In this chapter, we covered the essentials of computer programming and described universal elements shared between multiple CISC and RISC architectures. Then, we went through multiple assembly languages including the ones behind Intel x86, ARM, MIPS, and others, and understood their application areas, which eventually shaped the design and structure. We also covered the fundamental basics of each of them, learned the most important notions (such as the registers used and CPU modes supported), got an idea of how the instruction sets look, discovered what opcode formats are supported there, and explored what calling conventions are used.
Finally, we went from the low-level assembly languages to their high-level representation s3 in C or other similar languages, and became familiar with a set of examples for universal blocks, such as if conditions and loops.
After reading this chapter, you should have the ability to read the disassembled code of different assembly languages and be able to understand what high-level code it could possibly represent. While not aiming to be completely comprehensive, the main goal of this chapter is to provide a strong foundation, as well as a direction that you can follow in order to deepen your knowledge before starting analysis on actual malicious code. It should be your starting point for learning how to perform static code analysis on different platforms and devices.
In Chapter 2, Basic Static and Dynamic Analysis for x86/x64, we will start analyzing the actual malware for particular platforms, and the instruction sets we have become familiar with will be used as languages describing its functionality.
