Optimized feature representation and selection for malware detection using portable executable headers and machine learning
摘要
Feature representation techniques inherently introduce computational overhead, and conventional feature selection methodologies often discard closely correlated attributes, deeming them redundant. This study leverages Portable Executable Header (PEH) characteristics to construct an enriched feature representation, ensuring the preservation of critical and distinctive information while facilitating efficient extraction. A preliminary evaluation is conducted across six machine learning (ML) classifiers to identify the two most effective models for malware detection applications. To enhance feature representation, an advanced data preprocessing pipeline is employed prior to feature selection (FS). A Relief-F-based filtering mechanism is utilized to assign weighted importance to individual features, thereby preserving all relevant information. Iterative training with various weighted feature subsets enables the identification of an optimal, compact feature subset, denoted as