information, holding the device hostage, etc.

Brian Burke: Malware analysis is the action of analyzing a program to determine if it is malicious in intent. This is performed by looking at the functionality and impact of the program on its target(s)/victim(s).

Aaron Boyd: Malware analysis is the process of detecting, identifying, and dissecting software to further understand how malicious software works or spreads within a target host or network.

Adel Alshappip: Malware analysis is the process of learning how malware functions and any potential repercussions of a given malware. Malware code can differ radically, and it's essential to know that malware can have many functionalities. These may come in the form of viruses, worms, spyware, and Trojan horses. Each type of malware gathers information about the infected device without the knowledge, or authorization of the user. https://digitalguardian.com/blog/what-malware-analysis-defining-and-outlining-process-malware-analysis

Mario Eid: Malware analysis consists of preventing potential threats to a network or an application. These threats, or malware, consist of things such as viruses, worms, bots etc. The other large aspect of malware analysis consists of understanding these threats by dissecting them in an attempt to prevent them from occurring in the future.

Shane Reilly Malware analysis is the careful reverse engineering of malicious software. The goals are to figure out the method and manner in which the software works to determine what damage has been done and ways to prevent systems from being infected with it in future.

Ishaan Santhis: Malware Analysis to me is a through examination to detect a software that has the potential to harm your computer, steal your data and / or create untracable backdoors into your system to gain access without authorization; and it also consists of the methods to prevent and protect ourselves from these potentially harmful softwares

Piyush Sahu: Malware is a software designed to disrupt the functioning of a computer or a group/network of computers in some way. So, malware analysis will be to analyze that software and its execution. Malware could be categorized and broken down into smaller pieces to understand clearly. The outcome would be to understand how they work so that computer systems can be protected.

Henry Stiefel Malware analysis is a process that involves studying a sample of malware to understand what it consists of and what it is trying to accomplish. Methods for determining such information about malware may be actually running the malware, hopefully in a safe, secure, and controlled environment, or extracting code and scanning through it line by line. Malware analysis serves to advance detection algorithms, safeguard responses, and incident response. Source

Jihad Khan: Malware analysis, a subset of cybersecurity, describes the investigation of harmful software within a network or single system. It is a continuous process of identification, classification, removal, and prevention that ultimately helps protect our digital infrastructure.

Malicious software, can be defined as a computer intrusion. Any software that does something to cause harm to a network or computer or user can be considered malware. This can include viruses, trojan horses, worms, adware, spyware. Malware analysis is the process of inspecting malware to understand the working, to identify it, and to defeat it.

Grace Owens: Malware analysis is the process of interpreting the function, capability, and reach of a piece of malware through methods such as reverse engineering, execution and observation, or other means.

Noah Heinen: It is the Breakdown of the behavior and structure of software that causes harm to a device, process, or network.

Scott Hunt: Malware Analysis is the process of identifying the functionality, origin, and / or impact of a piece of software that causes harm to the user, system, or network, regardless of intent.

Cameron Skidmore: Malware Analysis is the methods and process of finding, identifying, analyzing, reverse engineering, and understanding a piece of malicious software in order to patch, prevent, or otherwise stop it from spreading or causing further harm. Additionally, this process can result in a more secure system that stops other forms of malware looking to exploit similar weaknesses in the future.

Eric Michalski Malware Analysis is the process of revealing the purpose of malicious or unwanted software to gain an understanding of why it's there and its behavior of it to be able to find effective solutions to remove it.

Trent Slavik: Malware analysis is the method of analyzing malicious software to discover how it is going to impact a system, computer, or network. Additionally, this includes how the software works, where it originated from, what is the intent of the malware, and can it be mitigated are all factors that need to be considered when defining malware analysis.

Srujana Rangapuram: Malware Analysis is a part of preventive measures where we investigate and study the malware samples and their effects on a system or network. This aids us in estimating better measures to prevent unauthorized access to data, systems, or a network.

Joshua Cain Malware analysis is the process of analyzing and identifying potential harmful effects to a user, network, or system caused by a piece of software. These harmful effects can be intentional or unintentional and often include bugs, viruses, or trojans.

Jacob G. Morgan: Malware Analysis is the process of breaking down malware, investigating its characteristics, unraveling its functionality, tracing its origin, and trying to determine its impact or future vulnerabilities. (source via Spiceworks.com)

Joe Brayshaw: Malware analysis is the process of breaking apart malicious software into its components and observing how it executes, propagates, and avoids detection in order to improve all systems.

