Unveiling Common Cryptography in Malware

Malware uses sophisticated cryptography to secure its communication and protect its payload. How can we use cryptography to hide malware settings and configurations? How can we use cryptography to hide a payload? Let’s try to answer these questions and cover some practical examples to aid with our understanding. This chapter will explore the most commonly used cryptographic techniques in malware.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following main topics:

• Overview of common cryptographic techniques in malware
• Cryptography for secure communication
• Payload protection – cryptography for obfuscation