用可解释性指导攻击,让恶意软件检测模型误判。
Explainability-Guided Adversarial Attacks on Transformer-Based Malware Detectors Using Control Flow Graphs
- 利用梯度归因找出关键函数调用进行替换
- 在小型和大型PE数据集上均成功诱导误分类
- 揭示了可解释性工具可能暴露的攻击漏洞
基于Transformer的恶意软件检测系统通过将控制流图(CFG)线性化为函数调用序列,在建模程序行为结构关系方面表现优异。然而,其对抗逃避攻击的鲁棒性仍待深入研究。本文分析了一种将CFG线性化为函数调用序列的RoBERTa-based检测器,该设计虽支持Transformer建模,但可能引入词元级敏感性和顺序伪影,易被攻击者利用。通过在图到序列框架内评估逃避策略,本文揭示了超越整体检测准确率的实际鲁棒性问题。提出一种白盒对抗逃避攻击方法,借助可解释性机制识别并扰动最具影响力的图组件。利用集成梯度生成的词元与词级归因,攻击迭代地将正向归因的函数调用替换为合成外部导入,生成对抗性CFG表示,同时保持整体程序结构不变。在小规模与大规模Windows PE数据集上的实验表明,该方法可可靠诱导误分类,即使对高精度训练的模型也有效。结果表明,可解释性工具虽有助于模型理解,却也可能暴露变压器型恶意软件检测器的关键攻击面。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Transformer-based malware detection systems operating on graph modalities such as control flow graphs (CFGs) achieve strong performance by modeling structural relationships in program behavior. However, their robustness to adversarial evasion attacks remains underexplored. This paper examines the vulnerability of a RoBERTa-based malware detector that linearizes CFGs into sequences of function calls, a design choice that enables transformer modeling but may introduce token-level sensitivities and ordering artifacts exploitable by adversaries. By evaluating evasion strategies within this graph-to-sequence framework, we provide insight into the practical robustness of transformer-based malware detectors beyond aggregate detection accuracy. This paper proposes a white-box adversarial evasion attack that leverages explainability mechanisms to identify and perturb most influential graph components. Using token- and word-level attributions derived from integrated gradients, the attack iteratively replaces positively attributed function calls with synthetic external imports, producing adversarial CFG representations without altering overall program structure. Experimental evaluation on small- and large-scale Windows Portable Executable (PE) datasets demonstrates that the proposed method can reliably induce misclassification, even against models trained to high accuracy. Our results highlight that explainability tools, while valuable for interpretability, can also expose critical attack surfaces in transformer-based malware detectors.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。