Malware

Author(s):  
Steven Furnell ◽  
Jeremy Ward

In the two decades since its first significant appearance, malware has become the most prominent and costly threat to modern IT systems. This chapter examines the nature of malware evolution. It highlights that, as well as the more obvious development of propagation techniques, the nature of payload activities (and the related motivations of the malware creators) is also significantly changing, as is the ability of the malware to defeat defences. Having established the various facets of the threat, the discussion proceeds to consider appropriate strategies for malware detection and prevention, considering the role of modern antivirus software, and its use alongside other network security technologies to give more comprehensive protection. It is concluded that although malware is likely to remain a significant and ever-present threat, the risk and resultant impacts can be substantially mitigated by appropriate use of such safeguards.

2008 ◽  
pp. 4014-4037
Author(s):  
Steven Furnell ◽  
Jeremy Ward

In the two decades since its first significant appearance, malware has become the most prominent and costly threat to modern IT systems. This chapter examines the nature of malware evolution. It highlights that, as well as the more obvious development of propagation techniques, the nature of payload activities (and the related motivations of the malware creators) is also significantly changing, as is the ability of the malware to defeat defences. Having established the various facets of the threat, the discussion proceeds to consider appropriate strategies for malware detection and prevention, considering the role of modern antivirus software, and its use alongside other network security technologies to give more comprehensive protection. It is concluded that although malware is likely to remain a significant and ever-present threat, the risk and resultant impacts can be substantially mitigated by appropriate use of such safeguards.


Author(s):  
Steven Furnell ◽  
Jeremy Ward

In the two decades since its first significant appearance, malware has become the most prominent and costly threat to modern IT systems. This chapter examines the nature of malware evolution. It highlights that, as well as the more obvious development of propagation techniques, the nature of payload activities (and the related motivations of the malware creators) is also significantly changing, as is the ability of the malware to defeat defences. Having established the various facets of the threat, the discussion proceeds to consider appropriate strategies for malware detection and prevention, considering the role of modern antivirus software, and its use alongside other network security technologies to give more comprehensive protection. It is concluded that although malware is likely to remain a significant and ever-present threat, the risk and resultant impacts can be substantially mitigated by appropriate use of such safeguards.


Author(s):  
Gordon Moore ◽  
John A. Quelch ◽  
Emily Boudreau

Choice Matters: How Healthcare Consumers Make Decisions (and Why Clinicians and Managers Should Care) is a timely and thoughtful exploration of the controversial role of consumers in the U.S. healthcare system. In most markets today, consumers have more options and autonomy than ever before. Empowered consumers easily shop around for products and services that better meet their needs, and they widely share their reviews on social media to inform and influence other consumers. Businesses have responded with better experiences and prices to compete for consumers’ business. Though healthcare has lagged behind other industries in this respect, there is a rising tide of interest in consumer choice and empowerment in healthcare markets. However, most healthcare provider organizations, individual doctors, and health insurers are unprepared to consider patients as consumers. The authors draw upon the fields of medicine, marketing, management, psychology, and public policy as they take a substantive, in-depth look at consumer choice and point out its appropriate use, as well as its limitations. This book addresses perplexing issues, such as how healthcare differs from other consumer-driven markets, how consumers make healthcare decisions, and how increased consumer choice in healthcare can not only aid and empower American consumers but also improve the overall healthcare system.


Information ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 118
Author(s):  
Vassilios Moussas ◽  
Antonios Andreatos

Malware creators generate new malicious software samples by making minor changes in previously generated code, in order to reuse malicious code, as well as to go unnoticed from signature-based antivirus software. As a result, various families of variations of the same initial code exist today. Visualization of compiled executables for malware analysis has been proposed several years ago. Visualization can greatly assist malware classification and requires neither disassembly nor code execution. Moreover, new variations of known malware families are instantly detected, in contrast to traditional signature-based antivirus software. This paper addresses the problem of identifying variations of existing malware visualized as images. A new malware detection system based on a two-level Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is proposed. The classification is based on file and image features. The proposed system is tested on the ‘Malimg’ dataset consisting of the visual representation of well-known malware families. From this set some important image features are extracted. Based on these features, the ANN is trained. Then, this ANN is used to detect and classify other samples of the dataset. Malware families creating a confusion are classified by a second level of ANNs. The proposed two-level ANN method excels in simplicity, accuracy, and speed; it is easy to implement and fast to run, thus it can be applied to antivirus software, smart firewalls, web applications, etc.


