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Detecting disguised processes using Application-Behaviour Profiling

Supervisors

Suitable for

MSc in Advanced Computer Science

Abstract

In order to avoid detection, malware can disguise itself as a legitimate program or hijack system processes to reach its goals. Commonly used signature-based Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) struggle to distinguish between these processes and are thus only of limited use to detect these kind of attacks. They also have the shortcoming that they need to be updated frequently to possess the latest malware definitions. This makes them inherently prone to missing novel attacks. Misuse detection IDSs however overcome this problem by maintaining a ground truth of normal application behaviour and reporting deviations as anomalies. In this project, students will be tasked to investigate how a process’ behaviours can be profiled in the attempt to identify whether it is behaving anomalously and if it can be correctly identified as malware. This project will build on existing research in this area.

Requirements: Programming skills required.