Red Team: Virus Labs

Advanced Malware Development for Operators

Virus Labs is a high-intensity, operator-focused training designed to turn your coding skills into stealthy, functional, and evasive malware.
This is where red teamers learn to create tooling that bypasses detection, abuses the OS, and survives in hostile environments.

🎯 Who It’s For

  • Red Team Operators with coding experience (C#, C/C++, Go preferred)
  • Understanding of DLLs, PE structure, and basic WinAPI
  • Familiarity with EDR/XDR architecture and detection techniques
  • Comfort with low-level Windows concepts and post-exploitation flow

This is not beginner malware dev. You’ll write real implants — and watch them go head-to-head with modern defenses.

🧰 Format & Approach

  • Self-contained labs in isolated, monitored environments
  • Real EDR/XDR simulation for live testing
  • Code-first approach: no prebuilt scripts, no generators
  • Focus on techniques, not tooling
  • Optional Windows kernel intro for advanced students

🧪 Virus Labs Curriculum

⚙️ Module 1: Windows Internals for Malware Devs

Goal: Set the low-level foundation

  • PE structure, import table manipulation
  • DLL injection vs. process hollowing
  • WinAPI essentials for stealth execution
  • Virtual memory, thread contexts, and handle abuse
  • Outcome: Operator understands the playground and its rules

💉 Module 2: Payload Delivery & Execution

Goal: Build and run initial implants

  • Building position-independent shellcode
  • Executing from memory using various techniques (RunPE, ROP, etc.)
  • DLL sideloading and LOLBins
  • Custom loaders: staged vs. stageless
  • Outcome: Create an in-memory executable loader that evades basic AV

🕶️ Module 3: Evasion Techniques & OPSEC

Goal: Evade modern security controls

  • Bypassing AMSI, ETW, and Windows Defender
  • Syscalls and direct system call techniques
  • Obfuscation and encryption of payloads
  • Sleeping, sandbox checks, and runtime unpacking
  • Outcome: Operator builds malware that lives under EDR/XDR radars

🧠 Module 4: Persistence & Execution Contexts

Goal: Survive reboots and blend in

  • Registry, scheduled tasks, COM hijacking
  • Living in Office macros or .NET runtime
  • Parent process spoofing and PPID spoofing
  • UAC bypass and execution from userland
  • Outcome: Your malware comes back — and no one notices

🧬 Module 5: Implant Behavior & C2 Integration

Goal: Extend into full post-ex capability

  • Building modular implants (C2 client side)
  • Working with encrypted C2 channels (HTTPS, DNS, custom)
  • File exfiltration, keylogging, screenshotting, shell access
  • OPSEC-safe beaconing & randomized behavior
  • Outcome: Fully functional lightweight implant integrated with a C2

🧪 Module 6: Testing, Refinement, and Signature Busting

Goal: Analyze and improve evasiveness

  • Static and dynamic analysis (YARA, strings, memory dumps)
  • Payload entropy and signature reduction
  • Binary padding, section injection, string encryption
  • Simulated detection and anti-analysis tactics
  • Outcome: Operator tests and hardens malware to survive longer

🔐 Bonus Topics (Optional Tracks)

  • Writing custom C2 protocols (e.g., using gRPC or steganography)
  • Malware for Linux/Mac targets (Go cross-compilation)
  • Kernel-level drivers and rootkit introduction
  • Red team malware vs. real-world malware — ethical and legal framing

🏁 Outcomes

After Virus Labs, you’ll be able to:

✅ Write your own custom malware, from loader to implant
✅ Evade most standard detections with layered OPSEC
✅ Choose between persistence, stealth, and capability per op
✅ Understand how defenders catch you — and how to adapt
✅ Move beyond tools, and become the tool

Tooling breaks. Payloads get caught.
Operators who build their own implants keep going.

Virus Labs isn’t about writing malware for the fun of it — it’s about understanding your adversary role deeply enough to create undetectable tooling with a purpose.