CRApr 22
TL-RL-FusionNet: An Adaptive and Efficient Reinforcement Learning-Driven Transfer Learning Framework for Detecting Evolving Ransomware ThreatsJannatul Ferdous, Rafiqul Islam, Arash Mahboubi et al.
Modern ransomware exhibits polymorphic and evasive behaviors by frequently modifying execution patterns to evade detection. This dynamic nature disrupts feature spaces and limits the effectiveness of static or predefined models. To address this challenge, we propose TL-RL-FusionNet, a reinforcement learning (RL)-guided hybrid framework that integrates frozen dual transfer learning (TL) backbones as feature extractors with a lightweight residual multilayer perceptron (MLP) classifier. The RL agent supervises training by adaptively reweighting samples in response to variations in observable ransomware behavior. Through reward and penalty signals, the agent prioritizes complex cases such as stealthy or polymorphic ransomware employing obfuscation, while down-weighting trivial samples including benign applications with simple file I/O operations or easily classified ransomware. This adaptive mechanism enables the model to dynamically refine its strategy, improving resilience against evolving threats while maintaining strong classification performance. The framework utilizes dynamic behavioral features such as file system activity, registry changes, network traffic, API calls, and anti-analysis checks, extracted from sandbox-generated JSON reports. These features are transformed into RGB images and processed using frozen EfficientNetB0 and InceptionV3 models to capture rich feature representations efficiently. Final classification is performed by a lightweight residual MLP guided by an RL (Q-learning) agent. Experiments on a balanced dataset of 1,000 samples (500 ransomware, 500 benign) show that TL-RL-FusionNet achieves 99.1% accuracy, 98.6% precision, 99.6% recall, and 99.74% AUC, outperforming non-RL baselines by up to 2.5% in accuracy and 3.1% in recall. Efficiency analysis shows 55% lower training time and 59% reduced RAM usage, demonstrating suitability for real-world deployment.
CRApr 18
Privacy-Aware Machine Unlearning with SISA for Reinforcement Learning-Based Ransomware DetectionJannatul Ferdous, Rafiqul Islam, Md Zahidul Islam
Ransomware detection systems increasingly rely on behavior-based machine learning to address evolving attack strategies. However, emerging privacy compliance, data governance, and responsible AI deployment demand not only accurate detection but also the ability to efficiently remove the influence of specific training samples without retraining the models from scratch. In this study, we present a privacy-aware machine unlearning evaluation framework for reinforcement learning (RL)-based ransomware detection built on Sharded, Isolated, Sliced, and Aggregated (SISA) training. The framework enables efficient data deletion by retraining only the affected model shards rather than the entire detector, reducing the retraining cost while preserving detection performance. We conduct a controlled comparative study using value-based RL agents, including Deep Q-Network (DQN) and Double Deep Q-Network (DDQN), under identical experimental settings with a cost-sensitive reward design and 5-fold cross-validation on Windows 11 ransomware dataset. Detection confidence is evaluated using a continuous Q-score margin, enabling ROC-AUC analysis beyond binary predictions. For unlearning, the dataset is partitioned into five shards with majority-vote aggregation, and a fast-unlearning path is evaluated by deleting 5% of the samples from a single shard and retraining only that shard. Results show that SISA-based unlearning incurs negligible utility degradation (<= 0.05 percent F1 drop) while substantially reducing retraining time relative to full SISA retraining. DDQN exhibits slightly improved stability and lower utility loss than DQN, while both agents maintain near identical in-distribution performance after unlearning. These findings indicate that SISA provides an efficient unlearning mechanism for RL-based ransomware detection, supporting privacy-aware deployment without compromising security effectiveness.
IVMay 11
Brain Tumor Classification in MRI Images: A Computationally Efficient Convolutional Neural NetworkMd Fahimul Kabir Chowdhury, Jannatul Ferdous
Improving patient outcomes depends on the prompt and accurate diagnosis of brain tumors, but manual MRI scan analysis is still time-consuming and unreliable. Although deep learning has shown promise, many of the models that are now in use are computationally intensive and have difficulty handling the intrinsic complexity and variety of different types of brain tumors. In this work, we propose a lightweight yet high-performing Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for multi-class brain tumor classification, employing MRI images to target gliomas, meningiomas, pituitary tumors, and healthy (no tumor) instances. The model was rigorously evaluated on two publicly accessible datasets from Figshare and Kaggle. Leveraging efficient feature extraction and optimized training strategies, our CNN achieved classification accuracies of 99.03% and 99.28%, along with ROC scores of 99.88% and 99.94% on Dataset 1 and Dataset 2, respectively-all while utilizing significantly fewer parameters than popular pre-trained architectures. In contrast to cutting-edge models like DenseNet201, MobileNetV2, VGG19, Xception, InceptionV3, and ResNet50, our approach consistently demonstrated superior performance with reduced computational overhead. These findings highlight the potential of the proposed model as a practical and reliable diagnostic aid in clinical environments.
CVApr 29, 2020
MatriVasha: A Multipurpose Comprehensive Database for Bangla Handwritten Compound CharactersJannatul Ferdous, Suvrajit Karmaker, A K M Shahariar Azad Rabby et al.
At present, recognition of the Bangla handwriting compound character has been an essential issue for many years. In recent years there have been application-based researches in machine learning, and deep learning, which is gained interest, and most notably is handwriting recognition because it has a tremendous application such as Bangla OCR. MatrriVasha, the project which can recognize Bangla, handwritten several compound characters. Currently, compound character recognition is an important topic due to its variant application, and helps to create old forms, and information digitization with reliability. But unfortunately, there is a lack of a comprehensive dataset that can categorize all types of Bangla compound characters. MatrriVasha is an attempt to align compound character, and it's challenging because each person has a unique style of writing shapes. After all, MatrriVasha has proposed a dataset that intends to recognize Bangla 120(one hundred twenty) compound characters that consist of 2552(two thousand five hundred fifty-two) isolated handwritten characters written unique writers which were collected from within Bangladesh. This dataset faced problems in terms of the district, age, and gender-based written related research because the samples were collected that includes a verity of the district, age group, and the equal number of males, and females. As of now, our proposed dataset is so far the most extensive dataset for Bangla compound characters. It is intended to frame the acknowledgment technique for handwritten Bangla compound character. In the future, this dataset will be made publicly available to help to widen the research.