Emulating shellcode attacks

Abstract

A system includes one or more 'BotMagnet' modules that are exposed to infection by malicious code. The BotMagnets may include one or more virtual machines hosing operating systems in which malicious code may be installed and executed without exposing sensitive data or other parts of a network. In particular, outbound traffic may be transmitted to a Sinkhole module that implements a service requested by the outbound traffic and transmits responses to the malicious code executing within the BotMagnet. In the case of shellcode attacks, unsuccessful attacks may be emulated by selecting a corresponding emulator that will receive and execute instructions, as would a successful shellcode attack. Events occurring on the BotMagnet and Sinkhole are correlated and used to characterize the malicious code. The characterization may be transmitted to other computer systems in order to detect instances of the malicious code.