Discovering Designer Intent through Dynamic Analysis of Malware

Associate Professor Michel Cukier (ME/ISR) has been given a two-year, $150K NSF Trustworthy Computing grant, Discovering Designer Intent through Dynamic Analysis of Malware. The research addresses the problem of identifying and providing source code-based understanding of obfuscated malcode plaguing the Internet. Obfuscated malcode presents a clear and present danger to today's society in terms of individual privacy, security as well as to the Internet's overall trustworthiness. Attackers continue to use obfuscation to successfully defeat attempts by defenders to prevent infection or spread of the malcode. The goal of the research will be to develop dynamic binary analysis processes for Internet worm executables.