TY - JOUR
T1 - Utilising flow aggregation to classify benign imitating attacks
AU - Hindy, Hanan
AU - Atkinson, Robert
AU - Tachtatzis, Christos
AU - Bayne, Ethan
AU - Bureš, Miroslav
AU - Bellekens, Xavier
PY - 2021/3/4
Y1 - 2021/3/4
N2 - Cyber-attacks continue to grow, both in terms of volume and sophistication. This is aided by an increase in available computational power, expanding attack surfaces, and advancements in the human understanding of how to make attacks undetectable. Unsurprisingly, machine learning is utilised to defend against these attacks. In many applications, the choice of features is more important than the choice of model. A range of studies have, with varying degrees of success, attempted to discriminate between benign traffic and well-known cyber-attacks. The features used in these studies are broadly similar and have demonstrated their effectiveness in situations where cyber-attacks do not imitate benign behaviour. To overcome this barrier, in this manuscript, we introduce new features based on a higher level of abstraction of network traffic. Specifically, we perform flow aggregation by grouping flows with similarities. This additional level of feature abstraction benefits from cumulative information, thus qualifying the models to classify cyber-attacks that mimic benign traffic. The performance of the new features is evaluated using the benchmark CICIDS2017 dataset and the results demonstrate their validity and effectiveness. This novel proposal will improve the detection accuracy of cyber-attacks and also, build towards a new direction of feature extraction for complex ones.
AB - Cyber-attacks continue to grow, both in terms of volume and sophistication. This is aided by an increase in available computational power, expanding attack surfaces, and advancements in the human understanding of how to make attacks undetectable. Unsurprisingly, machine learning is utilised to defend against these attacks. In many applications, the choice of features is more important than the choice of model. A range of studies have, with varying degrees of success, attempted to discriminate between benign traffic and well-known cyber-attacks. The features used in these studies are broadly similar and have demonstrated their effectiveness in situations where cyber-attacks do not imitate benign behaviour. To overcome this barrier, in this manuscript, we introduce new features based on a higher level of abstraction of network traffic. Specifically, we perform flow aggregation by grouping flows with similarities. This additional level of feature abstraction benefits from cumulative information, thus qualifying the models to classify cyber-attacks that mimic benign traffic. The performance of the new features is evaluated using the benchmark CICIDS2017 dataset and the results demonstrate their validity and effectiveness. This novel proposal will improve the detection accuracy of cyber-attacks and also, build towards a new direction of feature extraction for complex ones.
KW - netflow
KW - network
KW - intrusion detection
KW - machine learning
KW - cyber attacks
UR - https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/21/5/1761
U2 - 10.3390/s21051761
DO - 10.3390/s21051761
M3 - Article
SN - 1424-8220
VL - 21
JO - Sensors
JF - Sensors
IS - 5
M1 - 1761
ER -