Bachaalany Elias Koret Joxean - The Antivirus Hackers Handbook

The Antivirus Hacker's Handbook

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Joxean Koret has been working for the past +15 years in many different computing areas. He started as a database software developer and DBA, working with a number of different RDBMSs. Afterward he got interested in reverse-engineering and applied this knowledge to the DBs he was working with. He has discovered dozens of vulnerabilities in products from the major database vendors, especially in Oracle software. He also worked in other security areas, such as developing IDA Pro at Hex-Rays or doing malware analysis and anti-malware software development for an antivirus company, knowledge that was applied afterward to reverse-engineer and break over 14 AV products in roughly one year. He is currently a security researcher in Coseinc.

Elias Bachaalany has been a computer programmer, a reverse-engineer, an occasional reverse-engineering trainer, and a technical writer for the past 14 years. Elias has also co-authored the book Practical Reverse Engineering, published by Wiley (ISBN: 978-111-8-78731-1). He has worked with various technologies and programming languages including writing scripts, doing web development, working with database design and programming, writing Windows device drivers and low-level code such as boot loaders or minimal operating systems, writing managed code, assessing software protections, and writing reverse-engineering and desktop security tools. Elias has also presented twice at REcon Montreal (2012 and 2013).

While working for Hex-Rays SA in Belgium, Elias helped improve and add new features to IDA Pro. During that period, he authored various technical blog posts, provided IDA Pro training, developed various debugger plug-ins, amped up IDA Pro's scripting facilities, and contributed to the IDAPython project. Elias currently works at Microsoft.

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I would like to acknowledge Mario Ballano, Ruben Santamarta, and Victor Manual Alvarez, as well as all my friends who helped me write this book, shared their opinions and criticisms, and discussed ideas. I am most thankful to my girlfriend for her understanding and support during the time that I spent on this book. Many thanks to Elias Bachaalany; without his help, this book would not have been possible. Also, special thanks to everyone at Wiley; it has been a great pleasure to work with you on this book. I am grateful for the help and support of Daniel Pistelli, Carol Long, Sydney Argenta, Nicole Hirschman, and Marylouise Wiack.

Welcome to The Antivirus Hacker's Handbook. With this book, you can increase your knowledge about antivirus products and reverse-engineering in general; while the reverse-engineering techniques and tools discussed in this book are applied to antivirus software, they can also be used with any other software products. Security researchers, penetration testers, and other information security professionals can benefit from this book. Antivirus developers will benefit as well because they will learn more about how antivirus products are analyzed, how they can be broken into parts, and how to prevent it from being broken or make it harder to break.

I want to stress that although this book is, naturally, focused on antivirus products, it also contains practical examples that show how to apply reverse-engineering, vulnerability discovery, and exploitation techniques to real-world applications.