Weaknesses in Defenses against Web-Borne Malware

Web-based mechanisms, often mediated by malicious JavaScript code, play an important role in malware delivery today, making defenses against web-borne malware crucial for system security. This paper explores weaknesses in existing approaches to the detection of malicious JavaScript code. These approaches generally fall into two categories: lightweight techniques focusing on syntactic features such as string obfuscation and dynamic code generation; and heavier-weight approaches that look for deeper semantic characteristics such as the presence of shellcode-like strings or execution of exploit code. We show that each of these approaches has its weaknesses, and that state-of-the-art detectors using these techniques can be defeated using cloaking techniques that combine emulation with dynamic anti-analysis checks. Our goal is to promote a discussion in the research community focusing on robust defensive techniques rather than ad-hoc solutions.