[fosco]

can you share literature on what tools you used to reverse engineer and maybe other items worth reading if I am interested in this type of research?

[hypervis0r]

Literature: sorry no, I didn't read anything; everything I know is from practice.

As for the tools: just IDA Pro, really, if you don't count the standard stuff: a VM to avoid getting the host infected (VirtualBox), Burp (to analyze malware HTTP traffic), etc. Nothing too fancy.