Authors: Christian Seifert (Victoria University of Wellington), Ramon Steenson (Victoria University of Wellington), Ian Welch (Victoria University of Wellington), Peter Komisarczuk (Victoria University of Wellington), and Barbara Endicott-Popovsky (University of Washington)
DFRWS USA 2007
Abstract
In this paper, we present Capture, a tool for behavioral analysis of applications for the Win32 operating system family. Capture is able to monitor the state of a system during the execution of applications and processing of documents, which provides the analyst with insights on how the software operates even if no source code is available. Capture differs from existing behavioral analysis tools in its ability to monitor state changes on a low kernel level and its ability to be easily used across operating systems, various versions and configurations. Capture provides a powerful mechanism to exclude event noise that naturally occurs on an idle system or when using a specific application. This mechanism is finegrained and allows an analyst to take into account the process that causes the various state changes. As a result, this mechanism even allows Capture to analyze the behavior of documents that execute within the context of an application. We demonstrate Capture’s capabilities by analyzing a malicious Microsoft Word document.