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A polymorphic engine (sometimes called mutation engine or mutating engine) is a software component that uses polymorphic code to alter the payload while preserving the same functionality. Polymorphic engines are used almost exclusively in malware , with the purpose of being harder for antivirus software to detect.
[1] Encryption is the most common method to hide code. With encryption, the main body of the code (also called its payload) is encrypted and will appear meaningless. For the code to function as before, a decryption function is added to the code. When the code is executed, this function reads the payload and decrypts it before executing it in turn.
On its own, an arbitrary code execution exploit will give the attacker the same privileges as the target process that is vulnerable. [11] For example, if exploiting a flaw in a web browser, an attacker could act as the user, performing actions such as modifying personal computer files or accessing banking information, but would not be able to perform system-level actions (unless the user in ...
Metamorphic code is used by some viruses when they are about to infect new files, and the result is that the next generation will never look like current generation. The mutated code will do exactly the same thing (under the interpretation used), but the child's binary representation will typically be completely different from the parent's.
Self-modifying code is also sometimes used by programs that do not want to reveal their presence, such as computer viruses and some shellcodes. Viruses and shellcodes that use self-modifying code mostly do this in combination with polymorphic code. Modifying a piece of running code is also used in certain attacks, such as buffer overflows.
Multiple dispatch or multimethods is a feature of some programming languages in which a function or method can be dynamically dispatched based on the run-time (dynamic) type or, in the more general case, some other attribute of more than one of its arguments. [1]
SMEG is an acronym for Simulated Metamorphic Encryption Generator. Messages within the two viruses Pile created with it, SMEG.Pathogen and SMEG.Queeg, suggest that it is also an allusion to the word smeg, used as a profanity by characters in the British TV series Red Dwarf. [1] The engine is designed to be used to add polymorphism to viruses.
In computer science, dynamic dispatch is the process of selecting which implementation of a polymorphic operation (method or function) to call at run time. It is commonly employed in, and considered a prime characteristic of, object-oriented programming (OOP) languages and systems. [1]