Spectral Entanglement Fingerprinting: A Novel Framework for Ransomware Detection Using Cross-Frequency Anomalous Waveform Signatures

TL;DR

The paper introduces Spectral Entanglement Fingerprinting, a spectral analysis-based framework that detects ransomware by identifying unique frequency domain signatures, offering improved accuracy and efficiency over traditional methods.

Contribution

It presents a novel spectral analysis framework utilizing power spectral densities, coherence, and entropy metrics for ransomware detection, enhancing robustness against obfuscation techniques.

Findings

Achieves higher detection accuracy than traditional signature-based methods.

Reduces false positives and negatives in ransomware identification.

Operates efficiently in high-throughput, multi-instance environments.

Abstract

Malicious encryption techniques continue to evolve, bypassing conventional detection mechanisms that rely on static signatures or predefined behavioral rules. Spectral analysis presents an alternative approach that transforms system activity data into the frequency domain, enabling the identification of anomalous waveform signatures that are difficult to obfuscate through traditional evasion techniques. The proposed Spectral Entanglement Fingerprinting (SEF) framework leverages power spectral densities, coherence functions, and entropy-based metrics to extract hidden patterns indicative of unauthorized encryption activities. Detection accuracy evaluations demonstrate that frequency-domain transformations achieve superior performance in distinguishing malicious from benign processes, particularly in the presence of polymorphic and metamorphic modifications. Comparative analyses with established methods reveal that frequency-based detection minimizes false positive and false negative rates, ensuring operational efficiency without excessive computational overhead. Experimental results indicate that entropy variations in encrypted data streams provide meaningful classification insights, allowing the differentiation of distinct ransomware families based on spectral characteristics alone. The latency assessment confirms that SEF operates within a time window that enables proactive intervention, mitigating encryption-induced damage before data integrity is compromised. Scalability evaluations suggest that the framework remains effective even under concurrent execution of multiple ransomware instances, supporting its suitability for high-throughput environments.