MalDC: Malicious Software Detection and Classification using Machine Learning

Abstract

Recently, the importance and necessity of artificial intelligence (AI), especially machine learning, has been emphasized. In fact, studies are actively underway to solve complex and challenging problems through the use of AI systems, such as intelligent CCTVs, intelligent AI security systems, and AI surgical robots. Information security that involves analysis and response to security vulnerabilities of software is no exception to this and is recognized as one of the fields wherein significant results are expected when AI is applied. This is because the frequency of malware incidents is gradually increasing, and the available security technologies are limited with regard to the use of software security experts or source code analysis tools. We conducted a study on MalDC, a technique that converts malware into images using machine learning, MalDC showed good performance and was able to analyze and classify different types of malware. MalDC applies a preprocessing step to minimize the noise generated in the image conversion process and employs an image augmentation technique to reinforce the insufficient dataset, thus improving the accuracy of the malware classification. To verify the feasibility of our method, we tested the malware classification technique used by MalDC on a dataset provided by Microsoft and malware data collected by the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA). Consequently, an accuracy of 97% was achieved.