Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
AdStop: Efficient Flow-based Mobile Adware Detection using Machine Learning
Seneca College, Toronto, Canada.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3800-0757
Luleå University of Technology, Department of Computer Science, Electrical and Space Engineering, Digital Services and Systems. College of Information Technology, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain P.O. Box 17551, United Arab Emirates; Faculty of Engineering, Al-Azhar University, Qena P.O. Box 83513, Egypt; Centre for Security, Communications and Network Research, University of Plymouth, Plymouth PL4 8AA, UK.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3800-0757
2022 (English)In: Computers & Security, ISSN 0167-4048, E-ISSN 1872-6208, Vol. 117, article id 102718Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

In recent years, mobile devices have become commonly used not only for voice communications but also to play a major role in our daily activities. Accordingly, the number of mobile users and the number of mobile applications (apps) have increased exponentially. With a wide user base exceeding 2 billion users, Android is the most popular operating system worldwide, which makes it a frequent target for malicious actors. Adware is a form of malware that downloads and displays unwanted advertisements, which are often offensive and always unsolicited. This paper presents a machine learning-based system (AdStop) that detects Android adware by examining the features in the flow of network traffic. The design goals of AdStop are high accuracy, high speed, and good generalizability beyond the training dataset. A feature reduction stage was implemented to increase the accuracy of Adware detection and reduce the time overhead. The number of relevant features used in training was reduced from 79 to 13 to improve the efficiency and simplify the deployment of AdStop. In experiments, the tool had an accuracy of 98.02% with a false positive rate of 2% and a false negative rate of 1.9%. The time overhead was 5.54 s for training and 9.36 µs for a single instance in the testing phase. In tests, AdStop outperformed other methods described in the literature. It is an accurate and lightweight tool for detecting mobile adware.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Elsevier, 2022. Vol. 117, article id 102718
Keywords [en]
Mobile adware, Malware detection, Traffic flow, Machine learning, Feature engineering, Time efficiency
National Category
Computer Systems Computer Sciences
Research subject
Information Systems
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ltu:diva-90117DOI: 10.1016/j.cose.2022.102718ISI: 000797939000002Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85128191461OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ltu-90117DiVA, id: diva2:1650575
Note

Validerad;2022;Nivå 2;2022-04-20 (hanlid)

Available from: 2022-04-07 Created: 2022-04-07 Last updated: 2025-10-21Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Other links

Publisher's full textScopus

Authority records

Awad, Ali Ismail

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Alani, Mohammed M.Awad, Ali Ismail
By organisation
Digital Services and Systems
In the same journal
Computers & Security
Computer SystemsComputer Sciences

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

doi
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
urn-nbn
Total: 417 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf