Comprehensive Collection of Malware Analysis and Development Books Released for Security Researchers
A curated selection of books on malware analysis and development has been assembled, covering techniques for both creating and defending against malicious software across Windows, macOS, and Android platforms.
The collection begins with MalDev Academy Complete, a modular course on Windows malware development and offensive security. It guides readers from foundational topics such as C programming, Windows internals, and WinAPI to advanced subjects including PE files, memory manipulation, payload encryption, obfuscation, process injection, APC injection, and shellcode execution.
Its companion, MalDev Academy Extended Modules, expands on the core curriculum with specialized modules on Rust implementations, enhanced evasion tactics, and practical exercises designed to test deeper understanding of malware techniques.
The Art of Mac Malware by Patrick Wardle offers a practical guide to analyzing macOS threats. It covers infection vectors, persistence mechanisms, Mach-O binary analysis, dynamic debugging, and anti-analysis bypasses, concluding with a detailed case study of the EvilQuest malware.
The second volume focuses on building heuristic detection systems for macOS using Endpoint Security frameworks and code signing analysis to reduce false positives.
The Android Malware Handbook examines Android threats through static and dynamic analysis, feature extraction, and machine learning models for classifying banking trojans, ransomware, and spyware.
Classic references include Malware Analyst’s Cookbook, which provides recipes for classification, unpacking, memory forensics with Volatility, and rootkit detection, as well as Practical Malware Analysis, a foundational text on setting up isolated labs, using IDA Pro and WinDbg, and defeating packers and anti-debugging tricks.
The roundup concludes with Evasive Malware by Kyle Cucci, a field guide dedicated to analyzing samples that deliberately evade sandboxes, disassemblers, and forensic tools through context awareness and anti-forensics methods.
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