Visual malware classification and detection method based on convolutional neural network

With the rapid development of Internet technology, leading to the evolution of malware variants, and malicious threats are also increasing. Therefore, rapid and accurate classification of malware becomes crucial. In response to this challenge, this paper proposes a malware classification method based on deep learning and visualization techniques. The method first extracts sample features, then converts malware binary samples into image format, thus transforming abstract binary data into images with visual information. Subsequently, color mapping technique is applied to convert the processed images into color images. Furthermore, to address imbalanced datasets, this paper introduces data augmentation methods to ensure more balanced and comprehensive training of the model across different sample categories. Finally, an improved convolutional neural network architecture is employed for the classification detection of malware families, achieving accurate classification and identification of different malware families through learning and analysis of sample features. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, experiments are conducted on the Google Code Jam (GCJ) benchmark dataset. The experimental results demonstrate an accuracy rate of 99.29% on the GCJ dataset. Additionally, we also compared the performance of the improved method before and after, and found that the proposed method can provide more comprehensive feature representation and significantly improve classification accuracy and detection efficiency.