Overview#
When a suspicious file arrives in an incident, the first question is always: what does it actually do? Static strings can be deceptive, and a single antivirus engine miss means nothing on its own. Security operations teams at financial institutions, government CERTs, and managed detection providers run suspicious samples through multi-engine scanning and dynamic sandbox execution to get a complete picture: what the file is, what it does when executed, what it phones home to, and which known threat groups have used similar tooling. Malware Analysis automates that entire process at scale, from initial triage to IOC extraction to actor attribution.
Coverage spans 67+ antivirus engines and multi-platform sandbox environments supporting Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, and specialized systems for IoT and industrial control analysis.
Key Features#
- Multi-Engine Analysis: Parallel scanning across 67+ antivirus engines with consensus scoring, detection rate tracking, and engine-specific signature identification
- Dynamic Sandbox Execution: Behavioural analysis in isolated environments across Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android with process monitoring, network capture, file system tracking, and registry changes
- Malware Family Classification: Automated classification into malware families with variant tracking, polymorphic detection, and campaign correlation across related samples
- Indicator Extraction: Automated extraction of IOCs including file hashes, network indicators, dropped files, registry modifications, and behavioural signatures
- Threat Actor Attribution: Correlate samples with known APT groups, cybercriminal organisations, and campaign identifiers through code similarity, infrastructure reuse, and TTP mapping
- YARA Rule Integration: Custom and community YARA rule matching for rapid classification, with rule management and automated rule generation from analysed samples
- Static Analysis: PE header analysis, string extraction, import/export table examination, packer detection, and code section analysis without execution
- Reporting: Detailed analysis reports with executive summaries, technical findings, IOC listings, and recommended detection and mitigation strategies
Use Cases#
- Incident Response: Rapidly analyse suspicious files discovered during incidents to determine capabilities, identify IOCs, and assess threat scope for containment decisions
- Threat Hunting: Proactively search for malware variants in organisational environments using extracted IOCs, behavioural signatures, and YARA rules from analysed samples
- Threat Intelligence: Build threat actor profiles through malware analysis, tracking tool evolution, infrastructure reuse, and campaign patterns across related samples
- Security Operations: Enrich security alerts with malware analysis context, validate detections against multi-engine results, and prioritize response based on threat severity
- Vulnerability Assessment: Analyse exploit payloads to understand vulnerability exploitation techniques, assess patch effectiveness, and inform defensive priorities
Integration#
The platform integrates with the broader Argus OSINT ecosystem for cross-domain intelligence, SIEM platforms for IOC-based detection, and SOAR platforms for automated response workflows. Malware indicators and YARA rules share to MISP and MISP Modules for community malware intelligence distribution. Analysis results export via STIX/TAXII to OpenCTI and partner threat sharing platforms. Works with Cortex (TheHive) for analyst-driven deep enrichment and integrates with the full 153 third-party providers available through the Argus provider orchestration layer.
Open Standards#
- STIX 2.1 (OASIS): Analysis results, IOCs, threat-actor attributions, and intelligence reports are exchanged as STIX 2.1 Structured Threat Information Expression bundles, with full bidirectional conversion between internal entities and STIX SDOs including Indicator, Malware, Threat Actor, Vulnerability, and Report object types.
- TAXII 2.1 (OASIS): Automated ingestion of external malware intelligence feeds uses the Trusted Automated eXchange of Intelligence Information 2.1 protocol, allowing the platform to poll remote TAXII collections on a scheduled basis and ingest resulting STIX bundles.
- MITRE ATT&CK: Sandbox behavioural reports and threat actor profiles are mapped to MITRE ATT&CK tactics, techniques, and sub-techniques, enabling TTP-level attribution and correlation of observed malware behaviour against the knowledge base.
- YARA: Custom and community YARA pattern-matching rules are stored, managed, and applied against file samples for rapid malware family classification; the platform supports rule authoring, versioning, and automated rule generation from analysed samples.
- MISP (Malware Information Sharing Platform): The platform synchronises IOCs and malware attributes bidirectionally with MISP instances, consuming MISP event feeds and pushing indicators back to community sharing networks for collaborative threat intelligence distribution.
- Traffic Light Protocol (TLP): All malware intelligence artefacts carry TLP marking-definition labels (WHITE/CLEAR, GREEN, AMBER, AMBER+STRICT, RED) aligned with the FIRST TLP specification, governing sharing permissions when exporting bundles or ingesting from partner feeds.
- Cryptographic Hash Standards (MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256): File samples and IOCs are identified and deduplicated using MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-256 digest values, expressed in STIX indicator patterns following the standard hash-property naming conventions.
Last Reviewed: 2026-02-23 Last Updated: 2026-04-14