| Description | |
| The malware industry continues to be a well-organized, well-funded market dedicated to evading traditional security measures. Once a computer is infected by malware, criminals can hurt consumers and enterprises in many ways. With more than one billion enterprise and consumer customers, Microsoft takes this problem very seriously and is deeply invested in improving security. | |
| As one part of their overall strategy for doing so, Microsoft is challenging the data science community to develop techniques to predict if a machine will soon be hit with malware. As with their previous Malware Challenge (2015), Microsoft is providing Kagglers with an unprecedented malware dataset to encourage open-source progress on effective techniques for predicting malware occurrences. Can you help protect more than one billion machines from damage BEFORE it happens? | |
| Acknowledgements | |
| This competition is hosted by Microsoft, Windows Defender ATP Research, Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science, and Georgia Tech Institute for Information Security & Privacy. | |
| Microsoft contacts: | |
| - Rob McCann (Robert.McCann@microsoft.com) | |
| - Christian Seifert (chriseif@microsoft.com) | |
| - Susan Higgs (Susan.Higgs@microsoft.com) | |
| - Matt Duncan (Matthew.Duncan@microsoft.com) | |
| Northeastern University contact: | |
| - Mansour Ahmadi (m.ahmadi@northeastern.edu) | |
| Georgia Tech contacts: | |
| - Brendan Saltaformaggio (brendan@ece.gatech.edu) | |
| - Taesoo Kim (taesoo@gatech.edu) | |
| Evaluation | |
| Submissions are evaluated on the area under the ROC curve between the predicted probability and the observed label. | |
| Submission File | |
| For each MachineIdentifier in the test set, you must predict a probability for the HasDetections column. The file should contain a header and have the following format: | |
| ``` | |
| MachineIdentifier, HasDetections | |
| 1, 0.5 | |
| 6, 0.5 | |
| 14, 0.5 | |
| etc. | |
| ``` | |
| Dataset Description | |
| The goal of this competition is to predict a Windows machine’s probability of getting infected by various families of malware, based on different properties of that machine. The telemetry data containing these properties and the machine infections was generated by combining heartbeat and threat reports collected by Microsoft's endpoint protection solution, Windows Defender. | |
| Each row in this dataset corresponds to a machine, uniquely identified by a MachineIdentifier. HasDetections is the ground truth and indicates that Malware was detected on the machine. Using the information and labels in train.csv, you must predict the value for HasDetections for each machine in test.csv. | |
| The sampling methodology used to create this dataset was designed to meet certain business constraints, both in regards to user privacy as well as the time period during which the machine was running. Malware detection is inherently a time-series problem, but it is made complicated by the introduction of new machines, machines that come online and offline, machines that receive patches, machines that receive new operating systems, etc. While the dataset provided here has been roughly split by time, the complications and sampling requirements mentioned above may mean you may see imperfect agreement between your cross-validation, public, and private scores! Additionally, this dataset is not representative of Microsoft customers’ machines in the wild; it has been sampled to include a much larger proportion of malware machines. | |
| Columns | |
| Unavailable or self-documenting column names are marked with an "NA". | |
| - MachineIdentifier - Individual machine ID | |
| - ProductName - Defender state information e.g. win8defender | |
| - EngineVersion - Defender state information e.g. 1.1.12603.0 | |
| - AppVersion - Defender state information e.g. 4.9.10586.0 | |
| - AvSigVersion - Defender state information e.g. 1.217.1014.0 | |
| - IsBeta - Defender state information e.g. false | |
| - RtpStateBitfield - NA | |
| - IsSxsPassiveMode - NA | |
| - DefaultBrowsersIdentifier - ID for the machine's default browser | |
| - AVProductStatesIdentifier - ID for the specific configuration of a user's antivirus software | |
| - AVProductsInstalled - NA | |
| - AVProductsEnabled - NA | |
| - HasTpm - True if the machine has TPM | |
| - CountryIdentifier - ID for the country the machine is located in | |
| - CityIdentifier - ID for the city the machine is located in | |
| - OrganizationIdentifier - ID for the organization the machine belongs in, organization ID is mapped to both specific companies and broad industries | |
| - GeoNameIdentifier - ID for the geographic region a machine is located in | |
| - LocaleEnglishNameIdentifier - English name of Locale ID of the current user | |
| - Platform - Calculates platform name (of OS-related properties and processor property) | |
| - Processor - This is the process architecture of the installed operating system | |
| - OsVer - Version of the current operating system | |
| - OsBuild - Build of the current operating system | |
| - OsSuite - Product suite mask for the current operating system | |
| - OsPlatformSubRelease - Returns the OS Platform sub-release (Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, TH1, TH2) | |
| - OsBuildLab - Build lab that generated the current OS. Example: 9600.17630.amd64fre.winblue_r7.150109-2022 | |
| - SkuEdition - The goal of this feature is to use the Product Type defined in the MSDN to map to a 'SKU-Edition' name that is useful in population reporting. The valid Product Types are defined in %sdxroot%\data\windowseditions.xml. This API has been used since Vista and Server 2008, so there are many Product Types that do not apply to Windows 10. The 'SKU-Edition' is a string value that is in one of three classes of results. The design must hand each class. | |
| - IsProtected - This is a calculated field derived from the Spynet Report's AV Products field. Returns: | |
| - a. TRUE if there is at least one active and up-to-date antivirus product running on this machine. | |
