Online Clustering of Known and Emerging Malware Families

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Hauptverfasser: Jurečková, Olha, Jureček, Martin, Stamp, Mark
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Jurečková, Olha
Jureček, Martin
Stamp, Mark
author_facet Jurečková, Olha
Jureček, Martin
Stamp, Mark
contents Malware attacks have become significantly more frequent and sophisticated in recent years. Therefore, malware detection and classification are critical components of information security. Due to the large amount of malware samples available, it is essential to categorize malware samples according to their malicious characteristics. Clustering algorithms are thus becoming more widely used in computer security to analyze the behavior of malware variants and discover new malware families. Online clustering algorithms help us to understand malware behavior and produce a quicker response to new threats. This paper introduces a novel machine learning-based model for the online clustering of malicious samples into malware families. Streaming data is divided according to the clustering decision rule into samples from known and new emerging malware families. The streaming data is classified using the weighted k-nearest neighbor classifier into known families, and the online k-means algorithm clusters the remaining streaming data and achieves a purity of clusters from 90.20% for four clusters to 93.34% for ten clusters. This work is based on static analysis of portable executable files for the Windows operating system. Experimental results indicate that the proposed online clustering model can create high-purity clusters corresponding to malware families. This allows malware analysts to receive similar malware samples, speeding up their analysis.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_03298
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Online Clustering of Known and Emerging Malware Families
Jurečková, Olha
Jureček, Martin
Stamp, Mark
Cryptography and Security
Machine Learning
Malware attacks have become significantly more frequent and sophisticated in recent years. Therefore, malware detection and classification are critical components of information security. Due to the large amount of malware samples available, it is essential to categorize malware samples according to their malicious characteristics. Clustering algorithms are thus becoming more widely used in computer security to analyze the behavior of malware variants and discover new malware families. Online clustering algorithms help us to understand malware behavior and produce a quicker response to new threats. This paper introduces a novel machine learning-based model for the online clustering of malicious samples into malware families. Streaming data is divided according to the clustering decision rule into samples from known and new emerging malware families. The streaming data is classified using the weighted k-nearest neighbor classifier into known families, and the online k-means algorithm clusters the remaining streaming data and achieves a purity of clusters from 90.20% for four clusters to 93.34% for ten clusters. This work is based on static analysis of portable executable files for the Windows operating system. Experimental results indicate that the proposed online clustering model can create high-purity clusters corresponding to malware families. This allows malware analysts to receive similar malware samples, speeding up their analysis.
title Online Clustering of Known and Emerging Malware Families
topic Cryptography and Security
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.03298