---
pretty_name: Benign and Malicious PowerShell Scripts
task_categories:
- text-classification
tags:
- powershell
- cybersecurity
- malware-detection
- static-analysis
- code-obfuscation
- abstract-syntax-tree
size_categories:
- 10K<n<100K
---

# Benign and Malicious PowerShell Scripts

## Dataset summary

This dataset contains **30,595 high-quality PowerShell scripts** for binary benign/malicious classification and static-analysis research. It includes both unobfuscated and heavily obfuscated PowerShell, with obfuscation techniques including—but not limited to—multiple encoding schemes.

All published samples were validated as parseable with Microsoft's official PowerShell parser, `System.Management.Automation.Language.Parser`, and can be converted into a PowerShell abstract syntax tree (AST) without executing the script.

> **Safety warning:** This dataset contains potentially malicious PowerShell code. Treat every sample as untrusted. Do not execute samples on a host system. Use isolated, non-production environments and static-analysis tooling only.

## 中文简介

本数据集包含 **30,595 份高质量 PowerShell 脚本**，覆盖良性与恶意两类样本，适用于二分类、静态分析、恶意代码检测、混淆识别及基于 AST 的研究。

数据中包含大量高质量混淆样本，混淆方式包括但不限于多种编码方式。所有公开样本均已验证能够通过微软官方 PowerShell 解析器 `System.Management.Automation.Language.Parser` 成功解析并提取抽象语法树（AST），无需执行脚本。

> **安全提示：** 数据集中可能包含恶意代码。请将所有样本视为不可信内容，不要直接执行；建议仅在隔离、非生产环境中进行静态分析。

## Key characteristics

- **Task:** binary classification of PowerShell scripts
- **Content:** benign and malicious `.ps1` files
- **Total samples:** 30,595
- **Obfuscation:** includes multiple encoding and other PowerShell obfuscation techniques
- **Syntax quality:** every sample is parseable by the official PowerShell AST parser
- **Representation:** one script per file, organized by numeric label
- **Source split traceability:** original split, shard, and row identifiers are retained in filenames

## Dataset structure

The downloadable archive is `ast_ps1_by_label.tar.gz` (approximately 5.21 GB / 4.85 GiB compressed) and expands to:

The dataset uses the following label convention:

| Directory | Label | Samples |
|---|---|---:|
| `0/` | Benign | 15,173 |
| `1/` | Malicious | 15,422 |