Malware Secrets: De-Obfuscating in the Cloud
Arsh Arora, Thomas Stallings, Ragib Hasan, Gary Warner · 2017
Malicious software, universally known as malware, is typically used to cause disruption as it tries to steal sensitive information such as passwords, credit card numbers and other pertinent information. Malware infections have increased tremendously over the last decade. Recent reports indicate that around 70% of malware infections go undetected by the antivirus software. The infections that remain undetected fall into the category of zero-day malware, which is defined as malware that is new and is essentially an undiscovered and undisclosed threat. Furthermore, its substructure or the functioning has not been understood, and no signatures have been defined to distinguish the zero-day malware from others. Moreover, an average enterprise receives 17,000 malware alerts per week, and if 70% goes undetected, then one is certain to be infected by the zero-day malware every week. Therefore, the low detection rates and increasing vulnerabilities have created an unmet need for the researchers to try and develop an algorithm that will help in timely and efficient detection of malware. Moreover, in our approach researchers used the cloud for malware detection, which is a safe, cost-effective and user-friendly environment.