Static Analysis-based Detection of Android Malware using Machine Learning Algorithms

The increasing number of mobile devices using the Android operating system in the market makes these devices the first target for malicious applications. In recent years, several Android malware applications were developed to perform certain illegitimate activities and harmful actions on mobile devices. In response, specific tools and anti-virus programs used conventional signature-based methods in order to detect such Android malware applications. However, the most recent Android malware apps, such as zero-day, cannot be detected through conventional methods that are still based on fixed signatures or identifiers. Therefore, the most recently published research studies have suggested machine learning techniques as an alternative method to detect Android malware due to their ability to learn and use the existing information to detect the new Android malware apps. This paper presents the basic concepts of Android architecture, Android malware, and permission features utilized as effective malware predictors. Furthermore, a comprehensive review of the existing static, dynamic, and hybrid Android malware detection approaches is presented in this study. More significantly, this paper empirically discusses and compares the performances of six supervised machine learning algorithms, known as K-Nearest Neighbors (K-NN), Decision Tree (DT), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest (RF), Naïve Bayes (NB), and Logistic Regression (LR), which are commonly used in the literature for detecting malware apps.

In recent years, a significant amount of research has focused on analyzing the effectiveness of machine learning (ML) models for malware detection. These approaches have ranged from methods such as decision trees and clustering to more complex approaches like support vector machine (SVM) and deep neural networks. In particular, neural networks have proven to be very effective in detecting complex and advanced malware. This, however, comes with a caveat. Neural networks are notoriously complex. Therefore, the decisions that they make are often just accepted without questioning why the model made that specific decision. The black box characteristic of neural networks has challenged researchers to explore methods to explain black-box models such as SVM and neural networks and their decision-making process. Transparency and explainability give the experts and malware analysts assurance and trustworthiness about the ML models’ decisions. In addition, it helps in generating comprehensive reports that can be used to enhance cyber threat intelligence sharing. As such, this much needed analysis drives our work in this paper to explore the explainability and interpretability of ML models in the field of online malware detection. In this paper, we used the Shapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) explainability technique to achieve efficient performance in interpreting the outcome of different ML models such as SVM Linear, SVM-RBF (Radial Basis Function), Random Forest (RF), Feed-Forward Neural Net (FFNN), and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models trained on an online malware dataset. To explain the output of these models, explainability techniques such as KernalSHAP, TreeSHAP, and DeepSHAP are applied to the obtained results.

Alongside the recognition of the android operating system (OS), android malware is on the increase. Cybercriminals are using different techniques to develop malware for android devices. In addition, malware authors are trying to make malicious android applications that severely undermine the potential of traditional malware detectors. The key purpose of the chapter is to analyze and have a different appearance at various techniques of Android malware detection in a variety of research articles. However, this chapter presents an analysis of varied android malware detection approaches and comparing them to supported various parameters like detection technique, analysis method, features extracted and so on. The experiments are based on substantial malware datasets, evaluation parameters and this study employ a wide variety of machine learning techniques, including decision trees and random forests, support vector machines, logistic model trees, and artificial neural networks, also Deep learning techniques. It is a comparative analysis that should be useful in this field for researchers. The analysis shows, based on simple criteria, the similarities and differences in essential published research in addition to the accuracy. Thus, this chapter aims to study various android malware detection techniques and to identify plausible research directions. The findings showed that machine learning, with greater detection accuracy, is a more promising method. In order to achieve improved accuracy, future researchers can pursue a deep learning approach with the use of a large dataset.

