Muhammad Sibtain¹, Mehdi Hussain^1,*, Qaiser Riaz¹, Sana Qadir¹, Naveed Riaz¹, Ki-Hyun Jung^2,*

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.84, No.3, pp. 5177-5199, 2025, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2025.066198 - 30 July 2025

Abstract Ransomware is malware that encrypts data without permission, demanding payment for access. Detecting ransomware on Android platforms is challenging due to evolving malicious techniques and diverse application behaviors. Traditional methods, such as static and dynamic analysis, suffer from polymorphism, code obfuscation, and high resource demands. This paper introduces a multi-stage approach to enhance behavioral analysis for Android ransomware detection, focusing on a reduced set of distinguishing features. The approach includes ransomware app collection, behavioral profile generation, dataset creation, feature identification, reduction, and classification. Experiments were conducted on ∼3300 Android-based ransomware samples, despite the challenges posed… More >

Atif Raza Zaidi¹, Tahir Abbas^1,*, Ali Daud^2,*, Omar Alghushairy³, Hussain Dawood⁴, Nadeem Sarwar⁵

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.84, No.2, pp. 3281-3304, 2025, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2025.063646 - 03 July 2025

Abstract Safeguarding against malware requires precise machine-learning algorithms to classify harmful apps. The Drebin dataset of 15,036 samples and 215 features yielded significant and reliable results for two hybrid models, CNN + XGBoost and KNN + XGBoost. To address the class imbalance issue, SMOTE (Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique) was used to preprocess the dataset, creating synthetic samples of the minority class (malware) to balance the training set. XGBoost was then used to choose the most essential features for separating malware from benign programs. The models were trained and tested using 6-fold cross-validation, measuring accuracy, precision, recall,… More >

Amel Ksibi^1,*, Mohammed Zakariah², Latifah Almuqren¹, Ala Saleh Alluhaidan¹

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.82, No.3, pp. 4093-4116, 2025, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2025.059615 - 06 March 2025

Abstract The analysis of Android malware shows that this threat is constantly increasing and is a real threat to mobile devices since traditional approaches, such as signature-based detection, are no longer effective due to the continuously advancing level of sophistication. To resolve this problem, efficient and flexible malware detection tools are needed. This work examines the possibility of employing deep CNNs to detect Android malware by transforming network traffic into image data representations. Moreover, the dataset used in this study is the CIC-AndMal2017, which contains 20,000 instances of network traffic across five distinct malware categories: a.… More >

Manh Vu Minh^*, Cho Do Xuan

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.81, No.3, pp. 4371-4396, 2024, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2024.058168 - 19 December 2024

Abstract Detecting malware on mobile devices using the Android operating system has become a critical challenge in the field of cybersecurity, in the context of the rapid increase in the number of malware variants and the frequency of attacks targeting Android devices. In this paper, we propose a novel intelligent computational method to enhance the effectiveness of Android malware detection models. The proposed method combines two main techniques: (1) constructing a malware behavior profile and (2) extracting features from the malware behavior profile using graph neural networks. Specifically, to effectively construct an Android malware behavior profile,… More >

Mohammad Ababneh^*, Ayat Al-Droos, Ammar El-Hassan

Computer Systems Science and Engineering, Vol.48, No.5, pp. 1171-1191, 2024, DOI:10.32604/csse.2024.052875 - 13 September 2024

Abstract With the high level of proliferation of connected mobile devices, the risk of intrusion becomes higher. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms started to feature in protection software and showed effective results. These algorithms are nonetheless hindered by the lack of rich datasets and compounded by the appearance of new categories of malware such that the race between attackers’ malware, especially with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence tools and protection solutions makes these systems and frameworks lose effectiveness quickly. In this article, we present a framework for mobile malware detection based on a… More >

Abdallah Ghourabi^*

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.80, No.2, pp. 2743-2760, 2024, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2024.053163 - 15 August 2024

Abstract The dominance of Android in the global mobile market and the open development characteristics of this platform have resulted in a significant increase in malware. These malicious applications have become a serious concern to the security of Android systems. To address this problem, researchers have proposed several machine-learning models to detect and classify Android malware based on analyzing features extracted from Android samples. However, most existing studies have focused on the classification task and overlooked the feature selection process, which is crucial to reduce the training time and maintain or improve the classification results. The… More >

Jiawei Qin^1,2, Hua Zhang^1,*, Hanbing Yan², Tian Zhu², Song Hu¹, Dingyu Yan²

Intelligent Automation & Soft Computing, Vol.39, No.3, pp. 527-544, 2024, DOI:10.32604/iasc.2024.047509 - 11 July 2024

Abstract By the analysis of vulnerabilities of Android native system services, we find that some vulnerabilities are caused by inconsistent data transmission and inconsistent data processing logic between client and server. The existing research cannot find the above two types of vulnerabilities and the test cases of them face the problem of low coverage. In this paper, we propose an extraction method of test cases based on the native system services of the client and design a case construction method that supports multi-parameter mutation based on genetic algorithm and priority strategy. Based on the above method, More >

Ahsan Wajahat¹, Jingsha He¹, Nafei Zhu¹, Tariq Mahmood^2,3, Tanzila Saba², Amjad Rehman Khan², Faten S. Alamri^4,*

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.79, No.1, pp. 651-673, 2024, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2024.047530 - 25 April 2024

Abstract The growing usage of Android smartphones has led to a significant rise in incidents of Android malware and privacy breaches. This escalating security concern necessitates the development of advanced technologies capable of automatically detecting and mitigating malicious activities in Android applications (apps). Such technologies are crucial for safeguarding user data and maintaining the integrity of mobile devices in an increasingly digital world. Current methods employed to detect sensitive data leaks in Android apps are hampered by two major limitations they require substantial computational resources and are prone to a high frequency of false positives. This… More >

Rahul Gupta¹, Kapil Sharma^1,*, R. K. Garg²

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.78, No.3, pp. 4283-4301, 2024, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2024.046890 - 26 March 2024

Abstract The prevalence of smartphones is deeply embedded in modern society, impacting various aspects of our lives. Their versatility and functionalities have fundamentally changed how we communicate, work, seek entertainment, and access information. Among the many smartphones available, those operating on the Android platform dominate, being the most widely used type. This widespread adoption of the Android OS has significantly contributed to increased malware attacks targeting the Android ecosystem in recent years. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop new methods for detecting Android malware. The literature contains numerous works related to Android malware detection.… More >

Mamona Arshad¹, Ahmad Karim¹, Salman Naseer², Shafiq Ahmad³, Mejdal Alqahtani³, Akber Abid Gardezi⁴, Muhammad Shafiq^5,*, Jin-Ghoo Choi⁵

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.77, No.2, pp. 2123-2135, 2023, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2022.028680 - 29 November 2023

Abstract The exponential growth in the development of smartphones and handheld devices is permeated due to everyday activities i.e., games applications, entertainment, online banking, social network sites, etc., and also allow the end users to perform a variety of activities. Because of activities, mobile devices attract cybercriminals to initiate an attack over a diverse range of malicious activities such as theft of unauthorized information, phishing, spamming, Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS), and malware dissemination. Botnet applications are a type of harmful attack that can be used to launch malicious activities and has become a significant threat… More >