A security consultant has released a Ubuntu-based Linux distribution specifically designed to help analyze and re-engineer malware. Lenny Zeltser on Thursday released REMnux on Sourceforge and it has already been downloaded nearly 2,000 times.
malware detectionREMnux is not a brand-new distro built from scratch but really a stripped down version of Ubuntu distributed loaded on a VMware virtual machine and stuffed with hand-picked analysis tools.

Explains Zeltser on his blog, "REMnux is designed for running services that are useful to emulate within an isolated laboratory environment when performing behavioral malware analysis. As part of this process, the analyst typically infects another laboratory system with the malware sample and directs potentially-malicious connections to the REMnux system that's listening on the appropriate ports. REMnux is also useful for analyzing web-based malware, such as malicious JavaScript, Java programs, and Flash files."