The majority of threat actors buy and use commodity malware. To tailor this malicious software to their needs, they use malware configuration settings that dictate how it behaves. Parsing this data is an essential skill for any threat hunter or detection engineer.

Malware configuration parsing allows you to correlate intrusions, track campaigns, enrich threat hunts, improve incident response, and write better detection rules. It is a skill often overlooked due to its technical requirements, but with malware configuration parsing tools, you can add this game-changing anal skill to your arsenal.

This article will show you how. You will learn why malware configuration parsing is vital for defenders, the different parsing options available, and the challenges you will face. You will also see a practical example of how to parse PowerShell malware. Let’s jump in and get started!

There are around 5.5 billion malware (malicious software) attacks every year. It is used to gain initial access, move around networks, automatically exploit vulnerabilities, ransom victims, and exfiltrate data. Malware automates a human operator’s actions, making it more efficient, scalable, and less error-prone.

However, to be effective, malware needs to meet specific user needs. It needs to be able to exfiltrate data to a certain network address, install a persistence mechanism in a certain location, or only target certain victims. Malware authors must allow users to fine-tune the commodity malware they sell, which is where malware configuration comes in.

Like any other software, malware can be configured to behave, function, or interact in a certain way using parameters, settings, or a set of rules. You can instruct the malware to communicate with a specific IP address on a specific port at a specific time once it has infected a system without having to build your own custom malware (a resource-intensive process).

Here are some main reasons threat actors will configure the malware they use:

• Adapt to changing circumstances, evade detection, or update its capabilities in response to security measures. This can even be…