Evaluating Untrusted Software In a Controlled Environment

Tools and techniques of reverse engineering allow the professional analyst to identify and describe in detail the behavior of malicious software in a test lab environment. However, many users and organizations lack both the resources and time to subject untrusted software to such stringent tests. To address the key business concern of 'is this software safe to download and use?' a lightweight filtering methodology is proposed that will yield a reasonably reliable answer with a very modest resource and time investment.