Where to download malware samples

About the Author Lenny Zeltser develops products and programs that use security to achieve business results. Lenny has been leading efforts to establish resilient security practices and solve hard security problems for over two decades. A respected author and practitioner, he has been advancing tradecraft and contributing to the community.

Learn more. Active Oldest Votes. There's a number of interesting resources you can get malware from The premier Malware sample dump Contagio KernelMode.

Improve this answer. That's fantastic, I've been loving checking out DamageLab. Also there is VirusShare. I Suggest turning this into community wiki, it will allow easy access for the info in all the answers. I just wanted to add one that I have run across: VX Heaven. It includes forums, virus archives, and a bunch of interviews with old-school virus writers. Don't forget grandma's computer.

There are many great options to get malware samples in all the comments but, also, I want to point you to 2 more options: Open Malware.

This is the new site for the old Offensive Computing. I'll update with a new URL as soon as it's back up. MalwareURLs is pretty awesome! Can I ask where you get the URLs from? Both of these seem to be down now. Your question mentioned downloading in bulk. The site says: Want more than a few samples? Update: virusshare. Edit: Now it has 20,, I'd suggest Malware.

The website writes as of : Currently the database contains 5,, samples. You may start to look from your junk email folder and antivirus quarantine. Denis Laskov. There are a couple options when it comes to getting samples for analysis. Scraping This one is extremely common and is what is used by a lot of researches to build sample databases.

Honeypots Researchers can use server and client side honeypots to try and collect malware. Manually You can browse the shady portions of the internet and look for samples yourself. Would that work even though I'm just some random guy on the Internet that wants to learn with no credentials?

There's only one way to find out :- — harley. Yes you should give a try — accfews. While this link may answer the question, it is better to include the essential parts of the answer here and provide the link for reference. Link-only answers can become invalid if the linked page changes. Why do you recommend this? What does it offer? Even though this is an old post, I feel that I should say that I contacted VIrusTotal last year about gaining access and they just gave me a price list.

Dominik Antal. Here a website I like which wasn't mentioned before malwaretips. Please give us more details - why are these sites worth mentioning? The Overflow Blog. Does ES6 make JavaScript frameworks obsolete? Pin It on Pinterest. Cookies are files that store identifying information on the terminals of natural persons who download websites. Privacy Policy Accept Cookie settings. Manage consent. Close Privacy Overview This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website.

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