Early-stage malware prediction using recurrent neural networks

In this paper we investigate the possibility of predicting whether or not an executable is malicious based on a short snapshot of behavioural data. We find that an ensemble of recurrent neural networks are able to predict whether an executable is malicious or benign within the first 5 s of execution with 94% accuracy. This is the first time general types of malicious file have been predicted to be malicious during execution rather than using a complete activity log file post-execution, and enables cyber security endpoint protection to be advanced to use behavioural data for blocking malicious payloads rather than detecting them post-execution and having to repair the damage.