| Event Details |
|---|
|
Thursday, April 17, 2014 Talk:
4:00 p.m., Avery 115
Reception:
3:30 p.m., Avery 348
|
Bilal Khan, Ph.D.
Professor, John Jay CollegeAbstract
New variants of malware are constantly being created and released into the
wild. According to the latest PandaLabs report, in 2013 there were 30
million new malware strains created, an average of 82,000 per day. Since
malware mutates both autonomously and in the minds of virus writers, new
malware species are necessarily related to prior species through evolutionary
processes; a species' success is tempered primarily by its fitness within
the ever-shifting digital biome.
Here we present ongoing efforts to define plausible formal metric spaces on
the emerging corpus of malware - based on both static dissections of malware
on disk and behavioral observations of living samples in sandbox
environments. Such metric spaces can be used, in conjunction with
archaeological time data from malware archives, to better model the
biodiversity and structure of emerging cryptophylogenies, to identify strains
capable of rapid mutation, and to isolate critical changes in the digital
environment (e.g. patches and features to the OS and Anti-Virus technologies)
which have impacted the evolutionary trajectory of malware species.
wild. According to the latest PandaLabs report, in 2013 there were 30
million new malware strains created, an average of 82,000 per day. Since
malware mutates both autonomously and in the minds of virus writers, new
malware species are necessarily related to prior species through evolutionary
processes; a species' success is tempered primarily by its fitness within
the ever-shifting digital biome.
Here we present ongoing efforts to define plausible formal metric spaces on
the emerging corpus of malware - based on both static dissections of malware
on disk and behavioral observations of living samples in sandbox
environments. Such metric spaces can be used, in conjunction with
archaeological time data from malware archives, to better model the
biodiversity and structure of emerging cryptophylogenies, to identify strains
capable of rapid mutation, and to isolate critical changes in the digital
environment (e.g. patches and features to the OS and Anti-Virus technologies)
which have impacted the evolutionary trajectory of malware species.
Speaker Bio
Bilal Khan is professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at John Jay
College, and a faculty member of both the Criminal Justice the the Digital
Forensics/Cybersecurity programs at the City University of New York.
Prior to joining academia, Khan was Principal Research Scientist
at the Center for Computational Sciences at the U.S. Naval Research
Laboratory. These days, his research focus is on the development of new
formal and computational models of social systems.
College, and a faculty member of both the Criminal Justice the the Digital
Forensics/Cybersecurity programs at the City University of New York.
Prior to joining academia, Khan was Principal Research Scientist
at the Center for Computational Sciences at the U.S. Naval Research
Laboratory. These days, his research focus is on the development of new
formal and computational models of social systems.