Real-Time Malware Process Detection and Automated Process Killing

Perimeter-based detection is no longer sufficient for mitigating the threat posed by malicious software. This is evident as antivirus (AV) products are replaced by endpoint detection and response (EDR) products, the latter allowing visibility into live machine activity rather than relying on the AV to filter out malicious artefacts. This paper argues that detecting malware in real-time on an endpoint necessitates an automated response due to the rapid and destructive nature of some malware. The proposed model uses statistical filtering on top of a machine learning dynamic behavioural malware detection model in order to detect individual malicious processes on the fly and kill those which are deemed malicious. In an experiment to measure the tangible impact of this system, we find that fast-acting ransomware is prevented from corrupting 92% of files with a false positive rate of 14%. Whilst the false-positive rate currently remains too high to adopt this approach as-is, these initial results demonstrate the need for a detection model that is able to act within seconds of the malware execution beginning; a timescale that has not been addressed by previous work.

Our increasingly digitised world broadens both the opportunities and motivations for cyberattacks, which can have devastating social and financial consequences [1]. Malicious software (malware) is one of the most commonly used vectors to propagate malicious activity and exploit code vulnerabilities.

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