Google open sources file-identifying Magika AI for malware hunters and others
IMRAN RASHEED
Cyber Security Consultant | Auditor | Risk Assessment | SOC | VAPT| C-CISO | CISSP |
Google has open-sourced Magika, an in-house machine-learning-powered file identifier, as part of its AI Cyber Defense Initiative, which aims to give IT network defenders and others better-automated tools.
Enter Magika, which uses a trained model to identify file types from file data rapidly, and it's an approach the Big G thinks works well enough to use in production.
Magika is, we're told, used by Gmail, Google Drive, Chrome's Safe Browsing, and VirusTotal to identify and route data for further processing correctly.
In any case, Magika is an example of Google internally using artificial intelligence to reinforce its security and hopes others can benefit from that tech, too.
The pair believe network defenders can use Magika to identify, fast and at scale, the actual content of files, which is a first step in malware analysis and intrusion detection.
Google claims Magika is 50 per cent more accurate at identifying file types than the business's previous system of handcrafted rules, takes milliseconds to identify a file type, and is said to have at least 99 per cent accuracy in tests.