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Related papers: On Training Robust PDF Malware Classifiers

200 papers

Machine learning-based static malware detectors remain vulnerable to adversarial evasion techniques, such as metamorphic engine mutations. To address this vulnerability, we propose a certifiably robust malware detection framework based on…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-04-23 Nandakrishna Giri , Asmitha K. A. , Serena Nicolazzo , Antonino Nocera , Vinod P

Malicious PDF documents present a serious threat to various security organizations that require modern threat intelligence platforms to effectively analyze and characterize the identity and behavior of PDF malware. State-of-the-art…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-11-09 Tajuddin Manhar Mohammed , Lakshmanan Nataraj , Satish Chikkagoudar , Shivkumar Chandrasekaran , B. S. Manjunath

While machine-learning algorithms have demonstrated a strong ability in detecting Android malware, they can be evaded by sparse evasion attacks crafted by injecting a small set of fake components, e.g., permissions and system calls, without…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-28 Marco Melis , Michele Scalas , Ambra Demontis , Davide Maiorca , Battista Biggio , Giorgio Giacinto , Fabio Roli

Machine learning has proven to be a useful tool for automated malware detection, but machine learning models have also been shown to be vulnerable to adversarial attacks. This article addresses the problem of generating adversarial malware…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-04-09 Pavla Louthánová , Matouš Kozák , Martin Jureček , Mark Stamp

Malicious domains are increasingly common and pose a severe cybersecurity threat. Specifically, many types of current cyber attacks use URLs for attack communications (e.g., C\&C, phishing, and spear-phishing). Despite the continuous…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2020-06-03 Chen Hajaj , Nitay Hason , Nissim Harel , Amit Dvir

Machine Learning (ML) models have been utilized for malware detection for over two decades. Consequently, this ignited an ongoing arms race between malware authors and antivirus systems, compelling researchers to propose defenses for…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-10-04 Shoumik Saha , Wenxiao Wang , Yigitcan Kaya , Soheil Feizi , Tudor Dumitras

Malware analysis involves analyzing suspicious software to detect malicious payloads. Static malware analysis, which does not require software execution, relies increasingly on machine learning techniques to achieve scalability. Although…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-08-15 Pierre-Francois Gimenez , Sarath Sivaprasad , Mario Fritz

In malware behavioral analysis, the list of accessed and created files very often indicates whether the examined file is malicious or benign. However, malware authors are trying to avoid detection by generating random filenames and/or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-26 Marek Galovic , Branislav Bosansky , Viliam Lisy

The use of Machine Learning has become a significant part of malware detection efforts due to the influx of new malware, an ever changing threat landscape, and the ability of Machine Learning methods to discover meaningful distinctions…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-06-16 John Boutsikas , Maksim E. Eren , Charles Varga , Edward Raff , Cynthia Matuszek , Charles Nicholas

Machine learning is becoming increasingly popular as a go-to approach for many tasks due to its world-class results. As a result, antivirus developers are incorporating machine learning models into their products. While these models improve…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-03-19 Matouš Kozák , Martin Jureček , Mark Stamp , Fabio Di Troia

Malware is constantly adapting in order to avoid detection. Model based malware detectors, such as SVM and neural networks, are vulnerable to so-called adversarial examples which are modest changes to detectable malware that allows the…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2018-03-28 Abdullah Al-Dujaili , Alex Huang , Erik Hemberg , Una-May O'Reilly

We present a new algorithm to train a robust malware detector. Modern malware detectors rely on machine learning algorithms. Now, the adversarial objective is to devise alterations to the malware code to decrease the chance of being…

Classifier evasion consists in finding for a given instance $x$ the nearest instance $x'$ such that the classifier predictions of $x$ and $x'$ are different. We present two novel algorithms for systematically computing evasions for tree…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-05-30 Alex Kantchelian , J. D. Tygar , Anthony D. Joseph

Making learners robust to adversarial perturbation at test time (i.e., evasion attacks) or training time (i.e., poisoning attacks) has emerged as a challenging task. It is known that for some natural settings, sublinear perturbations in the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-11-07 Saeed Mahloujifar , Mohammad Mahmoody

Traditional classification algorithms assume that training and test data come from similar distributions. This assumption is violated in adversarial settings, where malicious actors modify instances to evade detection. A number of custom…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-11-29 Bo Li , Yevgeniy Vorobeychik , Xinyun Chen

Malware continues to be a major cyber threat, despite the tremendous effort that has been made to combat them. The number of malware in the wild steadily increases over time, meaning that we must resort to automated defense techniques. This…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2020-09-17 Deqiang Li , Qianmu Li , Yanfang Ye , Shouhuai Xu

Machine Learning (ML) techniques can facilitate the automation of malicious software (malware for short) detection, but suffer from evasion attacks. Many studies counter such attacks in heuristic manners, lacking theoretical guarantees and…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-04-07 Deqiang Li , Shicheng Cui , Yun Li , Jia Xu , Fu Xiao , Shouhuai Xu

As machine-learning (ML) based systems for malware detection become more prevalent, it becomes necessary to quantify the benefits compared to the more traditional anti-virus (AV) systems widely used today. It is not practical to build an…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2018-06-14 William Fleshman , Edward Raff , Richard Zak , Mark McLean , Charles Nicholas

Deep learning has emerged as a powerful approach for malware detection, demonstrating impressive accuracy across various data representations. However, these models face critical limitations in real-world, non-stationary environments where…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-04-24 Pawan Acharya , Lan Zhang

Machine learning algorithms, however effective, are known to be vulnerable in adversarial scenarios where a malicious user may inject manipulated instances. In this work we focus on evasion attacks, where a model is trained in a safe…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-08 Stefano Calzavara , Claudio Lucchese , Federico Marcuzzi , Salvatore Orlando