Book Image

Machine Learning for Cybersecurity Cookbook

By : Emmanuel Tsukerman
Book Image

Machine Learning for Cybersecurity Cookbook

By: Emmanuel Tsukerman

Overview of this book

Organizations today face a major threat in terms of cybersecurity, from malicious URLs to credential reuse, and having robust security systems can make all the difference. With this book, you'll learn how to use Python libraries such as TensorFlow and scikit-learn to implement the latest artificial intelligence (AI) techniques and handle challenges faced by cybersecurity researchers. You'll begin by exploring various machine learning (ML) techniques and tips for setting up a secure lab environment. Next, you'll implement key ML algorithms such as clustering, gradient boosting, random forest, and XGBoost. The book will guide you through constructing classifiers and features for malware, which you'll train and test on real samples. As you progress, you'll build self-learning, reliant systems to handle cybersecurity tasks such as identifying malicious URLs, spam email detection, intrusion detection, network protection, and tracking user and process behavior. Later, you'll apply generative adversarial networks (GANs) and autoencoders to advanced security tasks. Finally, you'll delve into secure and private AI to protect the privacy rights of consumers using your ML models. By the end of this book, you'll have the skills you need to tackle real-world problems faced in the cybersecurity domain using a recipe-based approach.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)

Tracking malware drift

The distribution of malware is ever-changing. Not only are new samples released, but new types of viruses as well. For example, cryptojackers are a relatively recent breed of malware unknown until the advent of cryptocurrency. Interestingly, from a machine learning perspective, it's not only the types and distribution of malware that are evolving, but also their definitions, something known as concept drift. To be more specific, a 15 year-old virus is likely no longer executable in the systems currently in use. Consequently, it cannot harm a user, and is therefore no longer an instance of malware.

By tracking the drift of malware, and even predicting it, an organization is better able to channel its resources to the correct type of defense, inoculating itself from future threats.

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