Empowering anti-malware research in Japan by sharing the MWS datasets

Abstract

Substantial research has been conducted to develop proactive and reactive countermeasures against malware threats. Gathering and analyzing data are widely accepted approaches for accelerating the research towards understanding malware threats. However, collecting useful data is not an easy task for individuals or new researchers owing to several technical barriers, such as conducting honeypot operations securely. The anti-Malware engineering WorkShop (MWS) was organized in 2008 to fill this gap; since then, we have shared datasets that are useful for accelerating the data-driven anti-malware research in Japan. This paper provides the definitive collection of the MWS Datasets that are a collection of different datasets for use in anti-malware research. We also report the effectiveness of the MWS Datasets from the viewpoint of published research papers and how to empower some of the papers by using the MWS Datasets. Furthermore, our discussion about issues of the MWS Datasets reveal the future directions for accelerating anti-malware research from the perspectives of dataset collection activity and dataset use activity.