Automation for security researchers who are tired of manual digging
If you’ve been in security for even a week, you know the drill: a shady executable shows up on your desk, your manager says “analyze this,” and suddenly you’re knee-deep in hex dumps wondering why you didn’t just stay in web development. I’ve been there. What makes malware analysis brutal isn’t always the complexity of the malware — it’s the monotony of repeating the same static/dynamic steps over and over again.
Here’s the good news: Python is the perfect sidekick for automating malware analysis. Whether you’re disassembling binaries, running samples in sandboxes, or detecting suspicious behavior at scale, Python has libraries that do the heavy lifting. In this article, I’ll show you how I’ve automated malware analysis workflows that used to eat up days of my life.
Pro tip: “In security, the enemy isn’t always the hacker it’s your own wasted time.”
The first step in malware analysis is usually static inspection. Think of it as the “autopsy without opening the body.”
With Python, you can automate extracting file metadata, imports, and even disassembly. Two…
