Malware is being increasingly threatening and malware detectors based on traditional signature-based analysis are no longer suitable for current malware detection. Recently, the models based on machine learning (ML) are developed for predicting unknown malware variants and saving human strength. However, most of the existing ML models are black-box, which made their pre-diction results undependable, and therefore need further interpretation in order to be effectively deployed in the wild. This paper aims to examine and categorize the existing researches on ML-based malware detector interpretability. We first give a detailed comparison over the previous work on common ML model inter-pretability in groups after introducing the principles, attributes, evaluation indi-cators and taxonomy of common ML interpretability. Then we investigate the interpretation methods towards malware detection, by addressing the importance of interpreting malware detectors, challenges faced by this field, solutions for migitating these challenges, and a new taxonomy for classifying all the state-of-the-art malware detection interpretability work in recent years. The highlight of our survey is providing a new taxonomy towards malware detection interpreta-tion methods based on the common taxonomy summarized by previous re-searches in the common field. In addition, we are the first to evaluate the state-of-the-art approaches by interpretation method attributes to generate the final score so as to give insight to quantifying the interpretability. By concluding the results of the recent researches, we hope our work can provide suggestions for researchers who are interested in the interpretability on ML-based malware de-tection models.
In cyberattack detection and prevention systems, cybersecurity analysts always prefer solutions that are as interpretable and understandable as rule-based or signature-based detection. This is because of the need to tune and optimize these solutions to mitigate and control the effect of false positives and false negatives. Interpreting machine learning models is a new and open challenge. However, it is expected that an interpretable machine learning solution will be domain-specific. For instance, interpretable solutions for machine learning models in healthcare are different than solutions in …
Università degli Studi di Torino（都灵大学）；aizoOn Technology Consulting（aizoOn技术咨询公司）
The constant growth in the number of malware - software or code fragment potentially harmful for computers and information networks - and the use of sophisticated evasion and obfuscation techniques have seriously hindered classic signature-based approaches. On the other hand, malware detection systems based on machine learning techniques started offering a promising alternative to standard approaches, drastically reducing analysis time and turning out to be more robust against evasion and obfuscation techniques. In this paper, we propose a malware taxonomic classification pipeline able to clas…
Identifying threats in a network traffic flow which is encrypted is uniquely challenging. On one hand it is extremely difficult to simply decrypt the traffic due to modern encryption algorithms. On the other hand, passing such an encrypted stream through pattern matching algorithms is useless because encryption ensures there aren't any. Moreover, evaluating such models is also difficult due to lack of labeled benign and malware datasets. Other approaches have tried to tackle this problem by employing observable meta-data gathered from the flow. We try to augment this approach by extending it t…
Nanyang Technological University（南洋理工大学）；Peking University（北京大学）；College of Intelligence and Computing, Tianjin University（天津大学智能与计算学部）；Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen)（哈尔滨工业大学（深圳））；College of Cyber Science, Nankai University（南开大学网络空间安全学院）；Chinese University of Hong Kong（香港中文大学）
Machine learning (ML) based approach is considered as one of the most promising techniques for Android malware detection and has achieved high accuracy by leveraging commonly-used features. In practice, most of the ML classifications only provide a binary label to mobile users and app security analysts. However, stakeholders are more interested in the reason why apps are classified as malicious in both academia and industry. This belongs to the research area of interpretable ML but in a specific research domain (i.e., mobile malware detection). Although several interpretable ML methods have be…
We propose in this paper a new propagation vector for malicious software by abusing the Tor network. Tor is particularly relevant, since operating a Tor exit node is easy and involves low costs compared to attack institutional or ISP networks. After presenting the Tor network from an attacker perspective, we describe an automated exploitation malware which is operated on a Tor exit node targeting to infect web browsers. Our experiments show that the current deployed Tor network, provides a large amount of potential victims.
