ANY.RUN Collaborates to Benefit Dakota State University Students

ANY.RUN, an interactive online sandbox for detecting and investigating malware, has started a cooperation with Dakota State University in Madison, S.D. 

Three online malware courses at DSU – Malware Analysis, Intrusion Detection, and Advanced Malware – have integrated the service into their programs, giving students a better understanding of how things unfold in real-time. These clear demonstrations in class show malware behavioral activity, with an opportunity to interact with it directly. 

Beginners and advanced analysts who are eager to boost their knowledge in the sphere can take these master and undergraduate programs. The main benefit is that all lectures and labs are dedicated largely to analysis practice, from malware delivery to lateral movement, obfuscation, reverse-engineering, and others. 

Dr. Josh Stroschein, assistant professor of Cyber Security and Network & Security Administration at Dakota State, has been working with the company for some time and is using the company’s services in his classes. 

He is also working with students to write technical analysis blogs to be published on ANY.RUN’s blog site. This is part of his efforts with mentoring students. “I’ve been working with several students to help them grow as malware analysts, and find them professional opportunities,” he said. Because they are a globally recognized company, having blogs on ANY.RUN “would look great on student’s resume.” The first student blog was posted in late April.  

Let’s have a look at what are these courses about: 

Malware Analysis

This course provides fundamental knowledge of malware analysis. Students learn static and dynamic techniques for investigating unknown binaries as well as malware detection.

Intrusion Detection

Threat hunting and detection are the main focus of this program. Topics will include signature, anomaly, and emerging detection methods on a network and host level.  

Advanced Malware 

The course covers advanced techniques used in malware analysis.  There are many themes that students learn; anti-reverse engineering methods and advanced obfuscation practices are some of them. 

ANY.RUN is integrated into each of these courses. The service helps students to analyze, debug, and reverse engineer unknown binaries.  It also allows students to explore the large database with relevant IOCs and fresh samples. And see the Network activity without waiting. Students make use of ANY.RUN here to monitor malware behavior and explore the results. 

We are glad that our service has become a part of several DSU programs. We hope it will make the process of education for young cybersecurity specialists easier and faster. 

Malware analysis is definitely not an easy topic, so if you are eager to start or continue your journey with that – courses like that are the best choice. Especially, when it is combined with modern tools like ANY.RUN.