Performing Firmware Malware Analysis
When to Use
- A compromised IoT device or router needs firmware analysis to identify implanted backdoors
- Investigating UEFI/BIOS rootkits that persist across OS reinstallations
- Analyzing firmware updates for supply chain compromise or malicious modifications
- Extracting and examining embedded Linux filesystems from IoT device firmware images
- Verifying firmware integrity after a suspected hardware or firmware-level compromise
Do not use for standard operating system malware; use PE/ELF analysis tools for OS-level malware on conventional systems.
Prerequisites
- binwalk installed for firmware image analysis and extraction (
pip install binwalk) - Ghidra with ARM/MIPS architecture support for embedded binary reverse engineering
- UEFI Tool (UEFITool) for UEFI firmware parsing and analysis
- Firmware Analysis Toolkit (FAT) or EMBA for automated firmware analysis
- QEMU for emulating extracted firmware filesystems
- Cross-compilation toolchains for ARM, MIPS, and other embedded architectures
Workflow
Step 1: Extract and Identify Firmware Components
Analyze the firmware image structure and extract filesystems:
