Knowledge of programming languages such as C and Python would be helpful (especially to understand the concepts covered in chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9). If you have written a few lines of code and have a basic understanding of programming concepts, you’ll be able to get the most out of this book.

If you have no programming knowledge, you will still be able to get the basic malware analysis concepts covered in chapters 1, 2, and 3. However, you may find it slightly difficult to understand the concepts covered in the rest of the chapters. To get you to speed, sufficient information and additional resources are provided in each chapter. You may need to do some additional reading to fully understand the concepts.

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/LearningMalwareAnalysis_ColorImages.pdf.

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: used for code examples, folder names, filenames, registry key and values, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, function names, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "Mount the downloaded WebStorm-10*.dmg disk image file as another disk in your system."

Any command-line input is highlighted in bold, and the example is as follows:

$ sudo inetsim
INetSim 1.2.6 (2016-08-29) by Matthias Eckert & Thomas Hungenberg
Using log directory: /var/log/inetsim/
Using data directory: /var/lib/inetsim/

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of code or output, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

$ python vol.py -f tdl3.vmem --profile=WinXPSP3x86 ldrmodules -p 880
Volatility Foundation Volatility Framework 2.6
Pid Process Base InLoad InInit InMem MappedPath
--- ----------- -------- ----- ------- ----- ----------------------------
880 svchost.exe 0x10000000 False False False \WINDOWS\system32\TDSSoiqh.dll
880 svchost.exe 0x01000000 True False True \WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe
880 svchost.exe 0x76d30000 True True True \WINDOWS\system32\wmi.dll
880 svchost.exe 0x76f60000 True True True \WINDOWS\system32\wldap32.dll

Italics:  Used for a new term, an important word, or words, malware name, and keyboard combinations. Here is an example: press Ctrl + C to copy

Screen Text: Words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: Select System info from the Administration panel.