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ModuleGuard: A gatekeeper for dynamic module loading against malware

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Wuhan University Journal of Natural Sciences

Abstract

We analyze the attack steps of malware and focus on the malware loading. Our assumption is that a malware contains no less than one module, so monitoring module loading is indispensable to defeat malware. Moreover, we design security policies and employ these policies when a module is loaded by the operating system. These policies depend on properties of module, the connection to created modules, and the link to user intention. The properties of module and this connection can improve the accuracy of malware detection. User intention can be helpful to handle unknown module and enhances the flexibility of policy. Finally, ModuleGuard, a gatekeeper for dynamic module loading against malware, has been designed and implemented, which integrates these security policies. Our experimental results have shown the feasibility and effectiveness of our method.

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Correspondence to Jianming Fu.

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Foundation item: Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(61373168, 61202387), Major Projects of National Science and Technology of China (2010ZX03006-001-01), and Doctoral Fund of Ministry of Education of China (20120141110002)

Biography: DING Shuang, female, Master candidate, research direction

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Ding, S., Fu, J. & Peng, B. ModuleGuard: A gatekeeper for dynamic module loading against malware. Wuhan Univ. J. Nat. Sci. 18, 489–498 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11859-013-0962-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11859-013-0962-4

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