A Systematic Literature Review and Quality Analysis of Javascript Malware Detection

Context: JavaScript (JS) is an often-used programming language by millions of web pages and is also affected by thousands of malicious attacks. Objective: In this investigation, we provided a general view and a quick understanding of JavaScript Malware Detection (JSMD) research reported in the scientific literature from several perspectives. Method: We performed a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and quality analysis of published research articles on the topic. We investigated 32 articles published between the year 2009 to the year 2019. Results: Selected 32 papers explained in this article reflect the outline of what was published so far. One of our key findings is the performance of Machine Learning (ML) based detection models were relatively higher than others. We also found that only a few papers were able to achieve high scores according to the quality assessment criteria. Conclusion: In this SLR, we summarized and synthesized the existing JSMD studies to identify the previous research practices and also to shed light on future guidelines in the malware detection space. This study will guide and help future researchers to investigate the previous literature efficiently and effectively.