The number of cyber attacks is undoubtedly on the rise, targeting government, military, public and private sectors. These cyber attacks focus on targeting individuals or organizations with an effort to extract valuable information. Sometimes, these cyber attacks are allegedly linked to cybercrime or state-sponsored groups, but may also be carried out by individual groups to achieve their goals. Most of these cyber attacks use malicious software (also called malware) to infect their targets. Knowledge, skills, and tools required to analyze malicious software are essential to detect, investigate and defend against such attacks.

In this chapter, you will learn the following topics:

• What malware means and its role in the cyber-attacks
• Malware analysis and its significance in digital forensics
• Different types of malware analysis
• Setting up the lab environment
• Various sources to obtain malware samples