Featured resource
pluralsight AI Skills Report 2025
AI Skills Report

As AI adoption accelerates, teams risk of falling behind. Discover the biggest skill gaps and identify tools you need to know now.

Learn more
  • Labs icon Lab
  • Security
Google Cloud Platform icon
Labs

Monitoring and Detection: File Analysis

In this lab, you’ll practice hunting malware with YARA and HollowsHunter (PE-Sieve). When you’re finished, you’ll have experience using open-source tooling to identify malware on disk with YARA and extract in-memory payloads with HollowsHunter. You’ll also briefly use CAPA, SpeakEasy and Floss in an automated solution to quickly grab new signatures.

Google Cloud Platform icon
Labs

Path Info

Rating
(17 reviews)
Level
Clock icon Beginner
Duration
Clock icon 1h 0m
Published
Clock icon Nov 15, 2024

Contact sales

By filling out this form and clicking submit, you acknowledge our privacy policy.

Table of Contents

  1. Challenge

    Getting Started in the Lab Environment

    Here are the initial instructions and explanation of the lab environment. Read this while your environment is busy creating itself from nothing. Yes, this violates physics; we know. How fun!

  2. Challenge

    Byte scanning with YARA - The Hunt For BloodMoon

    This challenge will discuss how YARA rules can be used to identify malware and how they are created. We will go over what makes a good rule and how to identify false positives. Finally, we will use some custom YARA rules to scan the filesystem for malware and upload the file to Sandblast for analysis.

  3. Challenge

    Shellcode Extraction with HollowsHunter - BloodMoon Stage2

    This challenge will focus on explaining in-memory malware and how we can extract it using tools like HollowsHunter, powered by PE-Sieve. We will run HollowsHunter against the system and see if we can identify the next stage of the malware.

  4. Challenge

    The Last Challenge

    Welcome to the final challenge! This is your last chance to experiment in the environment. Clicking Finish Lab will end this little world that flittered into existence just for you.

Aaron Diaz has worked primarily as a government contractor working with different branches of the military and government agencies. Aaron has worked as a Threat Hunter, Malware Reverse Engineer, Software Developer, and a Penetration tester. He is passionate about reverse engineering software and all things related to offensive security (malware/exploit development). During his tenure on a Threat Hunting team, he became the lead Malware Reverse Engineer. This sparked a love for understanding how APTs develop their malware and the creativity of their designs. Currently, Aaron is a penetration tester working with a small team specializing in reverse engineering and exploit development. Aaron is the founder and CEO of Elusive Threat Research, specializing in offensive and defensive research for sophisticated threats.

What's a lab?

Hands-on Labs are real environments created by industry experts to help you learn. These environments help you gain knowledge and experience, practice without compromising your system, test without risk, destroy without fear, and let you learn from your mistakes. Hands-on Labs: practice your skills before delivering in the real world.

Provided environment for hands-on practice

We will provide the credentials and environment necessary for you to practice right within your browser.

Guided walkthrough

Follow along with the author’s guided walkthrough and build something new in your provided environment!

Did you know?

On average, you retain 75% more of your learning if you get time for practice.