Author(s):  
Muhammad Hammad Butt ◽  
Abrar Ahmad ◽  
Shahzadi Misbah ◽  
Tauqeer Hussain Mallhi ◽  
Yusra Habib Khan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 395
Author(s):  
Héctor D. Menéndez ◽  
David Clark ◽  
Earl T. Barr

Malware detection is in a coevolutionary arms race where the attackers and defenders are constantly seeking advantage. This arms race is asymmetric: detection is harder and more expensive than evasion. White hats must be conservative to avoid false positives when searching for malicious behaviour. We seek to redress this imbalance. Most of the time, black hats need only make incremental changes to evade them. On occasion, white hats make a disruptive move and find a new technique that forces black hats to work harder. Examples include system calls, signatures and machine learning. We present a method, called Hothouse, that combines simulation and search to accelerate the white hat’s ability to counter the black hat’s incremental moves, thereby forcing black hats to perform disruptive moves more often. To realise Hothouse, we evolve EEE, an entropy-based polymorphic packer for Windows executables. Playing the role of a black hat, EEE uses evolutionary computation to disrupt the creation of malware signatures. We enter EEE into the detection arms race with VirusTotal, the most prominent cloud service for running anti-virus tools on software. During our 6 month study, we continually improved EEE in response to VirusTotal, eventually learning a packer that produces packed malware whose evasiveness goes from an initial 51.8% median to 19.6%. We report both how well VirusTotal learns to detect EEE-packed binaries and how well VirusTotal forgets in order to reduce false positives. VirusTotal’s tools learn and forget fast, actually in about 3 days. We also show where VirusTotal focuses its detection efforts, by analysing EEE’s variants.


2013 ◽  
Vol 433-435 ◽  
pp. 1720-1723
Author(s):  
Jun Ruan ◽  
Pan Zhang ◽  
Hong Bi Ding

With the rapid development of computer network technology, global information has become mega-trend of modern social development. But due to all kinds of defects existing in the network itself and variety and openness of network interconnection form, network security has become the focus of social attention. So in this paper, a lot of current advanced network security technologies and products are used in order to make network security, which is under the general principles of network security situation.


2015 ◽  
Vol 795 ◽  
pp. 24-30
Author(s):  
Andrzej Chluski ◽  
Dorota Jelonek ◽  
Cezary Stępniak ◽  
Tomasz Turek ◽  
Leszek Ziora

In the contemporary economy the more and more greater role is played by state and local government institutions. Offices of public administration not only create law, but more and more often become initiators of the different type of investments undertaken on the ground of their jurisdiction. Often neighbouring administrative units begin to compete between themselves in gaining of investments and resources for the purpose of its own development. In the functionality of mentioned offices the greater role is performed by IT systems building the architecture of a given unit, clearly expressed among other things in the idea of intelligent city. Applied by offices of public administration IT systems are more often opened for suppliants creating e-government tools [1]. In this paper was presented the role of e-government tools in the business activation of the region on the basis of IT systems made available by Czestochowa Municipal Office. The review of potential directions of the e-government tools usage in different areas of social-economic life of the city will be presented


2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 209-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Subir Roy ◽  
James C. Caillouette ◽  
Joel S. Faden ◽  
Tapon Roy ◽  
Diana E. Ramos

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. p77
Author(s):  
Parisa Barkhodari

This study investigated the Relationship between Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge and Semantic Set in Iranian EFL Learners’ Vocabulary Used in Writing. The purpose of this study was to see the role of depth of vocabulary knowledge in making appropriate choices among words in a semantic set in EFL learners’ writing performance. 70 lower-intermediate and upper-intermediate learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) from the language learners of English institute in Bandar Abbas, Iran participated in this study. Instruments for the data collection include Word Association Test (WAT), Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS), and four writing tests. In the first phase, using MANOVA statistical procedure for data analysis, the role of depth of vocabulary knowledge in writing performance and appropriate use of words in a semantic set in overall writing quality was investigated. The second part of the study attempted to explore the role of appropriate use of words in a semantic set in the participants’ overall writing performance using independent sample t-test. Finally, attempts were made to identify the role of depth of vocabulary knowledge and appropriate use of words in a semantic set in the overall use of words in the participants’ writings using a two-way ANOVA as the data analysis technique. The results of the data analysis provided empirical evidence supporting that: a) depth of vocabulary knowledge played a fundamental role in appropriate use of words in a semantic set in lower-intermediate level but not in upper-intermediate level, b) depth of vocabulary knowledge has a significant role in overall writing performance only in upper-intermediate level, c) using words appropriately in a semantic set played a significant role in writing performance of the lower-intermediate participants, while the opposite was revealed for the upper-intermediate group, d) the upper-intermediate learners could benefit from their knowledge of depth of vocabulary in using words, in general, correctly and appropriately. The findings promise some pedagogical implications for vocabulary and writing curriculum development, material development, and course designing.


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