Academic Journal

Multi-path exploration guided by taint and probability against evasive malware

التفاصيل البيبلوغرافية
العنوان: Multi-path exploration guided by taint and probability against evasive malware
المؤلفون: Xu Fangzhou, Zhang Wang, Qiang Weizhong, Jin Hai
المصدر: Security and Safety, Vol 2, p 2023023 (2023)
بيانات النشر: EDP Sciences, 2023.
سنة النشر: 2023
المجموعة: LCC:Electronic computers. Computer science
مصطلحات موضوعية: malware analysis, dynamic binary instrumentation, forced execution, taint analysis, evasion detection, Electronic computers. Computer science, QA75.5-76.95
الوصف: Static analysis is often impeded by malware obfuscation techniques, such as encryption and packing, whereas dynamic analysis tends to be more resistant to obfuscation by leveraging concrete execution information. Unfortunately, malware can employ evasive techniques to detect the analysis environment and alter its behavior accordingly. While known evasive techniques can be explicitly dismantled, the challenge lies in generically dismantling evasions without full knowledge of their conditions or implementations, such as logic bombs that rely on uncertain conditions, let alone unsupported evasive techniques, which contain evasions without corresponding dismantling strategies and those leveraging unknown implementations. In this paper, we present Antitoxin, a prototype for automatically exploring evasive malware. Antitoxin utilizes multi-path exploration guided by taint analysis and probability calculations to effectively dismantle evasive techniques. The probabilities of branch execution are derived from dynamic coverage, while taint analysis helps identify paths associated with evasive techniques that rely on uncertain conditions. Subsequently, Antitoxin prioritizes branches with lower execution probabilities and those influenced by taint analysis for multi-path exploration. This is achieved through forced execution, which forcefully sets the outcomes of branches on selected paths. Additionally, Antitoxin employs active anti-evasion countermeasures to dismantle known evasive techniques, thereby reducing exploration overhead. Furthermore, Antitoxin provides valuable insights into sensitive behaviors, facilitating deeper manual analysis. Our experiments on a set of highly evasive samples demonstrate that Antitoxin can effectively dismantle evasive techniques in a generic manner. The probability calculations guide the multi-path exploration of evasions without requiring prior knowledge of their conditions or implementations, enabling the dismantling of unsupported techniques such as C2 and significantly improving efficiency compared to linear exploration when dealing with complex control flows. Additionally, taint analysis can accurately identify branches related to logic bombs, facilitating preferential exploration.
نوع الوثيقة: article
وصف الملف: electronic resource
اللغة: English
تدمد: 2826-1275
Relation: https://sands.edpsciences.org/articles/sands/full_html/2023/01/sands20230021/sands20230021.html; https://doaj.org/toc/2826-1275
DOI: 10.1051/sands/2023023
URL الوصول: https://doaj.org/article/35bd8c02430a4bbeb0d0b2d0c2573652
رقم الانضمام: edsdoj.35bd8c02430a4bbeb0d0b2d0c2573652
قاعدة البيانات: Directory of Open Access Journals
الوصف
تدمد:28261275
DOI:10.1051/sands/2023023