Certified Malware Analyst – Advanced Practical Malware Analysis with Exploit Kits

Certified Malware Analyst: In 2024, sophisticated Cyber attacks will continue to increase, driven by APT threats that target most enterprise-level networks and individuals.

Certified malware analyst courses are designed to equip individuals with the skills necessary to analyze, understand, and mitigate malware threats effectively. These courses cover a range of topics, from basic introductions to malware analysis to advanced reverse engineering techniques.

Preventing Enterprise networks from advanced-level threats is a challenging task for malware analysts and threat researchers to break down the complete malware samples.

There is a huge skill gap in approaching, analyzing, and breaking down the advanced malware attacks from APT hackers around the globe.

To develop a skilled malware analyst, incident responders, and threat researchers, Ethical Hackers Academy experts have spent hundreds of hours to designing the best Advanced malware analysis training course with certification that focuses on Reverse Engineering, exploits development, researching advanced level threats with hand on malware analysis tools and techniques.

Analyzing malware, Exploit Development, and Reverse Engineering is a deep approach to modern threat attacks and figuring out the vulnerabilities that skilled security professionals and hackers frequently exploit.

Analyzing sophisticated malware is always a complex process. Ethical Hackers Academy spent plenty of time developing this course to easily understand the infection of sophisticated Malware such as Trojan, viruses, rootkits, ransomware, spyware, adware, and most recently, malware families from APT hackers groups and break down its infection vectors.

Certified Malware Analyst Course Syllabus Module

The certified Malware Analyst Course is is split into 5 different modules to ensure the students will learn every module in-depth with the dedicated malware analysis lab environment.

You will get all these module access and the instructor will guide you to setup your own lab environment in your machine.

Creating a comprehensive malware analysis training syllabus requires a balanced approach that introduces foundational concepts, offers hands-on experience, and covers advanced topics for experienced analysts. The syllabus below integrates best practices and key learnings from established programs like SANS Institute’s FOR610 course, Group-IB’s training, and guidance from experts such as Lenny Zeltser. This curriculum is designed to equip students with the skills to analyze, understand, and mitigate malware threats effectively.

Syllabus

Module 1: Introduction to Malware Analysis

• Overview of Malware Types (Viruses, Worms, Trojans, Ransomware)
• The Malware Analysis Process and Its Importance
• Setting Up a Safe and Isolated Analysis Environment (Lab)

Module 2: Basic Analysis Techniques

• Static Analysis: Examining Malware Without Execution
• File Fingerprinting, Hashing, and Recognizing File Types
• Static Properties Analysis: Strings, Binary Inspection
• Dynamic Analysis: Observing Malware in Action
• System and Network Monitoring Tools
• Behavior Analysis in a Controlled Environment

Module 3: Advanced Play-by-play Techniques

• Reverse Engineering Fundamentals
• Introduction to Disassemblers and Debuggers
• Basic Assembly Language for Malware Analysis
• Dealing with Obfuscated and Packed Malware
• Unpacking Techniques
• Analyzing Obfuscated Scripts (JavaScript, PowerShell)

Module 4: Analyzing Document and Web-based Malware

• Malicious Document Files: PDFs, Office Documents
• Malware in Web Scripts and Exploit Kits
• Hands-on Analysis of Real-world Samples

Module 5: Automation and Tools for Malware Analysis

• Automated Malware Analysis Tools and Sandboxes
• Building Custom Analysis Tools with Python
• Utilizing Public Malware Databases and Repositories

Module 6: Practical Malware Analysis Projects

• Real-World Malware Samples Analysis
• Capture-The-Flag (CTF) Challenges
• Malware Analysis Reporting and Presentation

Module 7: Advanced Topics in Malware Analysis

• Analysis of Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) Malware
• Malware Evasion Techniques and Countermeasures
• “Fileless” Malware and In-memory Exploits

Module 8: Career Paths and Further Learning

• Roles and Responsibilities of a Malware Analyst
• Staying Updated with the Latest Malware Trends and Tools
• Further Certifications and Courses for Advancement

Additional Resources

• A list of essential tools for each stage of analysis, including both free and commercial options.
• Access to a repository of malware samples for practice, with detailed instructions for safe handling and analysis.
• Forums and communities for sharing insights, asking questions, and staying connected with other malware analysts.

This syllabus is structured to progressively build knowledge and skills, starting from basic concepts and tools, moving through hands-on analysis of increasingly complex malware, and culminating in advanced topics and career guidance. It’s adaptable for both academic settings and professional development programs, ensuring that participants are well-prepared to tackle the challenges of modern malware analysis.

Certified Malware Analyst – What will you Learn?

1. Expert Level Malware analysis skills to Break down the most advanced malware.
2. Learn to implement complete prevention measures against sophisticated threat attacks.
3. Learn both Static and dynamic malware analysis with in-depth training.
4. Analyze and reverse-engineer the complete malware samples with advanced malware analysis tools and techniques.
5. Establish techniques to collect samples from different sources that help to start profiling malicious threat actors.
6. Learn about Cyber Kill Chain & APT Lifecycle and the most sophisticated techniques hackers use to develop the malware.
7. Learn the Malware analysis and reverse engineering tools such as obj dump, OllyDbg, IDA Pro , Immunity Debugger, Wireshark, Yara Cuckoo Sandbox, PDF Examiner, and more.
8. Ability to detect the malware using various approaches such as Signature-Based, Heuristic Analysis, rule-based, Behavioral Blocking, and sandbox.
9. Recognize the Exploit vectors, Exploit Obfuscation, understand the target communication, analyzing and reversing the malware with debugging tools.
10. Developing the exploits for the vulnerabilities that affect all the cross-platform operating systems and related web and network-based applications.

The Certified Malware analyst course with the malware analysis phase contains the following training modules.

• Static Malware Analysis
• Dynamic Malware Analysis
• Memory Forensics
• Malware Detection
• Web Domain Analysis
• Network interactions Analysis
• Debugging & Debugger
• Analyze malicious URL’s
• Sandboxes Technique

In Threat Research Phases (1, 2), You will learn the various advanced cyber threats and the APT hackers’ activities, infection vectors, Hunting, Extracting the Threat Feature, analyzing the behavior, Tracking the threat, taking down the attacker’s infrastructure.

Exploit Development Phase techs the skills that required to analyze the vulnerabilities and develop the tools, analyze the bugs, and write complex and relevant exploits against the modern operating system and software.

The reverse Engineering phase will cover complete reversing operations against Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android-based apps. also, you will learn about the complete insight of figure out the vulnerabilities that reside in the Applications and Operating system.

The Advanced Malware analysis Phase will train you to develop simple and effective Exploitation tools and exploring the vulnerabilities and the module of the exploitation that triggers the bug and bypass the target applications.

EHA covered various Topics, including Developing browser exploits, shellcode, Buffer overflow exploits, and windows, Linux, and Android-based exploits against recently patched vulnerabilities with the deep training approach even for Students with a limited programming background and experience.

John Michel, An Malware analysis and reverse engineering Expert Instructor from Ethical Hackers Academy, have to lead the course with the following Deep insights to train students from Very Basic to Advanced level.

Course Duration & Access

Who This Course is For:

How to Get This Course

• Ethical Hackers Academy assists you with the Simple way to enroll in the course. Please check here for How to enroll?.
• Once you complete enrollment, the course access dashboard credentials will be sent to the registered email ID within 5 minutes.
• You will also get lifetime access, so you no need to worry about the time frame. You can free to access the enrolled course anytime.
• Once you complete the course, You will get the certificate within 24 hours via email.