This is going to sound fishy.

Recently getting into cybersecurity things and have been pretty interested in looking at malware and maybe making some myself to get the hang of it. Do you guys know any good repositories with malware to learn from? For example, if I wanted to make a credential stealing program, there’s a lot of different programs that may have credentials that are valuable. Or, maybe writing a keylogger? I took a look at a rust crate that can record keystrokes but has kind of a weird (or at least not as easy) type system because of different OS implementations, but how do different types of malware consolidate those differences?

I guess the broader question I’m getting at specifically is looking at how already made programs get around different technical obstacles like detailed above.

Thanks

  • fool@programming.dev
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    2 months ago

    Not fishy at all! It’s like a lockpicking fan asking about locksport.

    If you’re looking for examples, GitHub has a lot of CVE proof-of-concepts and there are lots of payload git repos across git hosts in general, but if you’re looking for a one-stop-shop “Steal all credentials,” or “Work on all OSes/architectures just by switching the compile target,” then you’ll have a harder time. (A do-one-thing-well approach is more maintainable after all.)

    If you want to make something yourself that still tries to pull off the take-as-much-as-you-can, you should just search up how different apps store data and whether it’s easy to grab. Like, where browsers store their cookies, or the implications of X11’s security model (Linux-specific), or where Windows/Windows apps’ credentials and hashes are stored. Of course, there’s only much a payload can do without a vulnerability exploit to partner with (e.g. Is privilege escalated? Are we still in userland? is this just a run-of-the-mill Trojan?).

    Apologies if my answer is too general.