Enhanced Android Ransomware Detection Through Hybrid Simultaneous Swarm-Based Optimization

Abstract

Ransomware is a significant security threat that poses a serious risk to the security of smartphones, and its impact on portable devices has been extensively discussed in a number of research papers. In recent times, this threat has witnessed a significant increase, causing substantial losses for both individuals and organizations. The emergence and widespread occurrence of diverse forms of ransomware present a significant impediment to the pursuit of reliable security measures that can effectively combat them. This constitutes a formidable challenge due to the dynamic nature of ransomware, which renders traditional security protocols inadequate, as they might have a high false alarm rate and exert significant processing demands on mobile devices that are restricted by limited battery life, CPU, and memory. This paper proposes a novel intelligent method for detecting ransomware that is based on a hybrid multi-solution binary JAYA algorithm with a single-solution simulated annealing (SA). The primary objective is to leverage the exploitation power of SA in supporting the exploration power of the binary JAYA algorithm. This approach results in a better balance between global and local search milestones. The empirical results of our research demonstrate the superiority of the proposed SMO-BJAYA-SA-SVM method over other algorithms based on the evaluation measures used. The proposed method achieved an accuracy rate of 98.7%, a precision of 98.6%, a recall of 98.7%, and an F1 score of 98.6%. Therefore, we believe that our approach is an effective method for detecting ransomware on portable devices. It has the potential to provide a more reliable and efficient solution to this growing security threat.