FBI will share its Malware Investigator portal with businesses

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has announced that its internal Malware Investigator portal – previously available only to law enforcement and government entities – will soon be accessible to private sector businesses and non-profit organizations, as well.

Launched in August, the web portal offers automated analysis of submitted files, and provides the following types of testing and resulting information:

“Malware Investigator is a tool that provides users the ability to submit suspected malware files and within as little as an hour, receive detailed technical information about what the malware does and what it may be targeting,” it is explained on the website. The provided information allows investigators and defenders to react quickly to cyber compromises.

According to Jonathan Burns, an FBI agent who works on cybercrime and who presented the capabilities of Malware Investigator and announced its soon-to-be usefulness to private businesses at the Virus Bulletin conference audience on Thursday, the tool can currently be “fed” only with Windows executables, PDFs and several other common file types.

ThreatPost reports that the FBI is looking to expand this list to Android files and files for other operating systems.

Access to the tool’s API has also been granted, so businesses can integrate the tool into their existing systems.

Opening Malware Investigator to private sector businesses, non-profits, security researchers and academics is a great move by the FBI for several reasons: they are helping the wider community in the fight against malware, but they also collect malware samples that they otherwise might not get their hands on so soon.