Dual Convolutional Malware Network (DCMN): An Image-Based Malware Classification Using Dual Convolutional Neural Networks

Abstract

Malware attacks have a cascading effect, causing financial harm, compromising privacy, operations and interrupting. By preventing these attacks, individuals and organizations can safeguard the valuable assets of their operations, and gain more trust. In this paper, we propose a dual convolutional neural network (DCNN) based architecture for malware classification. It consists first of converting malware binary files into 2D grayscale images and then training a customized dual CNN for malware multi-classification. This paper proposes an efficient approach for malware classification using dual CNNs. The model leverages the complementary strengths of a custom structure extraction branch and a pre-trained ResNet-50 model for malware image classification. By combining features extracted from both branches, the model achieved superior performance compared to a single-branch approach.