Content area

Abstract

The JavaScript programming language, which began as a simple scripting language for the Web, has become ubiquitous, spanning desktop, mobile, and server applications. This increase in usage has made JavaScript an attractive target for nefarious actors, resulting in the proliferation of malicious browser extensions that steal user information and supply chain attacks that target the official Node.js package registry. To combat these threats, researchers have developed specialized tools and frameworks for analyzing the behavior of JavaScript programs to detect malicious patterns. Static analysis tools typically struggle with the highly dynamic nature of the language and fail to process obfuscated sources, while dynamic analysis pipelines take several minutes to run and require more resources per program, making them unfeasible for large-scale analyses. In this paper, we present Fakeium, a novel, open source, and lightweight execution environment designed for efficient, large-scale dynamic analysis of JavaScript programs. Built on top of the popular V8 engine, Fakeium complements traditional static analysis by providing additional API calls and string literals that would otherwise go unnoticed without the need for resource-intensive instrumented browsers or synthetic user input. Besides its negligible execution overhead, our tool is highly customizable and supports hooks for advanced analysis scenarios such as network traffic emulation. Fakeium's flexibility and ability to detect hidden API calls, especially in obfuscated sources, highlights its potential as a valuable tool for security analysts to detect malicious behavior.

Details

1009240
Title
Fakeium: A Dynamic Execution Environment for JavaScript Program Analysis
Publication title
arXiv.org; Ithaca
Publication year
2024
Publication date
Oct 28, 2024
Section
Computer Science
Publisher
Cornell University Library, arXiv.org
Source
arXiv.org
Place of publication
Ithaca
Country of publication
United States
University/institution
Cornell University Library arXiv.org
e-ISSN
2331-8422
Source type
Working Paper
Language of publication
English
Document type
Working Paper
Publication history
 
 
Online publication date
2024-10-29
Milestone dates
2024-10-28 (Submission v1)
Publication history
 
 
   First posting date
29 Oct 2024
ProQuest document ID
3121797049
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/working-papers/fakeium-dynamic-execution-environment-javascript/docview/3121797049/se-2?accountid=208611
Full text outside of ProQuest
Copyright
© 2024. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.
Last updated
2024-10-30
Database
ProQuest One Academic