Analyzing malware and ransomware without infecting ourself

Spoiler alert: for newbies.

I want to learn how to analyze the behavior and mechanism of the trending malwares and ransomwares without jeopardizing my own pc. How can I achieve my objective? Will infecting OS in booted pendrive work?

It’s called virtual machines, google it.

I’m familiar with using Ubuntu in VMWare. However, what I meant to ask was that as the virtual machine does access the hard disk for showing me the drives, wouldn’t the original OS installed be infected if i infect the OS in VMWare? I apologize if the question sounds dumb, I’m just getting to know these things.

Virtual machines are isolated/separate entities. The host OS should (in theory) be untouched. There are cases however where exploits/malware can achieve entire VM escapes but that’s another story.

Regards, but some of them can harm the hard drive even you run them on VM, like WannaCry [ just as a mention ]

I believe that’s exactly what I said above.

So do you have any alternatives you can suggest to accomplish the task?

So are there any alternative ways to accomplish the task knowing that I will be secure?

If you are concerned that the malware will escape the VM, then use a separate computer not connected to your network.

I only have a single laptop. That’s the reason I’m started this topic in the first place.

No. You will never know for certain that you’re secure. if this is what you want you’re in the wrong place looking into the wrong subject.

@witch So using virtual machine is the best choice I have, right?

Without another air-gaped machine (which is still not invulnerable) Yes.

Alright. Thank you for your time. :slight_smile:

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