What kind of analysis involves examining malware's behavior to understand its purpose?

Malware analysis is the process dedicated to examining and understanding the behavior and characteristics of malicious software. This type of analysis helps identify the purpose of the malware, how it operates, the damage it can inflict, and the methods it uses to propagate or exploit systems. During malware analysis, security professionals may study the ways in which malware interacts with the system, its network behavior, and the changes it makes to files or system settings.

This analytical approach can be further divided into two main types: static analysis, where the code is examined without executing it, and dynamic analysis, which observes the malware's behavior in a controlled environment. By understanding these behaviors, security teams can develop effective strategies for detection, prevention, and mitigation of such threats.

The other options relate to different aspects of security analysis. Traffic analysis, for instance, involves inspecting data flows across a network to identify patterns or anomalies but does not focus specifically on malware behavior. Root cause analysis seeks to identify the underlying reasons behind incidents or failures rather than the specific actions of malware. Threat modeling is a practice of identifying potential threats and vulnerabilities in a system or application but does not delve into analyzing malware behavior specifically. Therefore, malware analysis distinctly focuses on understanding malware, making it the correct choice in this