In this paper we introduce CrowdSource, a statistical natural language processing system designed to make rapid inferences about malware functionality based on printable character strings extracted from malware binaries. CrowdSource "learns" a mapping between low-level language and high-level software functionality by leveraging millions of web technical documents from StackExchange, a popular network of technical question and answer sites, using this mapping to infer malware capabilities. This paper describes our approach and provides an evaluation of its accuracy and performance, demonstrati…
Machine learning (ML) used for static portable executable (PE) malware detection typically employs per-file numerical feature vector representations as input with one or more target labels during training. However, there is much orthogonal information that can be gleaned from the \textit{context} in which the file was seen. In this paper, we propose utilizing a static source of contextual information -- the path of the PE file -- as an auxiliary input to the classifier. While file paths are not malicious or benign in and of themselves, they do provide valuable context for a malicious/benign de…
With malware detection techniques increasingly adopting machine learning approaches, the creation of precise training sets becomes more and more important. Large data sets of realistic web traffic, correctly classified as benign or malicious are needed, not only to train classic and deep learning algorithms, but also to serve as evaluation benchmarks for existing malware detection products. Interestingly, despite the vast number and versatility of threats a user may encounter when browsing the web, actual malicious content is often hard to come by, since prerequisites such as browser and opera…
Perimeter-based detection is no longer sufficient for mitigating the threat posed by malicious software. This is evident as antivirus (AV) products are replaced by endpoint detection and response (EDR) products, the latter allowing visibility into live machine activity rather than relying on the AV to filter out malicious artefacts. This paper argues that detecting malware in real-time on an endpoint necessitates an automated response due to the rapid and destructive nature of some malware. The proposed model uses statistical filtering on top of a machine learning dynamic behavioural malware d…
The popularity of Windows attracts the attention of hackers/cyber-attackers, making Windows devices the primary target of malware attacks in recent years. Several sophisticated malware variants and anti-detection methods have been significantly enhanced and as a result, traditional malware detection techniques have become less effective. This work presents MalBehavD-V1, a new behavioural dataset of Windows Application Programming Interface (API) calls extracted from benign and malware executable files using the dynamic analysis approach. In addition, we present MalDetConV, a new automated beha…
Malware evolves over time and antivirus must adapt to such evolution. Hence, it is critical to detect those points in time where malware has evolved so that appropriate countermeasures can be undertaken. In this research, we perform a variety of experiments on a significant number of malware families to determine when malware evolution is likely to have occurred. All of the evolution detection techniques that we consider are based on machine learning and can be fully automated -- in particular, no reverse engineering or other labor-intensive manual analysis is required. Specifically, we consid…
This paper proposes a technique for automatically learning semantic malware signatures for Android from very few samples of a malware family. The key idea underlying our technique is to look for a maximally suspicious common subgraph (MSCS) that is shared between all known instances of a malware family. An MSCS describes the shared functionality between multiple Android applications in terms of inter-component call relations and their semantic metadata (e.g., data-flow properties). Our approach identifies such maximally suspicious common subgraphs by reducing the problem to maximum satisfiabil…
The evolution of mobile malware poses a serious threat to smartphone security. Today, sophisticated attackers can adapt by maximally sabotaging machine-learning classifiers via polluting training data, rendering most recent machine learning-based malware detection tools (such as Drebin, DroidAPIMiner, and MaMaDroid) ineffective. In this paper, we explore the feasibility of constructing crafted malware samples; examine how machine-learning classifiers can be misled under three different threat models; then conclude that injecting carefully crafted data into training data can significantly reduc…
Malware detection is a critical aspect of information security. One difficulty that arises is that malware often evolves over time. To maintain effective malware detection, it is necessary to determine when malware evolution has occurred so that appropriate countermeasures can be taken. We perform a variety of experiments aimed at detecting points in time where a malware family has likely evolved, and we consider secondary tests designed to confirm that evolution has actually occurred. Several malware families are analyzed, each of which includes a number of samples collected over an extended …
MalVol-25: A Diverse, Labelled and Detailed Volatile Memory Dataset for Malware Detection and Response Testing and Validation
London Metropolitan University（伦敦 Metropolitan 大学）；Cyber Security Research Centre（网络安全研究中心）；Cybersecurity Institute（网络安全研究所）；Department of Computer Science（计算机科学系）
Ransomware, a class of self-propagating malware that uses encryption to hold the victims' data ransom, has emerged in recent years as one of the most dangerous cyber threats, with widespread damage; e.g., zero-day ransomware WannaCry has caused world-wide catastrophe, from knocking U.K. National Health Service hospitals offline to shutting down a Honda Motor Company in Japan[1]. Our close collaboration with security operations of large enterprises reveals that defense against ransomware relies on tedious analysis from high-volume systems logs of the first few infections. Sandbox analysis of fr…
