3,037 research outputs found
Advanced Techniques to Detect Complex Android Malware
Android is currently the most popular operating system for mobile devices in the world. However, its openness is the main reason for the majority of malware to be targeting Android devices. Various approaches have been developed to detect malware.
Unfortunately, new breeds of malware utilize sophisticated techniques to defeat malware detectors. For example, to defeat signature-based detectors, malware authors change the malware’s signatures to avoid detection. As such, a more effective approach to detect malware is by leveraging malware’s behavioral characteristics. However, if a behavior-based detector is based on static analysis, its reported results may contain a large number of false positives. In real-world usage, completing static analysis within a short time budget can also be challenging.
Because of the time constraint, analysts adopt approaches based on dynamic analyses to detect malware. However, dynamic analysis is inherently unsound as it only reports analysis results of the executed paths. Besides, recently discovered malware also employs structure-changing obfuscation techniques to evade detection by state-of-the-art systems. Obfuscation allows malware authors to redistribute known malware samples by changing their structures. These factors motivate a need for malware detection systems that are efficient, effective, and resilient when faced with such evasive tactics.
In this dissertation, we describe the developments of three malware detection systems to detect complex malware: DroidClassifier, GranDroid, and Obfusifier. DroidClassifier is a systematic framework for classifying network traffic generated by mobile malware. GranDroid is a graph-based malware detection system that combines dynamic analysis, incremental and partial static analysis, and machine learning to provide time-sensitive malicious network behavior detection with high accuracy. Obfusifier is a highly effective machine-learning-based malware detection system that can sustain its effectiveness even when malware authors obfuscate these malicious apps using complex and composite techniques.
Our empirical evaluations reveal that DroidClassifier can successfully identify different families of malware with 94.33% accuracy on average. We have also shown GranDroid is quite effective in detecting network-related malware. It achieves 93.0% accuracy, which outperforms other related systems. Lastly, we demonstrate that Obfusifier can achieve 95% precision, recall, and F-measure, collaborating its resilience to complex obfuscation techniques.
Adviser: Qiben Yan and Witawas Srisa-a
The Dark Side(-Channel) of Mobile Devices: A Survey on Network Traffic Analysis
In recent years, mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets) have met an
increasing commercial success and have become a fundamental element of the
everyday life for billions of people all around the world. Mobile devices are
used not only for traditional communication activities (e.g., voice calls and
messages) but also for more advanced tasks made possible by an enormous amount
of multi-purpose applications (e.g., finance, gaming, and shopping). As a
result, those devices generate a significant network traffic (a consistent part
of the overall Internet traffic). For this reason, the research community has
been investigating security and privacy issues that are related to the network
traffic generated by mobile devices, which could be analyzed to obtain
information useful for a variety of goals (ranging from device security and
network optimization, to fine-grained user profiling).
In this paper, we review the works that contributed to the state of the art
of network traffic analysis targeting mobile devices. In particular, we present
a systematic classification of the works in the literature according to three
criteria: (i) the goal of the analysis; (ii) the point where the network
traffic is captured; and (iii) the targeted mobile platforms. In this survey,
we consider points of capturing such as Wi-Fi Access Points, software
simulation, and inside real mobile devices or emulators. For the surveyed
works, we review and compare analysis techniques, validation methods, and
achieved results. We also discuss possible countermeasures, challenges and
possible directions for future research on mobile traffic analysis and other
emerging domains (e.g., Internet of Things). We believe our survey will be a
reference work for researchers and practitioners in this research field.Comment: 55 page
R2-D2: ColoR-inspired Convolutional NeuRal Network (CNN)-based AndroiD Malware Detections
The influence of Deep Learning on image identification and natural language
processing has attracted enormous attention globally. The convolution neural
network that can learn without prior extraction of features fits well in
response to the rapid iteration of Android malware. The traditional solution
for detecting Android malware requires continuous learning through
pre-extracted features to maintain high performance of identifying the malware.
In order to reduce the manpower of feature engineering prior to the condition
of not to extract pre-selected features, we have developed a coloR-inspired
convolutional neuRal networks (CNN)-based AndroiD malware Detection (R2-D2)
system. The system can convert the bytecode of classes.dex from Android archive
file to rgb color code and store it as a color image with fixed size. The color
image is input to the convolutional neural network for automatic feature
extraction and training. The data was collected from Jan. 2017 to Aug 2017.
During the period of time, we have collected approximately 2 million of benign
and malicious Android apps for our experiments with the help from our research
partner Leopard Mobile Inc. Our experiment results demonstrate that the
proposed system has accurate security analysis on contracts. Furthermore, we
keep our research results and experiment materials on http://R2D2.TWMAN.ORG.Comment: Verison 2018/11/15, IEEE BigData 2018, Seattle, WA, USA, Dec 10-13,
2018. (Accepted
NEMESYS: Enhanced Network Security for Seamless Service Provisioning in the Smart Mobile Ecosystem
As a consequence of the growing popularity of smart mobile devices, mobile
malware is clearly on the rise, with attackers targeting valuable user
information and exploiting vulnerabilities of the mobile ecosystems. With the
emergence of large-scale mobile botnets, smartphones can also be used to launch
attacks on mobile networks. The NEMESYS project will develop novel security
technologies for seamless service provisioning in the smart mobile ecosystem,
and improve mobile network security through better understanding of the threat
landscape. NEMESYS will gather and analyze information about the nature of
cyber-attacks targeting mobile users and the mobile network so that appropriate
counter-measures can be taken. We will develop a data collection infrastructure
that incorporates virtualized mobile honeypots and a honeyclient, to gather,
detect and provide early warning of mobile attacks and better understand the
modus operandi of cyber-criminals that target mobile devices. By correlating
the extracted information with the known patterns of attacks from wireline
networks, we will reveal and identify trends in the way that cyber-criminals
launch attacks against mobile devices.Comment: Accepted for publication in Proceedings of the 28th International
Symposium on Computer and Information Sciences (ISCIS'13); 9 pages; 1 figur
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