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Simple Malware Obfuscation Techniques

What is malware?

Malware stands for malicious software and software, in simple language, means some program written in any programming language. So if a malicious program is intentionally written to cause damage to any computer or server or gain unauthorized access to any system, it is called malware.

Malware is a generic term used to define a variety of malicious programs and can take various forms. These terms include virus, Trojan horse, worms, adware, spyware, ransomware and so on.

What is obfuscation? 

Obfuscation is the most commonly used technique to conceal the original code written by the programmer, rendering the executable code difficult to read and hard to understand while maintaining the functionality of the written code. Nearly every piece of malware uses obfuscation in some or the other way.

Why obfuscation?

Usually, every computer or server has some software installed on it to detect and prevent malicious programs from being executed onto the local machine. This software can be present in various forms like antivirus, Windows Defender, ad blockers and so on, which detect this malware and stop it at the perimeter.

Malware analysts can also analyze the malware and identify important information like strings and the URL with which the malware is communicating and implement necessary measures to prevent the malware from being executed. Thus, most of the malware is obfuscated by default.

Malware obfuscation techniques

There are many obfuscation techniques being used by malware writers. Some of them are basic, while others are advanced.

Let’s have a look at some of the basic malware techniques widely being used.

Exclusive OR (XOR)

XOR is the most commonly used technique for obfuscating any malware. Also, it is very simple to implement and can easily hide the malicious payload from getting detected. 

XOR is a binary operation. It (Read more...)