We present a novel malware detection approach based on metrics over quantitative data flow graphs. Quantitative data flow graphs (QDFGs) model process behavior by interpreting issued system calls as aggregations of quantifiable data flows.Due to the high abstraction level we consider QDFG metric based detection more robust against typical behavior obfuscation like bogus call injection or call reordering than other common behavioral models that base on raw system calls. We support this claim with experiments on obfuscated malware logs and demonstrate the superior obfuscation robustness in compa…
The design of attacks for cyber physical systems is critical to assess CPS resilience at design time and run-time, and to generate rich datasets from testbeds for research. Attacks against cyber physical systems distinguish themselves from IT attacks in that the main objective is to harm the physical system. Therefore, both cyber and physical system knowledge are needed to design such attacks. The current practice to generate attacks either focuses on the cyber part of the system using IT cyber security existing body of knowledge, or uses heuristics to inject attacks that could potentially har…
Android is becoming ubiquitous and currently has the largest share of the mobile OS market with billions of application downloads from the official app market. It has also become the platform most targeted by mobile malware that are becoming more sophisticated to evade state-of-the-art detection approaches. Many Android malware families employ obfuscation techniques in order to avoid detection and this may defeat static analysis based approaches. Dynamic analysis on the other hand may be used to overcome this limitation. Hence in this paper we propose DynaLog, a dynamic analysis based framewor…
The use of machine learning and intelligent systems has become an established practice in the realm of malware detection and cyber threat prevention. In an environment characterized by widespread accessibility and big data, the feasibility of malware classification without the use of artificial intelligence-based techniques has been diminished exponentially. Also characteristic of the contemporary realm of automated, intelligent malware detection is the threat of adversarial machine learning. Adversaries are looking to target the underlying data and/or algorithm responsible for the functionali…
Security operation centers (SOCs) typically use a variety of tools to collect large volumes of host logs for detection and forensic of intrusions. Our experience, supported by recent user studies on SOC operators, indicates that operators spend ample time (e.g., hundreds of man-hours) on investigations into logs seeking adversarial actions. Similarly, reconfiguration of tools to adapt detectors for future similar attacks is commonplace upon gaining novel insights (e.g., through internal investigation or shared indicators). This paper presents an automated malware pattern-extraction and early d…
Packed Malware Detection Using Grayscale Binary-to-Image Representations
Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity (CIC)（加拿大网络安全研究所）；University of New Brunswick（新不伦瑞克大学）；Behaviour-Centric Cybersecurity Center (BCCC)（以行为为中心的网络安全中心）；York University（约克大学）
University of Electronic and Science Technology of China（电子科技大学）；Temple University（天普大学）；University of Idaho（爱达荷大学）
Many IoT(Internet of Things) systems run Android systems or Android-like systems. With the continuous development of machine learning algorithms, the learning-based Android malware detection system for IoT devices has gradually increased. However, these learning-based detection models are often vulnerable to adversarial samples. An automated testing framework is needed to help these learning-based malware detection systems for IoT devices perform security analysis. The current methods of generating adversarial samples mostly require training parameters of models and most of the methods are aim…
Threats from the internet, particularly malicious software (i.e., malware) often use cryptographic algorithms to disguise their actions and even to take control of a victim's system (as in the case of ransomware). Malware and other threats proliferate too quickly for the time-consuming traditional methods of binary analysis to be effective. By automating detection and classification of cryptographic algorithms, we can speed program analysis and more efficiently combat malware. This thesis will present several methods of leveraging machine learning to automatically discover and classify cryptog…
Malware detection is a growing problem particularly on the Android mobile platform due to its increasing popularity and accessibility to numerous third party app markets. This has also been made worse by the increasingly sophisticated detection avoidance techniques employed by emerging malware families. This calls for more effective techniques for detection and classification of Android malware. Hence, in this paper we present an n-opcode analysis based approach that utilizes machine learning to classify and categorize Android malware. This approach enables automated feature discovery that eli…
Machine learning (ML)-based Android malware detection has been one of the most popular research topics in the mobile security community. An increasing number of research studies have demonstrated that machine learning is an effective and promising approach for malware detection, and some works have even claimed that their proposed models could achieve 99\% detection accuracy, leaving little room for further improvement. However, numerous prior studies have suggested that unrealistic experimental designs bring substantial biases, resulting in over-optimistic performance in malware detection. Un…
