Mid-Term Report Summary - ROSETTA (Rosetta s Way Back to the Source: <br/>Towards Reverse Engineering of Complex Software) In accordance with the original proposal, we have focused initially on reverse engineering data structures. Our hypothesis was, and still is, that data structure are key to reverse engineering. Moreover, knowledge about data structures brings additional benefits. For instance, we will see that knowing the data structures allows us to protect them against attacks like buffer overflows. Likewise, knowledge of data structures helps us locate vulnerabilities in binary software.Also, we have started to apply reverse engineering against malware.Malware is particularly challenging for reverse engineers, because it often employs defenses against analysis in general and reverse engineering in particular. We have started our investigations with a detailed analysis of the Zeus malware and similar peer-to-peer botnets. We have found that such malware has become so resilient against take-down attacks that it will be close to impossible to dismantle them without breaking into the systems themselves.
