For Reverse Engineers and Malware Analysts
Abstract
Code obfuscation has become one of the most prevalent mechanisms aiming to complicate the process of software reverse engineering. It plays a major role on a wide range of domains: from malware threats to protection of intellectual property and digital rights management.
“An Analytical approach to Modern Binary Deobfuscation” is a curated training that provides an intensive jump-start into the field of code (de)obfuscation. Over the course of this training, students will receive a comprehensive introduction to the most relevant software obfuscation mechanisms as well as existing deobfuscation techniques to analyze, confront and defeat obfuscated code.
Key learning objectives
- Obtain a high-level overview of the context and scenarios where code obfuscation is used
- Gain an in-depth understanding of code obfuscation mechanisms
- Build obfuscated code, both from scratch and through available tooling
- Develop an understanding of the main code deobfuscation techniques
- Learn tooling for analyzing obfuscated code and apply deobfuscation techniques
- Become familiar with state of the art (de)obfuscation research literature
Contents
Day 1
INTRODUCTION, CONTEXT AND MOTIVATION
DATA-FLOW BASED OBFUSCATION
- Constant unfolding
- Dead code insertion
- Encodings
- Pattern-based obfuscation
CONTROL-FLOW BASED OBFUSCATION
- Function inlining/outlining
- Opaque predicates
- Control-flow flattening
MIXING DATA-FLOW AND CONTROL-FLOW OBFUSCATION
- VM-based obfuscation
- Hardening VM-based obfuscation
EXERCISES PROJECT: Manually craft a custom obfuscation VM
Day 2
SMT-BASED ANALYSIS
- A primer on SMT solvers
- Translate code conditions into SMT solver constraints
- Program analysis with SMT solvers
MIXED BOOLEAN-ARITHMETIC
- Preliminary concepts
- MBA rewriting
- Insertion of identities
- Opaque constants
EXERCISES PROJECT: Applied MBA to obfuscate the semantics of VM-handlers
Day 3
SYMBOLIC EXECUTION
- Reasoning about code in a symbolic way
- Working with native code
- Working with intermediate representations
- Data-flow analysis and compiler optimizations
- Extract symbolic formulas
- Extract path constraints
- Plugging an SMT solver
- Attacking obfuscation schemes
GUIDED PROJECT: Build your own (toy) symbolic execution engine
EXERCISES PROJECT: Attack obfuscated VM and explore symbolic execution limits
Day 4
PROGRAM SYNTHESIS
- Code syntax VS Code semantics
- Specifying program behavior
- Oracle-based program synthesis
- Describing semantics through I/O behavior
- Generating I/O pairs
- Different synthesis flavors
- Practical considerations
- Attacking obfuscation schemes
CONCLUSIONS AND RESEARCH DIRECTIONS
GUIDED PROJECT: Build your own code semantics synthesizer
EXERCISES PROJECT: Recover the semantics of MBA-obfuscated VM-handlers
Tools used
- Disassemblers
- IDA Free/Home/Pro
- Ghidra
- radare2
- Obfuscation
- Manual obfuscation
- O-LLVM
- Tigress
- Symbolic execution
- Miasm
- Triton
- Program synthesis
- Syntia
- Msynth
- Custom tooling
- Other tools
- Z3
- Custom tooling
Teaching methodology
Live classes are designed to be dynamic and engaging, making the students get the most out of the training materials and instructor expertise. A clear presentation of the concepts, accompanied by illustrative examples and demos. For each section, there will be practice time allocated. The students will be provided with several exercises to work on, with the continuous support of the instructor.
Who should attend
Reverse engineers, malware analysts and folks within the anti-cheating and software protection industry. It can also be really beneficial for bug hunters, vulnerability researchers, exploit developers and enthusiast security researchers in general.
Prerequisites
- Understanding of basic programming concepts
- Familiarity with x86 assembly, C and Python
- Knowledge of reverse engineering fundamentals
System requirements
- A working desktop/laptop capable of running x86-64 virtual machines
- 40 GB free hard disk space
Students will be provided with
- A Virtual Machine with all tools, examples and exercises
- Access to a private chat with instructor and other students