Enhanced Federated Learning Framework based on Deep Learning and Neutrosophic Set for Android Malware Classification

Malware detection is one of the critical tasks of cybersecurity, especially considering the growing popularity of mobile devices. The integrity and security of mobile ecosystems rely on the capacity to identify malware quickly and precisely, as security hacks against these devices become increasingly frequent. Due to the requirement for massive volumes of data aggregation, traditional centralized machine learning (ML) techniques for malware detection face challenges with data sharing, computational complexity, and privacy. This research addresses these challenges by proposing a novel model, called "CNN-Fed", which is based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) with Federated Learning (Fed). The main goal of this work is to create a global classifier for Android malware detection that is highly accurate and does not require centralised data aggregation. Using four benchmark datasets—Drebin, Malgenome, Kronodroid, and Tuandromd—the CNN-Fed model is trained across many clients in a federated setting under the suggested architecture. Then we use multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methodology to evaluate the number of clients and number of rounds. We use two MCDM methods such as Entropy methodology to compute the criteria weights and the CoCoSo methodology to rank the alternatives. We use the interval-valued neutrosophic sets (IVNSs) to deal with uncertainty and vague information. We use five criteria such as accuracy, F1-score, precision, recall, and FP and six of alternatives refer to the number of clients and number of rounds. The results show the best alternative has a larger number of clients and rounds.