| - b. FALSE if there is no active AV product on this machine, or if the AV is active but is not receiving the latest updates. | |
| - c. null if there are no Anti Virus Products in the report. | |
| - Returns: Whether a machine is protected. | |
| - AutoSampleOptIn - This is the SubmitSamplesConsent value passed in from the service, available on CAMP 9+ | |
| - PuaMode - Pua Enabled mode from the service | |
| - SMode - This field is set to true when the device is known to be in 'S Mode', as in Windows 10 S mode, where only Microsoft Store apps can be installed | |
| - IeVerIdentifier - NA | |
| - SmartScreen - This is the SmartScreen enabled string value from registry. This is obtained by checking in order, HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System\SmartScreenEnabled and HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\SmartScreenEnabled. If the value exists but is blank, the value "ExistsNotSet" is sent in telemetry. | |
| - Firewall - This attribute is true (1) for Windows 8.1 and above if Windows firewall is enabled, as reported by the service. | |
| - UacLuaenable - This attribute reports whether or not the "administrator in Admin Approval Mode" user type is disabled or enabled in UAC. The value reported is obtained by reading the regkey HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\EnableLUA. | |
| - Census_MDC2FormFactor - A grouping based on a combination of Device Census level hardware characteristics. The logic used to define Form Factor is rooted in business and industry standards and aligns with how people think about their device. (Examples: Smartphone, Small Tablet, All in One, Convertible…) | |
| - Census_DeviceFamily - AKA DeviceClass. Indicates the type of device that an edition of the OS is intended for. Example values: Windows.Desktop, Windows.Mobile, and iOS.Phone | |
| - Census_OEMNameIdentifier - NA | |
| - Census_OEMModelIdentifier - NA | |
| - Census_ProcessorCoreCount - Number of logical cores in the processor | |
| - Census_ProcessorManufacturerIdentifier - NA | |
| - Census_ProcessorModelIdentifier - NA | |
| - Census_ProcessorClass - A classification of processors into high/medium/low. Initially used for Pricing Level SKU. No longer maintained and updated. | |
| - Census_PrimaryDiskTotalCapacity - Amount of disk space on the primary disk of the machine in MB | |
| - Census_PrimaryDiskTypeName - Friendly name of Primary Disk Type - HDD or SSD | |
| - Census_SystemVolumeTotalCapacity - The size of the partition that the System volume is installed on in MB | |
| - Census_HasOpticalDiskDrive - True indicates that the machine has an optical disk drive (CD/DVD) | |
| - Census_TotalPhysicalRAM - Retrieves the physical RAM in MB | |
| - Census_ChassisTypeName - Retrieves a numeric representation of what type of chassis the machine has. A value of 0 means xx | |
| - Census_InternalPrimaryDiagonalDisplaySizeInInches - Retrieves the physical diagonal length in inches of the primary display | |
| - Census_InternalPrimaryDisplayResolutionHorizontal - Retrieves the number of pixels in the horizontal direction of the internal display | |
| - Census_InternalPrimaryDisplayResolutionVertical - Retrieves the number of pixels in the vertical direction of the internal display | |
| - Census_PowerPlatformRoleName - Indicates the OEM preferred power management profile. This value helps identify the basic form factor of the device | |
| - Census_InternalBatteryType - NA | |
| - Census_InternalBatteryNumberOfCharges - NA | |
| - Census_OSVersion - Numeric OS version Example - 10.0.10130.0 | |
| - Census_OSArchitecture - Architecture on which the OS is based. Derived from OSVersionFull. Example - amd64 | |
| - Census_OSBranch - Branch of the OS extracted from the OsVersionFull. Example - OsBranch = fbl_partner_eeap where OsVersion = 6.4.9813.0.amd64fre.fbl_partner_eeap.140810-0005 | |
| - Census_OSBuildNumber - OS Build number extracted from the OsVersionFull. Example - OsBuildNumber = 10512 or 10240 | |
| - Census_OSBuildRevision - OS Build revision extracted from the OsVersionFull. Example - OsBuildRevision = 1000 or 16458 | |
| - Census_OSEdition - Edition of the current OS. Sourced from HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion@EditionID in registry. Example: Enterprise | |
| - Census_OSSkuName - OS edition friendly name (currently Windows only) | |
| - Census_OSInstallTypeName - Friendly description of what install was used on the machine i.e. clean | |
| - Census_OSInstallLanguageIdentifier - NA | |
| - Census_OSUILocaleIdentifier - NA | |
| - Census_OSWUAutoUpdateOptionsName - Friendly name of the WindowsUpdate auto-update settings on the machine. | |
| - Census_IsPortableOperatingSystem - Indicates whether OS is booted up and running via Windows-To-Go on a USB stick. | |
| - Census_GenuineStateName - Friendly name of OSGenuineStateID. 0 = Genuine | |
| - Census_ActivationChannel - Retail license key or Volume license key for a machine. | |
| - Census_IsFlightingInternal - NA | |
| - Census_IsFlightsDisabled - Indicates if the machine is participating in flighting. | |
| - Census_FlightRing - The ring that the device user would like to receive flights for. This might be different from the ring of the OS which is currently installed if the user changes the ring after getting a flight from a different ring. | |
| - Census_ThresholdOptIn - NA | |
| - Census_FirmwareManufacturerIdentifier - NA | |
| - Census_FirmwareVersionIdentifier - NA | |
| - Census_IsSecureBootEnabled - Indicates if Secure Boot mode is enabled. | |
| - Census_IsWIMBootEnabled - NA | |
| - Census_IsVirtualDevice - Identifies a Virtual Machine (machine learning model) | |
| - Census_IsTouchEnabled - Is this a touch device? | |
| - Census_IsPenCapable - Is the device capable of pen input? | |
| - Census_IsAlwaysOnAlwaysConnectedCapable - Retrieves information about whether the battery enables the device to be AlwaysOnAlwaysConnected. | |
| - Wdft_IsGamer - Indicates whether the device is a gamer device or not based on its hardware combination. | |
| - Wdft_RegionIdentifier - NA |