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How You Can Start Learning Malware Analysis with Cukoo

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About Cuckoo

Cuckoo Sandbox is the leading open source automated malware analysis system. You can throw any suspicious file at it and in a matter of minutes Cuckoo will provide a detailed report outlining the behavior of the file when executed inside a realistic but isolated environment.

Malware is the swiss-army knife of cybercriminals and any other adversary to your corporation or organization. In these evolving times, detecting and removing malware artifacts is not enough: it’s vitally important to understand how they operate in order to understand the context, the motivations, and the goals of a breach.Cuckoo Sandbox is free software that automated the task of analyzing any malicious file under Windows, OS X, Linux, and Android.

use of cuckoo

Some of the reasons to have the sandbox internal to your organization is because it would provide quick and definitive feedback on questionable files and URLs. For instance, an employee receives a phishing email with an attached document. Submit the document to Cuckoo and it will open the document and record everything about the system during this time. If the document attempts to create a new process, dump a file, edit the registry, or download more malware; all subsequent actions will be recorded. However, if it is just a normal document there will be no need to spend the time and money to either investigate internally or send the document to have it analyzed.

The VM image can also be controlled. Most organizations build PCs based on a template. This template can be converted to a VM drive and used as the basis for the Cuckoo analysis. This would provide accurate results of how a piece of malware would act in YOUR environment.

The host system does not need to be an enterprise server with massive amounts of RAM and disk space. If the system is capable of running a single VM it can run Cuckoo. The more powerful the host system the faster the VM can be spun up and taken down but that extra PC in the corner that nobody is using is perfect for running a malware sample now and again.

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The DFLabs and Cuckoo Solution

DFLabs IncMan SOAR’s integration with Cuckoo Sandbox allows users to automate the dynamic analysis of malicious and unknown files, providing critical information during the incident response process.

Using Cuckoo Sandbox’s open source and highly customizable dynamic malware analysis capabilities, organizations can automate the advanced analysis of malicious and unknown files as part of the automated and orchestrated response to a potential security incident. Cuckoo Sandbox provides critical insights in to the capabilities of a file, providing the basis for additional automated and manual decisions on the appropriate response to an incident.

what can it do?

Cuckoo Sandbox is an advanced, extremely modular, and 100% open source automated malware analysis system with infinite application opportunities. By default it is able to:
  • Analyze many different malicious files (executables, office documents, pdf files, emails, etc) as well as malicious websites under Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android virtualized environments.
  • Trace API calls and general behavior of the file and distill this into high level information and signatures comprehensible by anyone.
  • Dump and analyze network traffic, even when encrypted with SSL/TLS. With native network routing support to drop all traffic or route it through InetSIM, a network interface, or a VPN.
  • Perform advanced memory analysis of the infected virtualized system through Volatility as well as on a process memory granularity using YARA.
Due to Cuckoo’s open source nature and extensive modular design one may customize any aspect of the analysis environment, analysis results processing, and reporting stage. Cuckoo provides you all the requirements to easily integrate the sandbox into your existing framework and backend in the way you want, with the format you want, and all of that without licensing requirements.
When using  Cuckoo as an automated malware analysis tool, it is expected to reduce the amount of time analyzing a malware in a conventional way. There are some steps in dynamic malware analysis that require a lot of time; one of the instances are while we’re setting up a virtualized environment for a malware to run. The process may seem easy, but if we have several malware to analyze, it will be pretty time-consuming.
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