"Quantum" Classification of Malware

"Quantum" Classification of Malware

Quantum computation has recently become an important area for security research, with its applications to factoring large numbers and secure communication. In practice, only one company (D-Wave) has claimed to create a quantum computer which can solve relatively hard problems, and that claim has been met with much skepticism. Regardless of whether it is using quantum effects for computation or not, the D-Wave architecture cannot run the standard quantum algorithms, such as Grover’s and Shor’s. The D-Wave architecture is instead purported to be useful for machine learning and for heuristically solving NP-Complete problems.

We'll show why the D-Wave and the machine learning problem for malware classification seem especially suited for each other. We also explain how to translate the classification problem for malicious executables into an optimization problem which a D-Wave machine can solve. Specifically, using a 512-qubit D-Wave Two processor, we show that a minimalist malware classifier, with cross-validation accuracy comparable to standard machine learning algorithms, can be created. However, even such a minimalist classifier incurs a surprising level of overhead.

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