SoK: Use of Cryptography in Malware Obfuscation

ePrint Report: SoK: Use of Cryptography in Malware Obfuscation

Hassan Asghar, Benjamin Zi Hao Zhao, Muhammad Ikram, Giang Nguyen, Dali Kaafar, Sean Lamont, Daniel Coscia

We look at the use of cryptography to obfuscate malware. Most surveys on malware obfuscation only discuss simple encryption techniques (e.g., XOR encryption), which are easy to defeat (in principle), since the decryption algorithm and the key is shipped within the program. This SoK proposes a principled definition of malware obfuscation, and categorises instances of …

cryptography eprint report malware obfuscation