Unpacking the Endgame: Strategies for Quick Dumping Final Stage Malware — Part 1

Hello there! I hope you’re having a good day. In this article, I’d like to share my experience with unpacking malware (or what some people call dumping malware). Nowadays, we know that malware employs various tricks to evade detection, including the use of packers or loaders. As a result, identifying the malware family solely through static analysis of the initial stage can be challenging. Therefore, I will outline several methods of dynamic analysis, ranging from basic to advanced, for extracting payloads. The advanced level which means it needs more manual operations.

Part 1 will introduce dynamic analysis using tools, and the following parts will delve into more advanced manual operations, including how to use a debugger.

Dynamic analysis

The first method is to directly execute malware samples in a virtual environment. Let malware unpack itself and run in the memory. Many great tools can help us dump the final payloads, for example, Hollows Hunter and Process Hacker.

[Hollows Hunter]

First of all, It would be great to share a great tool, which is Hollows Hunter[1], developed by Hasherezade. I have to say that Hasherezade is a brilliant Software Engineer and Malware Analyst. She developed so many awesome tools, such as PE-Bear, PE-sieve, and pe_unmapper. Hasherezade has put a lot of effort into the research of unpacking malware, I recommend you guys…