Free Automated Malware Analysis Services

In my SANS Institute course, I teach security and systems professionals how to reverse-engineer malicious software. It is an interesting, but time-consuming process if you don't have the right skills and tools at hand.

There are several free automated malware analysis services that can examine compiled Windows executables to save us time and provide a sense about the specimen's capabilities:

Anubis
BitBlaze Malware Analysis Service
Comodo Automated Analysis System and Valkyrie
GFI ThreatTrack (formerly CWSandbox)
EUREKA Malware Analysis Internet Service
Joe Sandbox
Norman SandBox
ThreatExpert
ViCheck
Xandora

If you're interested in setting up your own automated malware analysis tools, take a look at my note regarding Free Toolkits for Automating Malware Analysis.

These are the services I have come across. If you know of another reliable and free service I didn't list, please let me know.

My other lists of on-line security resources outline Blocklists of Suspected Malicious IPs and URLs and On-Line Tools for Malicious Website Lookups.

About the Author: Lenny Zeltser is a seasoned IT professional with a strong background in information security and business management. His areas of expertise include cloud services and malicious software. Lenny focuses on safeguarding customers' IT operations at Radiant Systems. He also teaches how to analyze and combat malware at SANS Institute. Lenny explores security topics at conferences, in books and in articles. He also volunteers as an incident handler at the Internet Storm Center. You should follow Lenny on Twitter and read his blog.