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Malware Analysis

Forensic Analysis with Redline and Volatility

Article from ADMIN 21/2014

By David J. Dodd

We show you how to dig deep to find hidden and covert processes, clandestine communications, and signs of misconduct on your network.

In a previous article [1], I described how to obtain a memory image from a Windows computer that would allow forensic analysis. I briefly discussed using F-Response TACTICAL [2] to get the memory image, and then Volatility [3] and Mandiant Redline [4] for further investigation. In this paper, I dive more deeply into Redline and Volatility.

To begin, I review a raw memory dump of a known malware variant (see the "Malware Image" box) with Mandiant Redline. After firing up Redline, I chose By Analyzing a Saved Memory File under Analyze Data and browsed to the location of the memory image. Next, I edited my script to include Strings for both Process Listing and Driver Enumeration. Finally, I chose a destination to store the output for future analysis and to analyze memory dumps.

Malware Image

The malware image I am using in this article is a variant found by the Palo Alto PA-5000 series firewall [5] on a Windows box in our network, which was sent for further investigation to a sandbox that Palo Alto uses for such cases. Moments later, I received email telling me that malware was discovered by Palo Alto WildFire analysis [6].

WildFire identifies unknown malware, zero-day exploits, and advanced persistent threats by executing them directly in a scalable, cloud-based, virtual sandbox environment. The report, which goes into detail about what the malware has done, gave me a link to VirusTotal [7], used to score the executable for maliciousness, along with a

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