<div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 3.75pt;line-height:18pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b style="font-size:11pt"><span style="font-size:15.5pt;font-family:minionblackadditional,serif;color:black">Malware Analysis and Vulnerability Detection Using Machine
Learning</span></b><br></p>

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:18pt 0cm 9pt;line-height:16.5pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;border:none;padding:0cm;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:minionblackadditional,serif">Call
for Papers</span></p>

</div>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:9pt 0cm;text-align:justify;line-height:15pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Times,serif;color:black">Continuing to grow in
volume and complexity, malware is today one of the major threats faced by the
digital world. The intent of malware is to cause damage to a computer or
network and often involves performing an illegal or unsanctioned activity that
can be used to conduct espionage or receive economic gains. Malware attacks
have even started to affect embedded computational platforms such as Internet
of Things (IoT) devices, medical equipment, and environmental and industrial
control systems. Most modern malware types are complex, and many possess the
ability to change code as well as the behavior in order to avoid detection.
Instead of relying on traditional defense mechanisms, typically comprising the
use of signature-based techniques, there is a need to have a broader spectrum
of techniques to deal with the diverse nature of malware.</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:9pt 0cm;text-align:justify;line-height:15pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Times,serif;color:black">The variants of malware
families share typical behavioral patterns that can be obtained either
statically or dynamically. Static analysis typically refers to the techniques
that analyze the contents of malicious files without executing them, whereas
dynamic analysis considers the behavioral aspects of malicious files while
executing tasks such as information flow tracking, function call monitoring,
and dynamic binary instrumentation. Machine learning techniques can exploit
such static and behavioral artefacts to model the evolving structure of modern
malware, therefore enabling the detection of more complex malware attacks that
cannot be easily detected by traditional signature-based methods. Non-reliance
on signatures makes machine-learning-based methods more effective for newly
released (zero-day) malware. Moreover, the feature extraction and
representation process can further be improved by using deep learning
algorithms that can implicitly perform feature engineering.</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:9pt 0cm;text-align:justify;line-height:15pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Times,serif;color:black">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 machine learning.</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:9pt 0cm;text-align:justify;line-height:15pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Times,serif;color:black">Potential topics include
but are not limited to the following:</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 18pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Symbol;color:black">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span><span style="font-size:12pt;color:black">Machine learning and/or artificial
intelligence in malware analysis</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 18pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Symbol;color:black">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span><span style="font-size:12pt;color:black">Malware analysis for IoT, resource
constrained devices, and mobile platforms</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 18pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Symbol;color:black">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span><span style="font-size:12pt;color:black">Software vulnerability prediction with
machine learning and/or artificial intelligence</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 18pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Symbol;color:black">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span><span style="font-size:12pt;color:black">Advances in the detection and
prevention of zero-day malware attacks, advanced persistent threats, and cyber
deception using machine learning and/or artificial intelligence</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 18pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Symbol;color:black">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span><span style="font-size:12pt;color:black">Latest trends in vulnerability
exploitation, malware design,</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 18pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Symbol;color:black">·<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">        
</span></span><span style="font-size:12pt;color:black">and machine learning and/or artificial
intelligence</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:15pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Times,serif;color:black">Authors can submit their manuscripts through the
Manuscript Tracking System at </span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:15pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(65,139,52);border:1pt none windowtext;padding:0cm"><a href="https://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/scn/mavd/">https://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/scn/mavd/</a></span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Times,serif;color:black">.</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:15pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Times,serif;color:black"> </span></b></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:15pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Times,serif;color:black">Submission
Deadline:           Friday, 10 April 2020</span></b></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:15pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Times,serif;color:black">Publication
Date                    August 2020</span></b></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:9pt 0cm;text-align:justify;line-height:15pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Times,serif;color:black">Papers are published
upon acceptance, regardless of the Special Issue publication date.</span></p>

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:18pt 0cm 9pt;text-align:justify;line-height:16.5pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;border:none;padding:0cm;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b><span style="font-size:12.5pt;font-family:minionblackadditional,serif">Guest Editors</span></b></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;border:none;padding:0cm;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Times,serif;color:black">Farrukh A. Khan, King
Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;border:none;padding:0cm;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Times,serif;color:black">Muhammad Faisal Amjad:
National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;border:none;padding:0cm;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Times,serif;color:black">Yin Zhang: Zhongnan
University of Economics and Law, Wuhan,China</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;border:none;padding:0cm;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Times,serif;color:black">Hammad Afzal, National
University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan</span></p></div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><p></p><p></p><p></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>