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Effective methods to detect metamorphic malware: a systematic review

  • Mustafa Irshad
    ,
  • Haider Al-Khateeb
    ,
  • Ali Mansour
    ,
  • Moses Ashawa
    ,
  • Muhammad Hamisu
Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Abstract

The succeeding code for metamorphic malware is routinely rewritten to remain stealthy and undetected within infected environments. This characteristic is maintained by means of encryption and decryption methods, obfuscation through garbage code insertion, code transformation and registry modification which makes detection very challenging. The main objective of this study is to contribute an evidence-based narrative demonstrating the effectiveness of recent proposals. 16 primary studies were included in this analysis based on a pre-defined protocol. The majority of the reviewed detection methods used Opcode, control flow graph (CFG) and API call graph. Key challenges facing the detection of metamorphic malware include code obfuscation, lack of dynamic capabilities to analyse code and application difficulty. Methods were further analysed on the basis of their approach, limitation, empirical evidence and key parameters such as dataset, detection rate (DR) and false positive rate (FPR).

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 138-154

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics (Volume 10, Issue 2)

Publication milestones

  • Published - 12/04/2018

Publication status

Published - 12/04/2018

ISSN

1751-911X

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/623829
  • Scopus: 85045453656

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