A working knowledge of assembly and the disassembly process is key to becoming a successful malware analyst. This chapter has laid the foundation for important x86 concepts that you will encounter when disassembling malware. Use it as a reference if you encounter unfamiliar instructions or registers while performing analysis throughout the book.

Chapter 6 builds on this chapter to give you a well-rounded assembly foundation. But the only real way to get good at disassembly is to practice. In the next chapter, we’ll take a look at IDA Pro, a tool that will greatly aid your analysis of disassembly.