Andrew Dillon: Malware analysis is the process of detecting, identifying, and understanding malicious software on personal computers, servers, endpoints, networks, and IoT devices in an effort to deter and/or prevent the software from harming the user or device. (source: https://www.vmware.com/topics/glossary/content/malware-analysis.html)

Siwei Wang: Malware Analysis is the field of study which focuses on harmful softwares known as "malware." Malware is defined as softwares that violates a computer's security protocols, such as changing the computer settings without permission of the administrator, leaving a security backdoor to the system that can potentially cause harm, deploying viruses to the computer without consent, etc... Malware analysis studies the different types of malware, but it is not limited to problem solving such as coming up with a solution to "fight" the malware.

Haru Chu: Malware Analysis is the practice of determining and analyzing suspicious files on endpoints and within networks using dynamic analysis, static analysis, or full reverse engineering. (Source: https://www.vmware.com/topics/glossary/content/malware-analysis.html)

Adel Alshappip: Malware analysis is the use of tools and procedures to understand the behavior and purpose of a suspicious file. The process aims to detect and mitigate any potential threat. This practical process enables analysts to understand the malware’s functions, purposes, and potential impact. To achieve this, security teams use malware analysis tools. They assess and evaluate specific malware samples, usually inside a contained environment called a sandbox.(https://www.intezer.com/blog/malware-analysis/the-role-of-malware-analysis-in-cybersecurity/)

Avery Brinkman: Malware analysis is the process of taking malicious software and evaluating it to understand how it works, what it does, and why it was created. This can be done through various methods (static vs dynamic analysis), and is done so that the negative effects of malware can be prevented and mitigated.

Sai Manikant Paditham: The origin or The functionality of a malware sample, such as a virus, are analyzed or investigated. Malicious software, sometimes referred to as malware, is any computer program used to damage system or data from users. Malware includes programs that gather user data without their permission.

Armen Krikorian: Malware analysis is the term for when a program is looked at in order to determine if it is Malware or not and how that malware might work and be used. This can be anything from checking behavior, looking at the code directly, or comparing it to previously known malware. Also their can be an investigation into why or how the malware was transmitted or loaded.

According to VMware: Malware Analysis is the practice of determining and analyzing suspicious files on endpoints and within networks using dynamic analysis, static analysis, or full reverse engineering.

Vaishnavi Maheshuni: The process of identifying and minimizing possible dangers in a website, application, or server is known as malware analysis. It is an essential procedure that guarantees sensitive data protection for a computer's security and privacy. This Process evaluates the behavior and intended use of a questionable file or URL

Harshini Nuvvula: Malware analysis can simply be defined as the process of breaking down the malware into its core components and source code then investigating its characteristics, functionality, origin, and impact to mitigate the threat and prevent future occurrences.

Sourav Goud Gaddam: Malware analysis is a concept or methodology used to analyze malware occurrence and its behavior which will eventually help us to prevent future threats and events of a program. static and dynamic analysis are important methods used in malware analysis.

Aidan Sorensen: Malware analysis is the process of learning how malware functions and any potential repercussions of a given malware. from: Digital Guardian

Aaron Verst: Malware Analysis is the process of studying the origin, purpose, functionality, and potential impact of a malware specimen. This analysis is especially important in the realm of information security and cybersecurity.

Naveen Kumar Jakkula: "Malware" is short for malicious software and is typically used as a catch-all term to refer to any software designed to cause damage to a single computer, server, or computer network, whether it's a virus, spyware, et al. ( Source : Microsoft)

Soundarya Kasarla: Malware analysis examines and studies malware to understand its behavior, capabilities, and potential impacts. This can be done manually, using tools and techniques to reverse engineer and analyze the code, or using automated tools and analysis platforms to identify and classify malware. Malware analysis is an essential part of cybersecurity and incident response, as it helps identify and understand an organization’s threats and develop effective strategies to defend against them. (Source: www.sentinelone.com)

Gayathri Paladugu: Malware analysis is the process of determining the functionality, origin and potential impact of a piece of malicious software. This typically involves reverse engineering the code to understand how it works and identifying any malicious functionality, such as the ability to steal personal information or take control of a system. The goal of malware analysis is to understand the threat and develop ways to defend against it.

Varsha Goli: Malware analysis is the process of identifying the behavior of malware and analyzing the impacts of attacks. It is needed to identify the damages that can be caused and define the compromising indicators.

