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Abstract

Ransomware poses a significant threat to Android devices, presenting a pressing concern in the realm of malware. While there has been extensive research on malware detection, distinguishing between various malware categories remains a challenge. Notably, ransomware often disguises its behavior to resemble less harmful forms of malware like adware, evading conventional security measures. Therefore, there is a critical need for advanced malware category detection techniques to elucidate specific behaviors unique to each malware type and bolster detection efficacy. This paper aims to enhance Android ransomware detection by investigating the optimal combination of static features (such as permissions, intents, and API calls) and dynamic features (captured from network traffic flow) that contribute to minimize false negatives when applying supervised machine learning classification. Our research also aims to discern the pivotal features essential for accurate ransomware detection. To this end, we propose a model integrating feature selection techniques and employing various machine learning classifiers, including decision trees, k-nearest neighbors, random forest, gradient boosting, and bagging. The model was implemented in Python, and its evaluation was conducted with and without k-fold validation to offer a broader range of explored behaviours. Our findings highlight the efficacy of combining network-Permission and network-API features, exhibiting superior ransomware detection rates compared to other feature combinations. Moreover, our model achieved recall scores of 99.2 and 97% before and after employing cross-validation, respectively. We also identified 6 API features, 27 network features, and 18 permission features as the most useful ones for ransomware detection in Android.

Details

Business indexing term
Title
Enhancing Android Ransomware Detection Using an Ensemble Machine Learning Classifier
Publication title
Volume
50
Issue
8
Pages
562-576
Publication year
2024
Publication date
Dec 2024
Publisher
Springer Nature B.V.
Place of publication
New York
Country of publication
Netherlands
ISSN
03617688
e-ISSN
16083261
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
Document type
Journal Article
Publication history
 
 
Online publication date
2025-01-12
Milestone dates
2025-01-05 (Registration); 2024-05-03 (Received); 2024-09-12 (Accepted); 2024-09-02 (Rev-Recd)
Publication history
 
 
   First posting date
12 Jan 2025
ProQuest document ID
3154524532
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/enhancing-android-ransomware-detection-using/docview/3154524532/se-2?accountid=208611
Copyright
Copyright Springer Nature B.V. Dec 2024
Last updated
2025-01-13
Database
ProQuest One Academic