Malware methodologies and its future: A survey

Malware means any unwanted software that performs harmful actions or executes some tasks unauthorized. This includes all harmful programs like virus, worms, Trojan, rootkits, Botnets etc. The numbers of malwares rise exponentially with the increase of the use of digital media. With the enormous usage of internet world wide, the rate of cybercrimes has increased and giving life to many malwares in the cyber space. New technologies and skills should be developed and formulated to fight against malwares with the goals of automatic identification of malwares as well as their families. A lot of research is going on to combat the malwares, but still in vain. In order to design tools to fight against it, a systematic understanding is needed on its various types, behaviors along with different detection and analysis techniques. With all above, this paper summarizes a thorough information regarding malwares, their classification techniques, different obfuscation methods, packing and unpacking concepts along with particular tools. Copyright © 2017, IGI Global.