My Top Books to Learn Malware Analysis and Reverse Engineering

Malware analysis and reverse engineering are essential skills for cybersecurity professionals. Understanding how malware works can help prevent future attacks and protect against potential threats. In this essay, I will discuss my top three books for learning malware analysis and reverse engineering. These books provide a comprehensive guide to understanding malware and the techniques used to analyze it.

Practical Malware Analysis: The Hands-On Guide to Dissecting Malicious Software

This is probably one of my favorite books in the selection, although now a bit outdated, most of the content is still relevant today. I also heard that a second edition is being written.

This book will teach you the basics, from configuring your malware analysis setup to learning assembly languages, static and dynamic analysis, malware techniques, rootkit analysis… It comes with several exercises that will help you hone your skills and directly apply what you learn.

• Written by: Michael Sikorski and Andrew Honig
• Release date: Feb 2012
• Price: 42 USD

The IDA Pro Book, 2nd Edition: The Unofficial Guide to the World’s Most Popular Disassembler

This second book is also a bit outdated but still relevant today. It teaches you how IDA pro works and how you can use it. IDA is one of the most powerful disassemblers. It comes with a free version which is enough to get started. Additionally,

Written by: Chris Eagle

• Release date: 2011
• Price: 42 USD

“Practical Malware Analysis” is a great resource for those who want to learn about malware analysis. The book provides an overview of dynamic and static analysis techniques, which are used to analyze malware. It also includes in-depth analysis of various types of malware, including viruses, worms, and Trojans. The book offers hands-on exercises that allow readers to apply the techniques they have learned. For example, the book provides a detailed analysis of the Stuxnet worm, which was used to attack Iran’s nuclear program. The authors explain how the worm was designed and how it was able to infiltrate the system.

Windows Kernel Programming

This book is probably one of the best references for kernel programming, it’s not directly used for reverse engineering, but it will help you understand the Windows kernel and will be very useful if you want to explore Windows internals and how it works in more depth. I recommend reading this book after getting some skills.

• Written by: Pavel Yosifovitch
• Release date: 2019
• Price: 42 USD

Malware Data Science: Attack Detection and Attribution

This book is not related to reverse engineering, but it does provide useful information on manipulating data related to malware. It will help you understand concepts like machine learning and will be directly applied to malware. I highly recommend this book if you want to learn more about Python, data science, and machine learning.

• Written by: Joshua Saxe and Hillary Sanders
• Release date: 2018
• Price: 19 USD

The Art of Memory Forensics: Detecting Malware and Threats in Windows, Linux, and Mac Memory

This book is more geared towards memory forensics but will teach you how to recognize data structure, how to use Volatility and more. It’s a bit outdated too but still relevant today.

• Written by: Michael Hale Ligh, Andrew , Jamie Levy, AAron Walters
• Release date: 2014
• Price: 36 USD

Antivirus Bypass Techniques: Learn practical techniques and tactics to combat, bypass, and evade antivirus software

Having studied malware evasion techniques for several years now, I really like this book which focuses on bypassing antiviruses solution. You will learn some of the most well-known techniques used by malware as well as how an antivirus works.

• Written by: Nir Yehoshua, Uriel Kosayev
• Release date: 2021
• Price: 36 USD

Practical Binary Analysis: Build Your Own Linux Tools for Binary Instrumentation, Analysis, and Disassembly

At some point in your learning journey, you will need to understand binary instrumentation, this book comes in handy to help you understand concept such as taint analysis and symbolic execution. I recommend this book as soon as you become more comfortable with traditional malware analysis techniques.

• Written by: Dennis Andriesse
• Release date: 2017
• Price: 49 USD

Windows Internals: System architecture, processes, threads, memory management, and more, Part 1 (Developer Reference)

Finally, if you really want to understand how Windows works, the Windows Internals books are really the bible, you will find them useful in several areas, including vulnerability, malware research, but also forensics or programming. This book is the best reference although it does not focus on malware analysis, but it is certainly useful in many cases.

• Written by: Pavel Yosifovich, Mark Russinovich, David Solomon, Alex Ionescu
• Release date: 2017
• Price: 30 USD

Windows Internals, Part 2 (Developer Reference)

• Written by: Andrea Allievi, Mark Russinovich, David Solomon, Alex Ionescu
• Release date: 2021
• Price: 54 USD
• There are many other interesting books for learning malware analysis and reverse engineering. But these are probably the only ones you need to cover the full technical aspect of Malware analysis and reverse engineering in Windows environment. I hope you will find them useful