README.md

Microsoft Malware Prediction

This project demonstrates a comprehensive approach to detecting malware using a combination of Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) models, alongside MLflow for experiment tracking.

Table of Contents

• Enhanced Overview
• Clone the Repository
• Machine Learning Algorithms
• Top 3 ML Algorithms
• Deep Learning Algorithms
• MLflow Integration

Enhanced Overview

1. Data Preparation & Preprocessing:

• Imports necessary libraries for data manipulation, visualization and ML
• Loads Microsoft malware dataset from Kaggle
• Handles missing values and outliers
• Performs feature encoding and scaling

2. Feature Engineering & Selection:

• Uses various feature selection techniques like:
  • Chi-Square test
  • ANOVA
  • Mutual Information
  • Kendall's correlation

3. Dimensionality Reduction:

• Implements multiple dimensionality reduction techniques:
  • LDA (Linear Discriminant Analysis)
  • t-SNE
  • UMAP

Clone the Repository

To start using this project, first, clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/Abdelrahman-Elshahed/Microsoft_Maleware_Prediction_Kaggle_Competition.git

Machine Learning Algorithms

• Logistic Regression
  Uses the logit function to model malware probability.
  Accuracy: 50.47%

• K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN)
  Classifies by majority vote of nearest neighbors.
  Accuracy: 51.52%

• Random Forest
  Combines multiple decision trees to reduce overfitting via bagging.
  Accuracy: 60.84%

• Decision Tree
  Splits features recursively for interpretability.
  Accuracy: 56.09%

• AdaBoost
  Iteratively adjusts weights to emphasize misclassified samples.
  Accuracy: 62.65%

• Gradient Boosting (GBM)
  Minimizes residuals incrementally by adding weak learners.
  Accuracy: 62.84%

• XGBoost
  Highly efficient tree boosting with advanced regularization.
  Accuracy: 63.87%

• LightGBM
  Uses leaf-wise growth and gradient-based sampling.
  Accuracy: 63.72%

• CatBoost
  Handles categorical features internally, reducing manual encoding.
  Accuracy: 63.98%

Top 3 ML Algorithms

1. CatBoost

2. XGBoost
   

3. LightGBM
   

Deep Learning Algorithms

• Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP)
  A dense network that learns nonlinear boundaries with backpropagation. Accuracy: 62.68%

• Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU)
  Manages time-dependent data via gating mechanisms in recurrent layers. Accuracy: 62.93%

• Autoencoder
  Learns efficient encodings and reconstructs inputs for feature extraction. Accuracy: 62.45%

MLflow Integration

MLflow tracks experiments centrally, storing metrics (accuracy, precision, recall, AUC) and model artifacts. It integrates seamlessly with various libraries, enabling comparison of runs on a local or remote MLflow UI.