Nathan Brown: The meaning of "malware analysis" can be derived from the meaning of its two component words. "Malware" is software designed to interfere with a computer's normal functioning 1(https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/malware). And "analysis" is a detailed examination of anything complex in order to understand its nature or to determine its essential features 2(https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/analysis).

Pavan Kumar Madineni: Malware analysis is the process of examining the attributes or behavior of a particular piece of malware often for the purpose of identification, mitigation, or attribution. (Source: www.cisecurity.org)

Alex Robinson: Malware analysis is the process of taking some piece of malware and breaking that malware down to a level where it can be categorized, and its functionality can be understood.

Nikitha Chintala: Malware analysis deals with the study of how malware functions and about the possible outcomes of infection of a given specific malware. It is important for any IT security expert to know that malware can have different types of functions as they are of a type like worms, viruses, spyware, trojan horses, ransomware, etc. Each type of malware is crafted by the attackers to enter into the system through different sources to infect without the consent of the user. (Source: https://www.xcitium.com/blog/malware/what-is-malware-analysis).

Reshma chowdary vemulapalli: Malware analysis is the examination of malicious software to understand how it operates, where it came from, and what harm it can cause. It involves identifying the malware's type, spread, and actions, as well as developing strategies for detecting and eliminating it. The purpose of this analysis is to comprehend the threat and create defenses against it. The analysis can be conducted manually or with the use of specialized software

Shreshta Vardhan Pagidimarry: Dissecting malware to understand its core components and source code, as well as investigating its characteristics, functionality, origin, and impact in order to mitigate the threat and prevent future occurrences. (Source: https://www.spiceworks.com/security/data-security/articles/what-is-malware-analysis-definition-types-stages-best-practices/)

Sarayu Palepu:Malware is a kind of intrusive software that damages and destroys computer systems, servers, host systems, or networks. It is a catch-all term for all types of malicious software that is specifically intended to cause damage or exploit any programmable device, network, or service.

Jaya Bindu Kandi : The term "malware" is short for "malicious software," and it refers to a file or piece of code that can virtually perform any action that an attacker desires, including infecting, exploring, stealing, and conducting operations. The process of comprehending how malware functions and any potential effects is known as malware analysis.It is the process of determining the behavior and purpose of a suspicious file, program, URL, and so on and is designed to cause harm to the host system. This procedure will teach you how malware works and what its intended purpose is.

** Anusha Madishetty ** : Malware is software, an application, or a program that harms a computer. Malware analysis is the process of identifying a virus threat, which leads to improved application security and helps to secure the user's data. Source:(https://www.jigsawacademy.com/blogs/cyber-security/malware-analysis/)]

Venkateswara Rao Bhavana : Malware Analysis is the process where we analyze either a piece of bad code (which in general we call it as virus) i.e behavior and traits of the virus and understanding the effects that are caused due to malware, kind of stealing user information . The goal of this malware analysis is to understand how the malware effects the system and to prevent the spread of malware. Example: Ransomware Key Loggers.

Bala chaitanya Dasari: Malware is anything that is included intentionally into any targeted system which affects systems like data breaches, exploiting data, etc so the analysis of such malicious software and examine how it attacks the system and taking necessary action in order to protect the system from suspicious activities is called Malware Analysis

Mary Spandana Thumma : Understanding a suspicious file's or URL's behavior and intent is the process of malware analysis. The analysis's output assists in identifying and reducing the potential hazard.

Keerthi Muppalaneni: Malware analysis is the process of using tools and procedures to determine the behavior and intent of a suspicious file. The process is designed to detect and mitigate potential threats. This practical method allows analysts to comprehend the malware's functions, goals, and potential impact. Malware analysis tools are used by security teams to accomplish this. They assess and evaluate specific malware samples, typically within a confined environment known as a sandbox.

Sanketh Thatipamula: Malware analysis is the examination of malware ( harmful software intending to perform harmful actions on a system, group of systems or networks), its behavior in a system/network, the extent of its actions and consequences it has and finding solutions to prevent it from harming the system/network.

Jash Gada: Malware Analysis is the practice of determining and analyzing suspicious files on endpoints and within networks using dynamic analysis, static analysis, or full reverse engineering.

Gabe Imes: Malware Analyis is the understanding and defense of malicious attacks that take place in networks and computers while creating solutions to prevent attacks for the future to ensure safety across devices

**Brad Greene: Malware analysis is the ability to detect or discover software that was not written by "the manufacturer", no matter the intent of the malware. The goal would to then be able to prevent more software from being added.

Khoa Do:Malware analysis is the process of understanding how malware functions in order to prevent further malicious activity.