Malware has been around since the 1980s and is a large and expensive security concern today, constantly growing over the past years. As our social, professional and financial lives become more digitalised, they present larger and more profitable targets for malware. The problem of classifying and preventing malware is therefore urgent, and it is complicated by the existence of several specific approaches. In this paper, we use an existing malware taxonomy to formulate a general, language independent functional description of malware as transformers between states of the host system and described by a trust relation with its components. This description is then further generalised in terms of mechanisms, thereby contributing to a general understanding of malware. The aim is to use the latter in order to present an improved classification method for malware.

On Malfunction, Mechanisms and Malware Classification / G. Primiero, F.J. Solheim, J.M. Spring. - In: PHILOSOPHY & TECHNOLOGY. - ISSN 2210-5433. - 32:2(2019 Jun), pp. 339-362. [10.1007/s13347-018-0334-2]

On Malfunction, Mechanisms and Malware Classification

G. Primiero
;
2019

Abstract

Malware has been around since the 1980s and is a large and expensive security concern today, constantly growing over the past years. As our social, professional and financial lives become more digitalised, they present larger and more profitable targets for malware. The problem of classifying and preventing malware is therefore urgent, and it is complicated by the existence of several specific approaches. In this paper, we use an existing malware taxonomy to formulate a general, language independent functional description of malware as transformers between states of the host system and described by a trust relation with its components. This description is then further generalised in terms of mechanisms, thereby contributing to a general understanding of malware. The aim is to use the latter in order to present an improved classification method for malware.
Malware; Malfunctioning; Miscomputation; Mechanisms
Settore M-FIL/02 - Logica e Filosofia della Scienza
   Dipartimenti di Eccellenza 2018-2022 - Dipartimento di FILOSOFIA
   MINISTERO DELL'ISTRUZIONE E DEL MERITO
giu-2019
12-nov-2018
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2434/601552
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