Texas Cyber Summit II

StringSifter: Learning to Rank Strings Output for Speedier Malware Analysis
In static analysis, one of the most useful initial steps is to inspect a binary's printable characters via the Strings program. However, running Strings on a piece of malware inevitably produces noisy strings mixed in with important ones, which can only be uncovered after sifting through the entirety of its messy output. To address this, we are releasing StringSifter: a machine learning-based tool that automatically ranks strings based on their relevance for malware analysis. In our presentation, we'll show how StringSifter allows analysts to conveniently focus on strings located towards the top of its predicted output, and that it performs well based on criteria used to evaluate web search and recommendation engines. We’ll also demonstrate StringSifter live in action on sample binaries.