TKRD: Trusted kernel rootkit detection for cybersecurity of VMs based on machine learning and memory forensic analysis

Xiao Wang; Jianbiao Zhang; Ai Zhang; Jinchang Ren; Xiao Wang; Jianbiao Zhang; Ai Zhang; Jinchang Ren

doi:10.3934/mbe.2019132

Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering

2019, Volume 16, Issue 4: 2650-2667. doi: 10.3934/mbe.2019132

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Research article Special Issues

TKRD: Trusted kernel rootkit detection for cybersecurity of VMs based on machine learning and memory forensic analysis

1.
Faculty of Information Technology, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing 100124, China
2.
Beijing Key Laboratory of Trusted Computing, Beijing 100124, China
3.
Department of Computer Science & Engineering, UC San Diego, CA, USA
4.
Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, U.K.

Received: 05 December 2018 Accepted: 13 March 2019 Published: 26 March 2019

The promotion of cloud computing makes the virtual machine (VM) increasingly a target of malware attacks in cybersecurity such as those by kernel rootkits. Memory forensic, which observes the malicious tracks from the memory aspect, is a useful way for malware detection. In this paper, we propose a novel TKRD method to automatically detect kernel rootkits in VMs from private cloud, by combining VM memory forensic analysis with bio-inspired machine learning technology. Malicious features are extracted from the memory dumps of the VM through memory forensic analysis method. Based on these features, various machine learning classifiers are trained including Decision tree, Rule based classifiers, Bayesian and Support vector machines (SVM). The experiment results show that the Random Forest classifier has the best performance which can effectively detect unknown kernel rootkits with an Accuracy of 0.986 and an AUC value (the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve) of 0.998.

Keywords:

Citation: Xiao Wang, Jianbiao Zhang, Ai Zhang, Jinchang Ren. TKRD: Trusted kernel rootkit detection for cybersecurity of VMs based on machine learning and memory forensic analysis[J]. Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering, 2019, 16(4): 2650-2667. doi: 10.3934/mbe.2019132

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Abstract

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