DETECTING RANSOMWARE THROUGH POWER ANALYSIS

Abstract

Cyber criminals are increasingly using malicious programs to take control of and exploit individuals’, businesses’, and governments’ data. A large portion of malware is a type called ransomware, which finds a way to restrict the infected user’s access to data until a payment is obtained. Current detection solutions include programs that analyze file system changes and registry events, employ honeypot techniques, and identify anomalies in network patterns. This research presents an algorithm developed to detect ransomware by analyzing a computer’s power consumption. Specifically, the algorithm identifies features of the computer’s power consumption that are indicative of encryption operations. We can successfully identify encryption of files with sizes of 500MB and greater with a high degree of success. By applying our encryption detection algorithm to the Cryptographic Ransomware, we are able to successfully identify the execution of WannaCry Ransomware samples.