Efficient and interpretable real-time malware detection using random-forest

Mills, Alan; Spyridopoulos, Theodoros; Legg, Phil

Abstract

© 2019 IEEE. Malicious software, often described as malware, is one of the greatest threats to modern computer systems, and attackers continue to develop more sophisticated methods to access and compromise data and resources. Machine learning methods have potential to improve malware detection both in terms of accuracy and detection runtime, and is an active area within academic research and commercial development. Whilst the majority of research focused on improving accuracy and runtime of these systems, to date there has been little focus on the interpretability of detection results. In this paper, we propose a lightweight malware detection system called NODENS that can be deployed on affordable hardware such as a Raspberry Pi. Crucially, NODENS provides transparency of output results so that an end-user can begin to examine why the classifier believes a software sample to be either malicious or benign. Using an efficient Random-Forest approach, our system provides interpretability whilst not sacrificing accuracy or detection runtime, with an average detection speed of between 3-8 seconds, allowing for early remedial action to be taken before damage is caused.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: 2019 International Conference on Cyber Situational Awareness, Data Analytics and Assessment, Cyber SA 2019
• Start Date: Jun 3, 2019
• End Date: Jun 4, 2019
• Acceptance Date: Mar 26, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Jun 4, 2019
• Publication Date: Jun 1, 2019
• Deposit Date: Apr 4, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 4, 2019
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• ISBN: 9781728102320
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/CyberSA.2019.8899533
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/846193
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1109/CyberSA.2019.8899533
• Contract Date: Apr 4, 2019