Mal-Warehouse: A Data Collection-as-a-Service of Mobile Malware Behavioral Patterns

Smartphones are pervasively used in many everyday life extents, and have been both targets and victims of malware. While there are many anti-malware applications available in mobile markets, so far there are no public services that collect mobile usage data, so as to observe malware effects on mobile devices. The main contribution of this paper is the Mal-warehouse, an open-source tool performing data collectionas-a-service for Android malware behavioral patterns. During its initial development and experimentation phase, the tool extracts mobile device statistics, including CPU, memory and battery usage, process reports, and network statistics for 14 Android malware applications from a target device. It then stores them in a classified manner on a cloud database. Despite the fact that the work at hand is still in an early stage, the detection model is enhanced with a preliminary detection module. Machine learning techniques are used as a proof-of-concept so as to evaluate the detection capabilities of the detection model, when compared to a clean snapshot of the target device. Mal-warehouse is publicly available, meaning that anyone can download and use it locally and then upload their findings to the cloud service for further evaluation and processing by others.