Deep Learning Fusion For Effective Malware Detection: Leveraging Visual Features

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Johny, Jahez Abraham, P., Vinod, A., Asmitha K., Radhamani, G., A., Rafidha Rehiman K., Conti, Mauro
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Johny, Jahez Abraham
P., Vinod
A., Asmitha K.
Radhamani, G.
A., Rafidha Rehiman K.
Conti, Mauro
author_facet Johny, Jahez Abraham
P., Vinod
A., Asmitha K.
Radhamani, G.
A., Rafidha Rehiman K.
Conti, Mauro
contents Malware has become a formidable threat as it has been growing exponentially in number and sophistication, thus, it is imperative to have a solution that is easy to implement, reliable, and effective. While recent research has introduced deep learning multi-feature fusion algorithms, they lack a proper explanation. In this work, we investigate the power of fusing Convolutional Neural Network models trained on different modalities of a malware executable. We are proposing a novel multimodal fusion algorithm, leveraging three different visual malware features: Grayscale Image, Entropy Graph, and SimHash Image, with which we conducted exhaustive experiments independently on each feature and combinations of all three of them using fusion operators such as average, maximum, add, and concatenate for effective malware detection and classification. The proposed strategy has a detection rate of 1.00 (on a scale of 0-1) in identifying malware in the given dataset. We explained its interpretability with visualization techniques such as t-SNE and Grad-CAM. Experimental results show the model works even for a highly imbalanced dataset. We also assessed the effectiveness of the proposed method on obfuscated malware and achieved state-of-the-art results. The proposed methodology is more reliable as our findings prove VGG16 model can detect and classify malware in a matter of seconds in real-time.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_14311
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Deep Learning Fusion For Effective Malware Detection: Leveraging Visual Features
Johny, Jahez Abraham
P., Vinod
A., Asmitha K.
Radhamani, G.
A., Rafidha Rehiman K.
Conti, Mauro
Cryptography and Security
Malware has become a formidable threat as it has been growing exponentially in number and sophistication, thus, it is imperative to have a solution that is easy to implement, reliable, and effective. While recent research has introduced deep learning multi-feature fusion algorithms, they lack a proper explanation. In this work, we investigate the power of fusing Convolutional Neural Network models trained on different modalities of a malware executable. We are proposing a novel multimodal fusion algorithm, leveraging three different visual malware features: Grayscale Image, Entropy Graph, and SimHash Image, with which we conducted exhaustive experiments independently on each feature and combinations of all three of them using fusion operators such as average, maximum, add, and concatenate for effective malware detection and classification. The proposed strategy has a detection rate of 1.00 (on a scale of 0-1) in identifying malware in the given dataset. We explained its interpretability with visualization techniques such as t-SNE and Grad-CAM. Experimental results show the model works even for a highly imbalanced dataset. We also assessed the effectiveness of the proposed method on obfuscated malware and achieved state-of-the-art results. The proposed methodology is more reliable as our findings prove VGG16 model can detect and classify malware in a matter of seconds in real-time.
title Deep Learning Fusion For Effective Malware Detection: Leveraging Visual Features
topic Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.14311