SHIELD: A Host-Independent Framework for Ransomware Detection using Deep Filesystem Features

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Raz, Md, Putrevu, Venkata Sai Charan, Krishnamurthy, Prashanth, Khorrami, Farshad, Karri, Ramesh
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Raz, Md
Putrevu, Venkata Sai Charan
Krishnamurthy, Prashanth
Khorrami, Farshad
Karri, Ramesh
author_facet Raz, Md
Putrevu, Venkata Sai Charan
Krishnamurthy, Prashanth
Khorrami, Farshad
Karri, Ramesh
contents Ransomware's escalating sophistication necessitates tamper-resistant, off-host detection solutions that capture deep disk activity beyond the reach of a compromised operating system. Existing detection systems use host/kernel signals or rely on coarse block-I/O statistics, which are easy to evade and miss filesystem semantics. The filesystem layer itself remains underexplored as a source of robust indicators for storage-controller-level defense. To address this, we present SHIELD: a Secure Host-Independent Extensible Metric Logging Framework for Tamper-Proof Detection and Real-Time Mitigation of Ransomware Threats. SHIELD parses and logs filesystem-level features that cannot be evaded or obfuscated to expose deep disk activity for real-time ML-based detection and mitigation. We evaluate the efficacy of these metrics through experiments with both binary (benign vs. malicious behavior) and multiclass (ransomware strain identification) classifiers. In evaluations across diverse ransomware families, the best binary classifier achieves 97.29% accuracy in identifying malicious disk behavior. A hardware-only feature set that excludes all transport-layer metrics retains 95.97% accuracy, confirming feasibility for FPGA/ASIC deployment within the storage controller datapath. In a proof-of-concept closed-loop deployment, SHIELD halts disk operations within tens of disk actions, limiting targeted files affected to <0.4% for zero-shot strains at small action-windows, while maintaining low false-positive rates (<3.6%) on unseen benign applications. Results demonstrate that filesystem-aware, off-host telemetry enables accurate, resilient ransomware detection, including intermittent/partial encryption, and is practical for embedded integration in storage controllers or alongside other defense mechanisms.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_16619
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SHIELD: A Host-Independent Framework for Ransomware Detection using Deep Filesystem Features
Raz, Md
Putrevu, Venkata Sai Charan
Krishnamurthy, Prashanth
Khorrami, Farshad
Karri, Ramesh
Cryptography and Security
Systems and Control
Ransomware's escalating sophistication necessitates tamper-resistant, off-host detection solutions that capture deep disk activity beyond the reach of a compromised operating system. Existing detection systems use host/kernel signals or rely on coarse block-I/O statistics, which are easy to evade and miss filesystem semantics. The filesystem layer itself remains underexplored as a source of robust indicators for storage-controller-level defense. To address this, we present SHIELD: a Secure Host-Independent Extensible Metric Logging Framework for Tamper-Proof Detection and Real-Time Mitigation of Ransomware Threats. SHIELD parses and logs filesystem-level features that cannot be evaded or obfuscated to expose deep disk activity for real-time ML-based detection and mitigation. We evaluate the efficacy of these metrics through experiments with both binary (benign vs. malicious behavior) and multiclass (ransomware strain identification) classifiers. In evaluations across diverse ransomware families, the best binary classifier achieves 97.29% accuracy in identifying malicious disk behavior. A hardware-only feature set that excludes all transport-layer metrics retains 95.97% accuracy, confirming feasibility for FPGA/ASIC deployment within the storage controller datapath. In a proof-of-concept closed-loop deployment, SHIELD halts disk operations within tens of disk actions, limiting targeted files affected to <0.4% for zero-shot strains at small action-windows, while maintaining low false-positive rates (<3.6%) on unseen benign applications. Results demonstrate that filesystem-aware, off-host telemetry enables accurate, resilient ransomware detection, including intermittent/partial encryption, and is practical for embedded integration in storage controllers or alongside other defense mechanisms.
title SHIELD: A Host-Independent Framework for Ransomware Detection using Deep Filesystem Features
topic Cryptography and Security
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.16619