The paper introduces Replicant, a deep reinforcement learning framework that learns to evade malware detectors under a strict label‑only black‑box threat model. Replicant generates reusable policies for modifying malware samples and deciding when to query the target, and it transfers across different samples, detectors, and feature spaces. In experiments on seven Android malware detectors and three feature spaces, Replicant achieves a mean attack success rate of 78.8%, outperforming state‑of‑the‑art methods by 20.9%–39.2% and providing a stronger signal for adversarial training to harden detectors.
By Shae McFadden, Ilias Tsingenopoulos, Mario D'Onghia, Alexander Herzog, Myles Foley, Chris Hicks, Lorenzo Cavallaro, Fabio Pierazzi
arXiv:2507. 18313v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Malware evolves rapidly, forcing machine learning-based detectors to be continuously updated.
By Daniele Ghiani, Daniele Angioni, Giorgio Piras, Angelo Sotgiu, Luca Minnei, Srishti Gupta, Maura Pintor, Fabio Roli, Battista Biggio
arXiv:2604. 23025v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Android malware detectors built with machine learning often suffer from temporal bias: models are trained and evaluated without respecting apps' actual release times, inflating accuracy and weakening real-world robustness.
By Annan Fu, Hao Pei, Maryam Tanha
arXiv:2606. 03523v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Early attribution of Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) activity can help defenders prioritise investigation, select countermeasures, and reduce the impact of an intrusion.
By Peter Williams, Adam Sobey, Erisa Karafili
The study evaluates pseudo‑labeling for semi‑supervised learning on Android malware attribution using six classifiers. Results show that the benefit of SSL varies strongly by classifier: SVM gains the most, LightGBM improves modestly, and Random Forest can be harmed at low label ratios. The approach particularly helps hard‑to‑classify families and achieves near‑optimal performance with about 800 labeled samples.
By Md Rafid Islam, Zahid Hasan, Hafiz Abdur Rahman
arXiv:2608. 03250v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The rapid advancement of modern technology has led to a significant increase in the use of smart devices, such as smartphones and tablets, resulting in the widespread adoption of mobile applications.
By Md Faisal Ahmed, Zarin Tasnim Biash, Abu Raihan Shakil, Ahmed Ann Noor Ryen, Arman Hossain, Faisal Bin Ashraf, Muhammad Iqbal Hossain
arXiv:2606. 26707v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Adversarial APKs are Android applications modified in the problem space to evade machine-learning malware detectors.
By Christian Scano, Diego Soi, Angelo Sotgiu, Luca Demetrio, Davide Maiorca, Giorgio Giacinto, Fabio Roli, Battista Biggio
arXiv:2610.27533v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Machine learning benchmarks act as guideposts for model development and spur the creation of training datasets intended to improve benchmark scores....
By Yixin Wu, Rachel Hong, Jamie Morgenstern, Tadayoshi Kohno
arXiv:2609.21303v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Product abuse is an individually rare, but growing, problem across the SaaS industry. Highly sophisticated threat actors can misuse security platform...
By Shaefer Drew, Michael Brautbar, Paul Knight, Edward Raff, Lana Peric-McDermott, Simran Sarin, Nickolas Machado, Hanna Albright, Vitaly Zaytsev
arXiv:2606. 16072v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Compared with binaries and decompiled code, malware source code more directly reflects the attackers' original intent.
By Bojing Li, Duo Zhong, Prajna Bhandary, Raguvir S, Charles Maxa, Robert J Joyce, Charles Nicholas
arXiv:2605. 09028v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Machine learning-based Android malware detectors often fail in real-world deployment due to domain shift, where models trained on one data source perform poorly on applications from another.
By Md Rafid Islam
arXiv:2605. 24903v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Machine learning based malware detectors become obsolete over time due to concept drift in benign and malware applications.
By Suresh Kumar Amalapuram, Bikraj Shresta, Siva Ram murthy Chebiyam, Bheemarjuna Reddy Tamma, Sumohana S Channappayya