Deobfuscation and Anti-Analysis Tricks
Identify and bypass string obfuscation, control flow flattening, anti-debugging, and packing.
Why Malware Obfuscates
Malware authors obfuscate code to defeat: static AV signature detection, reverse engineering by analysts, and sandbox detection. Deobfuscation is the process of restoring readable code from obfuscated form.
String Obfuscation
Malware rarely stores C2 URLs or API names in plaintext. Common techniques:
- XOR encoding:
key ^ charfor each byte - Base64 encoding
- Stack strings: strings constructed character by character at runtime
- Custom encryption with a hardcoded key
All lessons in this course
- Ghidra: Navigating and Annotating Binaries
- x86/x64 Assembly Essentials for Reversers
- Dynamic Analysis with GDB and pwndbg
- Deobfuscation and Anti-Analysis Tricks