A forensic investigator encounters a suspicious executable on a compromised system, believed to be packed using a known program packer, and is password-protected. The investigator has knowledge of the tool used for packing and has the corresponding unpacking tool. What should be the next best course of action to examine the executable?
When a forensic investigator encounters a password-protected executable that is packed using a known program packer, the best next course of action is to decrypt the password to unpack the executable before analyzing it. This allows the investigator to access the original content of the executable safely and effectively using the unpacking tool at their disposal. Dynamic analysis without unpacking could miss hidden malicious behaviors that only become visible after unpacking. Reverse engineering without unpacking may also be unnecessarily complex and potentially error-prone.
C > The packers compress the files using various algorithms. Hence, unless the investigators know the tool that has been used to pack the file and have a tool to unpack it, they will not be able to access it. Program packers that are password-protected can pose a challenge during investigation as investigators need to first decrypt the password to unpack the file.
In case of executable files, these programs carry unpackers built into them as well, which unpack the file when user tries to run it and installs the executable on the host system. Some of the widely used packers are UPX, PECompact, BurnEye, Exe Stealth Packer, Smart Packer Pro, etc. Investigators can dynamically analyze these packed executables by running them in a controlled environment and observing their behavior
best course of action to examine the executable is dynamic analysis.
Same question as earlier