{"title":"MVDroid: an android malicious VPN detector using neural networks.","authors":"Saeed Seraj, Siavash Khodambashi, Michalis Pavlidis, Nikolaos Polatidis","doi":"10.1007/s00521-023-08512-1","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The majority of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) fail when it comes to protecting our privacy. If we are using a VPN to protect our online privacy, many of the well-known VPNs are not secure to use. When examined closely, VPNs can appear to be perfect on the surface but still be a complete privacy and security disaster. Some VPNs will steal our bandwidth, infect our computers with malware, install secret tracking libraries on our devices, steal our personal data, and leave our data exposed to third parties. Generally, Android users should be cautious when installing any VPN software on their devices. As a result, it is important to identify malicious VPNs before downloading and installing them on our Android devices. This paper provides an optimised deep learning neural network for identifying fake VPNs, and VPNs infected by malware based on the permissions of the apps, as well as a novel dataset of malicious and benign Android VPNs. Experimental results indicate that our proposed classifier identifies malicious VPNs with high accuracy, while it outperforms other standard classifiers in terms of evaluation metrics such as accuracy, precision, and recall.</p>","PeriodicalId":49766,"journal":{"name":"Neural Computing & Applications","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10069720/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Neural Computing & Applications","FirstCategoryId":"94","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-023-08512-1","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"COMPUTER SCIENCE, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The majority of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) fail when it comes to protecting our privacy. If we are using a VPN to protect our online privacy, many of the well-known VPNs are not secure to use. When examined closely, VPNs can appear to be perfect on the surface but still be a complete privacy and security disaster. Some VPNs will steal our bandwidth, infect our computers with malware, install secret tracking libraries on our devices, steal our personal data, and leave our data exposed to third parties. Generally, Android users should be cautious when installing any VPN software on their devices. As a result, it is important to identify malicious VPNs before downloading and installing them on our Android devices. This paper provides an optimised deep learning neural network for identifying fake VPNs, and VPNs infected by malware based on the permissions of the apps, as well as a novel dataset of malicious and benign Android VPNs. Experimental results indicate that our proposed classifier identifies malicious VPNs with high accuracy, while it outperforms other standard classifiers in terms of evaluation metrics such as accuracy, precision, and recall.
期刊介绍:
Neural Computing & Applications is an international journal which publishes original research and other information in the field of practical applications of neural computing and related techniques such as genetic algorithms, fuzzy logic and neuro-fuzzy systems.
All items relevant to building practical systems are within its scope, including but not limited to:
-adaptive computing-
algorithms-
applicable neural networks theory-
applied statistics-
architectures-
artificial intelligence-
benchmarks-
case histories of innovative applications-
fuzzy logic-
genetic algorithms-
hardware implementations-
hybrid intelligent systems-
intelligent agents-
intelligent control systems-
intelligent diagnostics-
intelligent forecasting-
machine learning-
neural networks-
neuro-fuzzy systems-
pattern recognition-
performance measures-
self-learning systems-
software simulations-
supervised and unsupervised learning methods-
system engineering and integration.
Featured contributions fall into several categories: Original Articles, Review Articles, Book Reviews and Announcements.