Introduction
Threat Actors and malware developers need to protect their intellectual property just as much as benign software vendors. Every Cybersecurity professional who worked with malware samples will also know, that such a protection employed helps adversaries morph/mutate how their malicious artifacts look & feel under the hood, eventually evading signatured detection.
Executable protectors, obfuscators, encoders, packers/compressors, virtualizers – are all specialized software attempting to manipulate input artifacts, producing output with often altered code layout and contents. Sometimes for file size reduction purposes, other time to fend off reverse engineers aiming to disclose their technology & implementation details.
Continue reading