Art of Computer Virus Research and Defense, The

Chapter 7. Advanced Code Evolution Techniques and Computer Virus Generator Kits

“ In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.”

—John von Neumann

In this chapter you will learn about the advanced self-protection techniques computer virus writers have developed over the years to fight back against scanners. In particular, you will learn about encrypted, oligomorphic, polymorphic¹, and advanced metamorphic computer viruses². Finally, we will look at computer virus generator kits³ that use similar techniques to create different-looking virus variants.

7.1 Introduction

We will examine the various ways in which virus writers have challenged our scanning products over the last decade. Although most of these techniques ...