MalScore: A Quality Assessment Framework for Visual Malware Datasets Using No-Reference Image Quality Metrics
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The Internet has been progressively more integrated into daily life through its evolutionary stages, ranging from web1.0 to the current development of web3.0. These continued integrations broaden the attack surface that cybercriminals aim to exploit. The prevalence of cybercrimes, particularly malware attacks, has become increasingly sophisticated and made more accessible through dark web marketplaces. Including artificial intelligence (AI) within anti-virus solutions has challenged the traditional dichotomy of malware detection schemes, offering more accurate and holistic detection capabilities. Research has shown that transforming malware files into textured images offers resistance to obfuscation and the potential to detect zero-days. This paper explores the application of image quality assessment (IQA) techniques in enhancing visual malware dataset curation. We propose a novel framework that applies a no-reference IQA algorithm to evaluate current datasets and offer guidance in future dataset curation. We use datasets of various popularities and sizes, applying a standardized framework to assess and compare their effectiveness based on multiple metrics. These metrics raised awareness of malware's continuous evolution and were derived from a need for robust detection mechanisms. A proposed MalScore formula and framework are applied to facilitate the evaluation and ranking of datasets. This work bridges the gap between IQA and visual malware detection to set the foundation for future work to further unite the two research fields. The evaluation findings demonstrate that the proposed framework effectively distinguishes between datasets, highlighting strengths and areas for improvement.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.032 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.010 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".