The increasing sophistication of malware threats has led to growing concerns in the anti-malware community, as malware poses a significant danger to online users despite the availability of numerous defense solutions. The aim of this study is to comprehensively review malware evolution and current attack trends in order to identify effective defense mechanisms. This study reviewed the most recent journal articles, conference proceedings, reports, and online resources published over the last five years. We extensively reviewed the malware landscape from 1970 to the present, and analyzed its types, operational mechanisms, attack vectors, and vulnerabilities. Furthermore, we explored different defensive strategies developed in response to these evolving threats. Our findings highlight the increasing sophistication of malware attack trends, including a surge in cryptojacking, attacks on mobile devices, Internet of Things devices, ransomware, advanced persistent threats, supply chain attacks, fileless malware, cloud-based attacks, exploitation of remote employees, and attack trends on edge networks. Defense strategies have also evolved in parallel, emphasizing multi-layered security measures to counter these dynamic threats. This study highlights the critical need for robust, multi-layered security measures to combat dynamic malware. Despite these advancements, some open challenges and significant research gaps remain, which require further innovation. This review serves as a valuable guide for cybersecurity professionals by identifying the key trends, challenges, limitations, and future research on cybersecurity.

Ransomware attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, thereby rendering conventional detection methods less effective. Recognizing this challenge, this study reviews advanced detection mechanisms and explores the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to improve detection capabilities. This study reviews the recent literature, including journal articles, conference proceedings, and online resources since 2017, to offer insights into the current state of AI-based ransomware detection and suggests future research directions. This study contributes significantly to the development of a systematic evaluation framework that evaluates each component of the AI-based detection model framework using specific criteria and methodologies and analyzes how various AI algorithms respond to different ransomware attacks, thereby providing insights for more effective and robust detection methods. This review begins with an overview of AI and ransomware, and discusses various types of ransomware attacks, the process of an attack chain, and emerging trends. We then review the existing literature on the core components of AI-based ransomware detection models, including the datasets and challenges arising during data collection, data pre-processing, feature engineering techniques, model training, and performance evaluation for effective model training. This study assessed the detection performance of AI models using metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. By synthesizing these findings, we identify gaps in the current research and suggest future directions for enhancing AI-based ransomware detection techniques. The insights provided aim to guide researchers and practitioners in developing more robust methods for detecting and mitigating ransomware attacks by using AI.

Malware has emerged as a significant threat to end-users, businesses, and governments, resulting in financial losses of billions of dollars. Cybercriminals have found malware to be a lucrative business because of its evolving capabilities and ability to target diverse platforms such as PCs, mobile devices, IoT, and cloud platforms. While previous studies have explored single platform-based malware detection, no existing research has comprehensively reviewed malware detection across diverse platforms using machine learning (ML) techniques. With the rise of malware on PC or laptop devices, mobile devices and IoT systems are now being targeted, posing a significant threat to cloud environments. Therefore, a platform-based understanding of malware detection and defense mechanisms is essential for countering this evolving threat. To fill this gap and motivate further research, we present an extensive review of malware detection using ML techniques with respect to PCs, mobile devices, IoT, and cloud platforms. This paper begins with an overview of malware, including its definition, prominent types, analysis, and features. It presents a comprehensive review of machine learning-based malware detection from the recent literature, including journal articles, conference proceedings, and online resources published since 2017. This study also offers insights into the current challenges and outlines future directions for developing adaptable cross-platform malware detection techniques. This study is crucial for understanding the evolving threat landscape and for developing robust detection strategies.

The Internet of Things (IoT) devices are being widely deployed and have been targeted and victimized by malware attacks. The mathematical modelling for an accurate prediction of malicious spreads of botnets across IoT networks is of great importance. Suppose the spread of IoT botnets can be predicted using mathematical models, the security community can then take the necessary steps to deter an outbreak of botnet attacks and minimize the damage caused by malware. This paper surveys mobile malware epidemiological models to understand the mechanisms and dynamics of malware spread for IoT botnets. We describe the characteristics of IoT botnets based on the Susceptible-Infection-Recovery-Susceptible and Susceptible-Exposed-Infection-Recovery-Susceptible epidemic models. These models extend the traditional SIR (Susceptible-Infection-Recovery) model by adding extra states and parameters specific to the epidemic spread of IoT botnets. We use mathematical modelling to simulate complex spreading processes of IoT botnets and interpret the influence of an epidemic on distributed denial of service attacks. We use MATLAB and R to illustrate the use of a stochastic IoT botnet transmission model in the identification and mitigation of challenges towards minimizing the impact of devastating IoT botnet epidemics.

Compression is widely used in Internet applications to save communication time, bandwidth and storage. Recently invented by Jarek Duda asymmetric numeral system (ANS) offers an improved efficiency and a close to optimal compression. The ANS algorithm has been deployed by major IT companies such as Facebook, Google and Apple. Compression by itself does not provide any security (such as confidentiality or authentication of transmitted data). An obvious solution to this problem is an encryption of compressed bitstream. However, it requires two algorithms: one for compression and the other for encryption. In this work, we investigate natural properties of ANS that allow to incorporate authenticated encryption using as little cryptography as possible. We target low-level security communication and storage such as transmission of data from IoT devices/sensors. In particular, we propose three solutions for joint compression and encryption (compcrypt). The solutions offer different tradeoffs between security and efficiency assuming a slight compression deterioration. All of them use a pseudorandom bit generator (PRBG) based on lightweight stream ciphers. The first solution is close to original ANS and applies state jumps controlled by PRBG. The second one employs two copies of ANS, where compression is switched between the copies. The switch is controlled by a PRBG bit. The third compcrypt modifies the encoding function of ANS depending on PRBG bits. Security and efficiency of the proposed compcrypt algorithms are evaluated. The first compcrypt is the most efficient with a slight loss of compression quality. The second one consumes more storage but the loss of compression quality is negligible. The last compcrypt offers the best security but is the least efficient.