Security News > 2024 > February > Google open sources file-identifying Magika AI for malware hunters and others

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 rapidly identify file types from file data, 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 properly identify and route data for further processing.

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 Magika can be used by network defenders to identify, fast and at scale, the true content of files, which is a first step in malware analysis and intrusion detection.

Google claims Magika is 50 percent more accurate at identifying file types than the biz's previous system of handcrafted rules, takes milliseconds to identify a file type, and is said to have at least 99 percent accuracy in tests.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/02/17/google_ai_magika/