Evasion of IoT Malware Detection via Dummy Code Injection

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Zargarzadeh, Sahar, Islam, Mohammad
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866914315365253120
author Zargarzadeh, Sahar
Islam, Mohammad
author_facet Zargarzadeh, Sahar
Islam, Mohammad
contents The Internet of Things (IoT) has revolutionized connectivity by linking billions of devices worldwide. However, this rapid expansion has also introduced severe security vulnerabilities, making IoT devices attractive targets for malware such as the Mirai botnet. Power side-channel analysis has recently emerged as a promising technique for detecting malware activity based on device power consumption patterns. However, the resilience of such detection systems under adversarial manipulation remains underexplored. This work presents a novel adversarial strategy against power side-channel-based malware detection. By injecting structured dummy code into the scanning phase of the Mirai botnet, we dynamically perturb power signatures to evade AI/ML-based anomaly detection without disrupting core functionality. Our approach systematically analyzes the trade-offs between stealthiness, execution overhead, and evasion effectiveness across multiple state-of-the-art models for side-channel analysis, using a custom dataset collected from smartphones of diverse manufacturers. Experimental results show that our adversarial modifications achieve an average attack success rate of 75.2\%, revealing practical vulnerabilities in power-based intrusion detection frameworks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_08170
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Evasion of IoT Malware Detection via Dummy Code Injection
Zargarzadeh, Sahar
Islam, Mohammad
Cryptography and Security
Machine Learning
The Internet of Things (IoT) has revolutionized connectivity by linking billions of devices worldwide. However, this rapid expansion has also introduced severe security vulnerabilities, making IoT devices attractive targets for malware such as the Mirai botnet. Power side-channel analysis has recently emerged as a promising technique for detecting malware activity based on device power consumption patterns. However, the resilience of such detection systems under adversarial manipulation remains underexplored. This work presents a novel adversarial strategy against power side-channel-based malware detection. By injecting structured dummy code into the scanning phase of the Mirai botnet, we dynamically perturb power signatures to evade AI/ML-based anomaly detection without disrupting core functionality. Our approach systematically analyzes the trade-offs between stealthiness, execution overhead, and evasion effectiveness across multiple state-of-the-art models for side-channel analysis, using a custom dataset collected from smartphones of diverse manufacturers. Experimental results show that our adversarial modifications achieve an average attack success rate of 75.2\%, revealing practical vulnerabilities in power-based intrusion detection frameworks.
title Evasion of IoT Malware Detection via Dummy Code Injection
topic Cryptography and Security
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.08170