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An Efficient Method for Detecting Obfuscated Suspicious JavaScript Based on Text Pattern Analysis

Published: 30 May 2016 Publication History

Abstract

The malicious JavaScript is a common springboard for attackers to launch several types of network attacks, such as Drive-by-Download and malicious PDF delivery attack. In order to elude detection of signature matching, malicious JavaScript is often packed (so-called "obfuscation") with diversified algorithms therefore the occurrence of obfuscation is always a good pointer for potential maliciousness. In this investigation, we propose a light weight approach for quickly filtering obfuscated JavaScript by a novel method of tokenizing JavaScript text at letter level and information-theoretic measures, based on the previous work in the domain of detecting obfuscated malicious code as well as the pattern analysis of natural languages. The new approach is apparently time efficient compared to existing systems since it processes much less objects while it is also proved to be able to reach the acceptable detection accuracies.

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Cited By

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  • (2021)Measuring Software Obfuscation Quality–A Systematic Literature ReviewIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2021.30945179(99024-99038)Online publication date: 2021
  • (2020)A Systematic Literature Review and Quality Analysis of Javascript Malware DetectionIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2020.30316908(190539-190552)Online publication date: 2020
  • (2017)JSDESProceedings of the 12th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security10.1145/3098954.3107009(1-13)Online publication date: 29-Aug-2017

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      WTMC '16: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International on Workshop on Traffic Measurements for Cybersecurity
      May 2016
      66 pages
      ISBN:9781450342841
      DOI:10.1145/2903185
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      Published: 30 May 2016

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      Author Tags

      1. information-theoretic measures
      2. obfuscated javascript
      3. text pattern analysis

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      • (2021)Measuring Software Obfuscation Quality–A Systematic Literature ReviewIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2021.30945179(99024-99038)Online publication date: 2021
      • (2020)A Systematic Literature Review and Quality Analysis of Javascript Malware DetectionIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2020.30316908(190539-190552)Online publication date: 2020
      • (2017)JSDESProceedings of the 12th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security10.1145/3098954.3107009(1-13)Online publication date: 29-Aug-2017

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