Art of Computer Virus Research and Defense, The

Chapter 2. The Fascination of Malicious Code Analysis

“ The Lion looked at Alice wearily. 'Are you animal—or vegetable—or mineral?' he said, yawning at every other word.”

—Lewis Carroll (1832–1898), Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871).

For people who are interested in nature, it is difficult to find a subject more fascinating than computer viruses. Computer virus analysis can be extremely difficult for most people at first glance. However, the difficulty depends on the actual virus code in question. Binary forms of viruses, those compiled to object code, must be reverse-engineered to understand them in detail. This process can be challenging for an individual, but it provides a great deal of knowledge about computer ...