Female Genital mutilation (FGM) has been associated with numerous negative health effects like sexual dysfunction, chronic pain, infections, infertility, and an increased risk of maternal mortality. To date, no recognized studies in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have combined machine learning (ML) models with nationally representative Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data to classify FGM. Therefore, this study aims to identify the most effective ML model for classifying FGM in SSA. ML offers the significant advantage of handling extremely large and complex datasets with numerous variables and interactions, providing more accurate classifications than conventional statistical methods. This study used secondary data from the DHS collected between 2015 and 2023 in 11 SSA countries. The DHS employs a cross-sectional study design. A total of 62,249 women who had at least one daughter were included in the analysis. Seven classification algorithms, including Logistic Regression, Decision Tree, Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM), K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), XGBoost (XGB), and Naive Bayes (NB), were used to classify FGM. The RF classifier yielded the highest performance, achieving 0.85 accuracy, 0.83 precision, 0.88 recall, 0.85 F1 score, and 0.93 AUC. Random Forest (Brier score = 0.1319) and Decision Tree (0.1328) showed best calibration. The SHAP plots provide a comprehensive interpretation of the features influencing the model's classification of whether a mother reports that at least one daughter has undergone FGM. The bar plot shows the global importance of each feature, with opinion on FGM (+ 0.14), country of residence (+ 0.13), respondent's circumcision status (+ 0.11), and religious justification for FGM (+ 0.07) contributing the most on average to the classification of FGM. This study applied seven machine ML techniques to classify FGM in SSA, with the Random Forest classifier demonstrating the best performance. SHAP interpretability findings indicated that maternal opinion on FGM, country of residence, religious justifications for FGM, and the respondent's circumcision status contributed most, on average, to the classification of FGM. These results suggest that education and advocacy efforts aimed at mothers particularly those who have had FGM themselves or who believe that the practice is justified by religion should be given top priority in interventions. Implementing community engagement initiatives that challenge accepted conventions and ideas around FGM may be particularly beneficial, especially when these practices are rooted in religious or cultural justifications.

In today’s digital world, Android phones play a vital part in a variety of facets of both professionals and individuals’ personal and professional lives. Android phones are great for getting things done faster and more organized. The proportionate increase in the number of malicious applications has also been seen to be expanding. Since the play store offers millions of apps, detection of malware apps is challenging task. In this paper, a methodology is introduced for detecting malware in Android applications through the utilization of global image shape transform (GIST) features extracted from grayscale images of the applications. The dataset comprises samples of both malware and benign apps collected from the virus share website. After converting the apps into grayscale images, GIST features are extracted to capture their global spatial layout. Various machine learning (ML) algorithms, such as logistic regression (LR), k-nearest neighbour (KNN), AdaBoost, decision tree (DT), Naïve Bayes (NB), random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), extra tree classifier (ETC), and gradient boosting (GB), are employed to classify the applications according to their GIST features. Furthermore, a feed forward neural network (FFNN) is utilized as a deep learning (DL) technique to further improve the accuracy of classification. The performance of each algorithm is evaluated using metrics such as accuracy, precision and recall. The results demonstrated that the FFNN achieves superior accuracy compared to traditional ML classifiers, indicating its effectiveness in detecting malware in Android apps.

Over the past few years, Android Application is deemed as one of the fastest-growing technology areas. On the other hand, the rapid growth of android applications also increases the security threats for Android users in the form of malware. Malware hacks the personal information of a user and exploits it in different criminal activities. To date, various studies have been conducted for the detection of android malware. Some authors have preferred static analysis while others have performed dynamic analysis for android malware detection. In static analysis, researchers have only employed one feature of android application either intents or permissions. As best of our knowledge, there does not exist any technique that combines both intents and permissions. In this paper, we have performed static analysis for the detection of Android malware using android intents (both implicit and explicit), android permissions and combination of intents and permissions. Furthermore, the classification is performed to analyze the effectiveness of different machine learning algorithms for malware detection and to identify the best performing feature. Our experiment results show that combination of intents and permissions play a key role in the detection of android malware.

The presence of malicious software (malware), for example, in Android applications (apps), has harmful or irreparable consequences to the user and/or the device. Despite the protections app stores provide to avoid malware, it keeps growing in sophistication and diffusion. In this paper, we explore the use of machine learning (ML) techniques to detect malware in Android apps. The focus is on the study of different data pre-processing, dimensionality reduction, and classification techniques, assessing the generalization ability of the learned models using public domain datasets and specifically developed apps. We find that the classifiers that achieve better performance for this task are support vector machines (SVM) and random forests (RF). We emphasize the use of feature selection (FS) techniques to reduce the data dimensionality and to identify the most relevant features in Android malware classification, leading to explainability on this task. Our approach can identify the most relevant features to classify an app as malware. Namely, we conclude that permissions play a prominent role in Android malware detection. The proposed approach reduces the data dimensionality while achieving high accuracy in identifying malware in Android apps.

