MALWARE ANALYSIS AND STATIC CALL GRAPH GENERATION WITH RADARE2

A powerful feature used in automated malware analysis is the static call graph of the executable file. Elimination of sandbox environment, fast scan, function call patterns beyond instruction level information – all of these motivate the prevalence of the feature. Processing and storing the static...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Attila MESTER
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca 2023-07-01
Series:Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai: Series Informatica
Subjects:
Online Access:http://193.231.18.162/index.php/subbinformatica/article/view/6349
_version_ 1797322221740359680
author Attila MESTER
author_facet Attila MESTER
author_sort Attila MESTER
collection DOAJ
description A powerful feature used in automated malware analysis is the static call graph of the executable file. Elimination of sandbox environment, fast scan, function call patterns beyond instruction level information – all of these motivate the prevalence of the feature. Processing and storing the static call graph of malicious samples in a scaled manner facilitates the application of complex network analysis in malware research. IDA Pro is one of the leading disassembler tools in the industry and can generate the call graph via GenCallGdl and GenFuncGdl APIs – a tool which was used in our previous works. In this paper an alternative analysis method is presented using another disassembler tool, Radare2, an open-source Unix-based software, which is also frequently used in this domain. Radare2 has Python support (among other languages), via the r2pipe package, thus enabling full scalability on Linux-based servers using containerized solutions. This paper offers a detailed technical description on how to use Radare2 to generate the static call graph of a PE file and a thorough comparison with the output of IDA Pro, as well as a public dataset on which the experiments were carried out.    
first_indexed 2024-03-08T05:11:04Z
format Article
id doaj.art-53bc4166532845faaf1c15cecde3afa7
institution Directory Open Access Journal
issn 2065-9601
language English
last_indexed 2024-03-08T05:11:04Z
publishDate 2023-07-01
publisher Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
record_format Article
series Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai: Series Informatica
spelling doaj.art-53bc4166532845faaf1c15cecde3afa72024-02-07T10:03:29ZengBabes-Bolyai University, Cluj-NapocaStudia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai: Series Informatica2065-96012023-07-0168110.24193/subbi.2023.1.01MALWARE ANALYSIS AND STATIC CALL GRAPH GENERATION WITH RADARE2 Attila MESTER0Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Email: attila.mester@ubbcluj.ro. A powerful feature used in automated malware analysis is the static call graph of the executable file. Elimination of sandbox environment, fast scan, function call patterns beyond instruction level information – all of these motivate the prevalence of the feature. Processing and storing the static call graph of malicious samples in a scaled manner facilitates the application of complex network analysis in malware research. IDA Pro is one of the leading disassembler tools in the industry and can generate the call graph via GenCallGdl and GenFuncGdl APIs – a tool which was used in our previous works. In this paper an alternative analysis method is presented using another disassembler tool, Radare2, an open-source Unix-based software, which is also frequently used in this domain. Radare2 has Python support (among other languages), via the r2pipe package, thus enabling full scalability on Linux-based servers using containerized solutions. This paper offers a detailed technical description on how to use Radare2 to generate the static call graph of a PE file and a thorough comparison with the output of IDA Pro, as well as a public dataset on which the experiments were carried out.     http://193.231.18.162/index.php/subbinformatica/article/view/6349malware analysis, static call graph, radare2, IDA Pro. 1https://www.av-test.org.
spellingShingle Attila MESTER
MALWARE ANALYSIS AND STATIC CALL GRAPH GENERATION WITH RADARE2
Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai: Series Informatica
malware analysis, static call graph, radare2, IDA Pro. 1https://www.av-test.org.
title MALWARE ANALYSIS AND STATIC CALL GRAPH GENERATION WITH RADARE2
title_full MALWARE ANALYSIS AND STATIC CALL GRAPH GENERATION WITH RADARE2
title_fullStr MALWARE ANALYSIS AND STATIC CALL GRAPH GENERATION WITH RADARE2
title_full_unstemmed MALWARE ANALYSIS AND STATIC CALL GRAPH GENERATION WITH RADARE2
title_short MALWARE ANALYSIS AND STATIC CALL GRAPH GENERATION WITH RADARE2
title_sort malware analysis and static call graph generation with radare2
topic malware analysis, static call graph, radare2, IDA Pro. 1https://www.av-test.org.
url http://193.231.18.162/index.php/subbinformatica/article/view/6349
work_keys_str_mv AT attilamester malwareanalysisandstaticcallgraphgenerationwithradare2