TY  - EJOU
AU  - Niu, Danping 
AU  - Ping, Yuan 
AU  - Guo, Chun 
AU  - Wang, Xiaojun 
AU  - Hao, Bin 

TI  - FedDPL: Federated Dynamic Prototype Learning for Privacy-Preserving Malware Analysis across Heterogeneous Clients
T2  - Computers, Materials \& Continua

PY  - 2026
VL  - 86
IS  - 3
SN  - 1546-2226

AB  - With the increasing complexity of malware attack techniques, traditional detection methods face significant challenges, such as privacy preservation, data heterogeneity, and lacking category information. To address these issues, we propose Federated Dynamic Prototype Learning (FedDPL) for malware classification by integrating Federated Learning with a specifically designed <i>K</i>-means. Under the Federated Learning framework, model training occurs locally without data sharing, effectively protecting user data privacy and preventing the leakage of sensitive information. Furthermore, to tackle the challenges of data heterogeneity and the lack of category information, FedDPL introduces a dynamic prototype learning mechanism, which adaptively adjusts the clustering prototypes in terms of position and number. Thus, the dependency on predefined category numbers in typical <i>K</i>-means and its variants can be significantly reduced, resulting in improved clustering performance. Theoretically, it provides a more accurate detection of malicious behavior. Experimental results confirm that FedDPL excels in handling malware classification tasks, demonstrating superior accuracy, robustness, and privacy protection.
KW  - Malware classification; data heterogeneity; federated learning; clustering; differential privacy

DO  - 10.32604/cmc.2025.073630