Background Malaria remains a major cause of illness and death among children under five in Nigeria, despite efforts to control transmission. Accurate and reliable prediction of malaria outbreaks is crucial for health authorities to take timely measures. This study aims to identify the most robust machine learning classification algorithms for predicting the status of malaria in children under five (0-59 months). Methods The 2021 Nigeria Malaria Indicator Survey (NMIS) included 10,655 children under five who were tested for malaria using the Rapid Diagnostic Test (RDT). Various machine learning models were explored, including Decision Trees, K-Nearest Neighbor, Naïve Bayes, Random Forest, Support Vector Machines, and Survey Logistic Regression, and their performance was evaluated through metrics such as accuracy, AUC, balanced accuracy, F1-Score, negative predictive value, precision, sensitivity, and specificity. Results Random Forest (RF) is the most robust and balanced classification model due to its superior accuracy (79%), precision (77%), recall (62%), F1-score (69%), and AUC (80%). Support Vector Machine (SVM) also demonstrated strong performance, particularly in accuracy (74%) and AUC (80%). Survey Logistic Regression (SLR) and Decision Tree (DT) offered moderate results but fell short compared to RF and SVM, indicating the need for further optimization. Naive Bayes (NB) and K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) had limitations, making them less reliable for this task. Conclusion In conclusion, the study reveals that RF and SVM are the best classification models for predicting malaria status in children under five years old. RF is reliable and balanced, while SVM is preferred for recall. SLR and DT show potential but require optimization. NB and KNN have significant performance gaps, making them less suitable. These findings will help policymakers and malaria intervention programs address key factors, enabling more targeted public health interventions to reduce the malaria burden on young children and improve the well-being of vulnerable populations in Nigeria.

-Stroke diagnosis is a time-critical medical task that requires rapid and precise identification to initiate appropriate treatment and prevent severe neurological damage. This study introduces a machine learning–driven diagnostic framework designed to identify stroke using neuroimaging data. A comprehensive set of machine learning models—Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest, Decision Tree, and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)—were trained and evaluated on a curated dataset of brain images to classify stroke and non-stroke cases. The proposed system leverages the strengths of both classical and deep learning algorithms. Logistic Regression enables examination of relationships between neuroimage features and stroke presence, while SVM effectively separates complex feature patterns. Random Forest and Decision Tree models provide structured rule-based classification derived from key imaging attributes. The inclusion of a CNN significantly enhances diagnostic accuracy by extracting high-level spatial and textural features from neuroimages without manual feature engineering. Experimental results indicate that the CNN model outperforms all other techniques, achieving 95.6% accuracy, 94.2% sensitivity, and 96.5% specificity. Random Forest and SVM also show strong performance with accuracies of 93.1% and 92.5%, respectively. The findings confirm the potential of machine learning, particularly deep learning, in improving stroke diagnosis and supporting clinicians with faster and more reliable decision-making. By harnessing modern computational intelligence, this framework contributes toward reducing diagnostic delays, enhancing patient outcomes, and lowering the overall healthcare burden associated with stroke. Key Words: Brain Imaging, Classification Algorithms, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), CT Scan, Decision Tree, Deep Learning, Diagnostic Model, Logistic Regression, Machine Learning, MRI Scan, Neuroimages, Random Forest, Stroke Detection, Stroke Identification, Support Vector Machine (SVM).

In recent years, the microbiome has been recognized as an important factor associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD), which is the leading cause of human mortality worldwide. Disparities in gut microbial compositions between individuals with and without CVD were reported, whereby, we hypothesized that utilizing such microbiome-based data for training with supervised machine learning (ML) models could be exploited as a new strategy for evaluation of cardiovascular health. To test our hypothesis, we analyzed the metagenomics data extracted from the American Gut Project. Specifically, 16S rRNA reads from stool samples of 478 CVD and 473 non-CVD control samples were analyzed using five supervised ML algorithms: random forest (RF), support vector machine with radial kernel (svmRadial), decision tree (DT), elastic net (ENet) and neural networks (NN). Thirty-nine differential bacterial taxa (LEfSe: LDA > 2) were identified between CVD and non-CVD groups. ML classifications, using these taxonomic features, achieved an AUC (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve) of ~0.58 (RF). However, by choosing the top 500 high-variance features of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) for training ML models, an improved AUC of ~0.65 (RF) was achieved. Further, by limiting the selection to only the top 25 highly contributing OTU features to reduce the dimensionality of feature space, the AUC was further significantly enhanced to ~0.70 (RF). In summary, this study is the first to demonstrate the successful development of a ML model using microbiome-based datasets for a systematic diagnostic screening of CVD.

