When Malware is Packin' Heat

Explore the intricacies of malware packing and obfuscation techniques in this 21-minute conference talk from USENIX Enigma 2018. Delve into the world of cybersecurity as Giovanni Vigna, Professor at UCSB and CTO of Lastline, and Davide Balzarotti, Professor at Eurecom Institute, France, discuss how packing is used by both malicious and benign applications. Discover the challenges faced by anti-virus systems in distinguishing between packed malware and legitimate software, and learn about the limitations of machine learning and AI in malware detection. Gain insights from experimental data and a systematization of packer behavior, applied to a large corpus of real-world malware observed across thousands of corporate networks. Understand the implications of misclassification and false positives in the anti-virus industry, and consider the potential consequences of alert fatigue and missed detections in cybersecurity.