A Survey on Virtual Machines for Malware Analysis
Abstract
Virtualisation and emulation technologies are increasingly used for malware analysis. However this is not what they were developed for and as a result, new problems arise. This presentation will introduce the different kinds of virtualisation technologies, the problem they try to solve for malware analysts (real-time behavior monitoring) and the currently emerging problems (virtual machine detection and logic bombs). The conclusion of this survey is that perfect monitoring and undetectability are reachable goals for virtual machines, but the detection of logic bombs is intractable. As a result, virtual machines are a handy tool for malware analysts but undetectable real-time monitoring techniques should be developed instead.