There is a growing body of malware samples that evade automated analysis and detection tools. Malware may measure fingerprints ("artifacts") of the underlying analysis tool or environment and change their behavior when artifacts are detected. While analysis tools can mitigate artifacts to reduce exposure, such concealment is expensive. However, not every sample checks for every type of artifact-analysis efficiency can be improved by mitigating only those artifacts most likely to be used by a sample. Using that insight, we propose MIMOSA, a system that identifies a small set of "covering" tool …
With the increase in machine learning (ML) applications in different domains, incentives for deceiving these models have reached more than ever. As data is the core backbone of ML algorithms, attackers shifted their interest toward polluting the training data. Data credibility is at even higher risk with the rise of state-of-art research topics like open design principles, federated learning, and crowd-sourcing. Since the machine learning model depends on different stakeholders for obtaining data, there are no reliable automated mechanisms to verify the veracity of data from each source. Malwa…
Android malware has been on the rise in recent years due to the increasing popularity of Android and the proliferation of third party application markets. Emerging Android malware families are increasingly adopting sophisticated detection avoidance techniques and this calls for more effective approaches for Android malware detection. Hence, in this paper we present and evaluate an n-gram opcode features based approach that utilizes machine learning to identify and categorize Android malware. This approach enables automated feature discovery without relying on prior expert or domain knowledge f…
Background: Machine learning-based security detection models have become prevalent in modern malware and intrusion detection systems. However, previous studies show that such models are susceptible to adversarial evasion attacks. In this type of attack, inputs (i.e., adversarial examples) are specially crafted by intelligent malicious adversaries, with the aim of being misclassified by existing state-of-the-art models (e.g., deep neural networks). Once the attackers can fool a classifier to think that a malicious input is actually benign, they can render a machine learning-based malware or int…
In recent years we have witnessed an increase in cyber threats and malicious software attacks on different platforms with important consequences to persons and businesses. It has become critical to find automated machine learning techniques to proactively defend against malware. Transformers, a category of attention-based deep learning techniques, have recently shown impressive results in solving different tasks mainly related to the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP). In this paper, we propose the use of a Transformers' architecture to automatically detect malicious software. We propo…
Machine learning based solutions have been successfully employed for automatic detection of malware on Android. However, machine learning models lack robustness to adversarial examples, which are crafted by adding carefully chosen perturbations to the normal inputs. So far, the adversarial examples can only deceive detectors that rely on syntactic features (e.g., requested permissions, API calls, etc), and the perturbations can only be implemented by simply modifying application's manifest. While recent Android malware detectors rely more on semantic features from Dalvik bytecode rather than m…
Recent statistics show that in 2015 more than 140 millions new malware samples have been found. Among these, a large portion is due to ransomware, the class of malware whose specific goal is to render the victim's system unusable, in particular by encrypting important files, and then ask the user to pay a ransom to revert the damage. Several ransomware include sophisticated packing techniques, and are hence difficult to statically analyse. We present EldeRan, a machine learning approach for dynamically analysing and classifying ransomware. EldeRan monitors a set of actions performed by applica…
The numbers of the botnet attacks are increasing day by day and the detection of botnet spreading in the network has become very challenging. Bots are having specific characteristics in comparison of normal malware as they are controlled by the remote master server and usually dont show their behavior like normal malware until they dont receive any command from their master server. Most of time bot malware are inactive, hence it is very difficult to detect. Further the detection or tracking of the network of theses bots requires an infrastructure that should be able to collect the data from a …
Network traffic analytics technology is a cornerstone for cyber security systems. We demonstrate its use through three popular and contemporary cyber security applications in intrusion detection, malware analysis and botnet detection. However, automated traffic analytics faces the challenges raised by big traffic data. In terms of big data's three characteristics --- volume, variety and velocity, we review three state of the art techniques to mitigate the key challenges including real-time traffic classification, unknown traffic classification, and efficiency of classifiers. The new techniques…
Georgia Institute of Technology（佐治亚理工学院）；Microsoft（微软）
Computer vision is playing an increasingly important role in automated malware detection with the rise of the image-based binary representation. These binary images are fast to generate, require no feature engineering, and are resilient to popular obfuscation methods. Significant research has been conducted in this area, however, it has been restricted to small-scale or private datasets that only a few industry labs and research teams have access to. This lack of availability hinders examination of existing work, development of new research, and dissemination of ideas. We release MalNet-Image,…
