 CALL FOR PAPERS Digital Threats: Research and Practice Special Issue on Challenges and Trends in Malware Analysis Guest Editors Ricardo J. Rodríguez, Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain Xabier Ugarte-Pedrero, Cisco Systems, USA Juan Tapiador, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain  Description Malicious software (malware) has become one of the major threats to Internet security, with a sustained growth in complexity and volume during the last decades. Malware developers are continuously improving their arsenal of software techniques to earn quick money in different ways, from click fraud or sending spam to collect cryptocurrencies by means of mining. Traditional techniques that detect malware rely on signatures are easily bypassed by malware using obfuscation, software packing, or other techniques. Malware starts incorporating code snippets to detect the execution environment and behave benignly and be misclassified as non-malicious software. In this ever-changing world, there is a need to have a broader spectrum of techniques to detect and respond in a timely manner to the diverse nature of malware. This special issue aims to attract top-quality original research and review articles covering the latest ideas, techniques, and empirical findings related to malware analysis and data science. Topics include, but are not limited to: * Automated malware detection and response * Malware attribution * Malware lineage * Malware in Advanced Persistent Threats * Anti-analysis techniques * Malware for industrial, IoT, and mobile platforms * Big data, machine learning, and AI techniques in malware analysis * Open problems and limitations of current analysis techniques * Cybercrime, the underground economy and the abuse ecosystem Expected Contributions Research manuscripts reporting novel methodologies and results (up to 25 pages) Benchmark, Datasets, Repositories, and Demonstration Systems that enable further research and facilitate research on the topics of this special issue (10 pages + links to such systems) Field notes (up to 8 pages) reporting analysis methodologies, detection methods, experience reports, or any other real-world case studies that complement academic research from a practitioners’ perspective. Potential authors are encouraged to submit an abstract for an initial assessment of the suitability of the contribution. To submit to this special issue, please visit ACM Manuscript Central at mc.manuscriptcentral.com/dtrap and select paper type “Special Issue on Challenges and Trends in Malware Analysis.” Details of the author guidelines for Digital Threats: Research and Practice are available at dl.acm.org/journal/dtrap/author-guidelines. Important Dates Initial submission: November 30, 2020 (submissions accepted up to this date) First Review: January 15, 2020 Revised Manuscripts: February 15, 2021 Publication: mid-2021 (tentative) |