Before you begin setting up a lab, you need a few components: a physical system running a base operating system of Linux, Windows, or macOS X, and installed with virtualization software (such as VMware or VirtualBox). When analyzing the malware, you will be executing the malware on a Windows-based virtual machine (Windows VM). The advantage of using a virtual machine is that after you finish analyzing the malware, you can revert it to a clean state.

To create a safe lab environment, you should take the necessary precautions to avoid malware from escaping the virtualized environment and infecting your physical (host) system. The following are a few points to remember when setting up the virtualized lab:

• Keep your virtualization software up to date. This is necessary because it might be possible for malware to exploit a vulnerability in the virtualization software, escape from the virtual environment, and infect your host system.
• Install a fresh copy of the operating system inside the virtual machine (VM), and do not keep any sensitive information in the virtual machine.
• While analyzing a malware, if you don't want the malware to reach out to the Internet, then you should consider using host-only network configuration mode or restrict your network traffic within your lab environment using simulated services.
• Do not connect any removable media that might later be used on the physical machines, such as USB drives.
• Since you will be analyzing Windows malware (typically Executable or DLL), it is recommended to choose a base operating system such as Linux or macOS X for your host machine instead of Windows. This is because, even if a Windows malware escapes from the virtual machine, it will still not be able to infect your host machine.