Machine learning approach to predict susceptible growth regions of Moringa peregrina (Forssk)

In this study, six machine learning (ML) models, namely, random forest (RF), Gaussian process regression (GPR), support vector regression (SVR), decision tree (DT), least squares support vector machine (LSSVM), and multivariate adaptive regression spline (MARS) models, were employed to reconstruct the missing daily‐averaged discharge in a mega‐delta from 1980 to 2015 using upstream‐downstream multi‐station data. The performance and accuracy of each ML model were assessed and compared with the stage‐discharge rating curves (RCs) using four statistical indicators, Taylor diagrams, violin plots, scatter plots, time‐series plots, and heatmaps. Model input selection was performed using mutual information and correlation coefficient methods after three data pre‐processing steps: normalization, Fourier series fitting, and first‐order differencing. The results showed that the ML models are superior to their RC counterparts, and MARS and RF are the most reliable algorithms, although MARS achieves marginally better performance than RF. Compared to RC, MARS and RF reduced the root mean square error (RMSE) by 135% and 141% and the mean absolute error by 194% and 179%, respectively, using year‐round data. However, the performance of MARS and RF developed for the climbing (wet season) and recession (dry season) limbs separately worsened slightly compared to that developed using the year‐round data. Specifically, the RMSE of MARS and RF in the falling limb was 856 and 1,040 m3/s, respectively, while that obtained using the year‐round data was 768 and 789 m3/s, respectively. In this study, the DT model is not recommended, while the GPR and SVR models provide acceptable results.

In this paper, we have done detection of android malware using static and dynamic analysis. This approach also knows as hybrid approach. Our goal is to find recent vulnerabilities in social engineering applications which cannot be detected by modern antivirus or online scanners. The hackers inject malicious code into benign application modify the nature of code and hence forth strength attack can be polymorphic or stealth techniques. We are building model using supervised learning applying SVM (Supervised Learning Machine) taking features as input and label for decision whether malicious or benign application also added hyper parameter tuned for obtaining better accuracy rate. By using this classifier, we can make binary classification and henceforth suggest a decision support system for end user to protect themselves from recent threats that can come to their android application.

Aim: The aim of the work is to evaluate the accuracy and precision in predicting heart disease using Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random forest (RF), Logistic Regression (LR), Decision Tree (DT) Classification algorithms. Materials and Methods: Classification algorithm is appealed on a heart dataset which consists of 180 records. A framework for heart disease prediction in the medical sector comparing Random forest, Logistic Regression, Decision Tree and SVM classifiers has been proposed and developed. The sample size was calculated as 55 in each group using G power 80%. Sample size was calculated using clincalc analysis, with alpha and beta values 0.05 and 0.5, 95% confidence, pretest power 80% and enrolment ratio 1. Results: The Novel Random Forest Algorithm (92.13%), Support Vector Machine (62.51%), Logistic Regression (84.89%), Decision Tree (86.25%) classifiers produce respectively. SVM, RF exists a statistically significant difference between the two groups (p=0.001,p=.004;p<0.05).LR, RF exists a statistically insignificant difference between the two groups (p=.103, P=.080;p>0.05) both with confidence interval 95%. Hence Random forest is better than SVM, RF, DT classifiers. Conclusion: The results show that the performance of RF is better when compared with SVM, LR and DT in terms of both precision and accuracy.

Android based Smartphones are nowadays getting more popular. While using Smartphone, user is always concerned about security and malicious attacks, cryptographic vulnerability of the applications. With increase in the number of Android mobiles, Android malwares are also increasing very rapidly. So the authors have proposed the “Identification of cryptographic vulnerability and malware detection in Android” system. They have designed a user friendly android application, through which user and developer can easily test the application whether it is benign or vulnerable. The application will be tested firstly using static analysis and then the dynamic analysis will be carried out. The authors have implemented static and dynamic analysis of android application for vulnerable and malicious app detection. They have also created a web page. User can either use the application or the web page.