With exponential growth in the size of computer networks and developed applications, the significant increasing of the potential damage that can be caused by launching attacks is becoming obvious. Meanwhile, Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPSs) are one of the most important defense tools against the sophisticated and ever-growing network attacks. Due to the lack of adequate dataset, anomaly-based approaches in intrusion detection systems are suffering from accurate deployment, analysis and evaluation. There exist a number of such datasets such as DARPA98, KDD99, ISC2012, and ADFA13 that have been used by the researchers to evaluate the performance of their proposed intrusion detection and intrusion prevention approaches. Based on our study over eleven available datasets since 1998, many such datasets are out of date and unreliable to use. Some of these datasets suffer from lack of traffic diversity and volumes, some of them do not cover the variety of attacks, while others anonymized packet information and payload which cannot reflect the current trends, or they lack feature set and metadata. This paper produces a reliable dataset that contains benign and seven common attack network flows, which meets real world criteria and is publicly avaliable. Consequently, the paper evaluates the performance of a comprehensive set of network traffic features and machine learning algorithms to indicate the best set of features for detecting the certain attack categories.

Toward Generating a New Intrusion Detection Dataset and Intrusion Traffic Characterization

Machine learning techniques are being widely used to develop an intrusion detection system (IDS) for detecting and classifying cyberattacks at the network-level and the host-level in a timely and automatic manner. However, many challenges arise since malicious attacks are continually changing and are occurring in very large volumes requiring a scalable solution. There are different malware datasets available publicly for further research by cyber security community. However, no existing study has shown the detailed analysis of the performance of various machine learning algorithms on various publicly available datasets. Due to the dynamic nature of malware with continuously changing attacking methods, the malware datasets available publicly are to be updated systematically and benchmarked. In this paper, a deep neural network (DNN), a type of deep learning model, is explored to develop a flexible and effective IDS to detect and classify unforeseen and unpredictable cyberattacks. The continuous change in network behavior and rapid evolution of attacks makes it necessary to evaluate various datasets which are generated over the years through static and dynamic approaches. This type of study facilitates to identify the best algorithm which can effectively work in detecting future cyberattacks. A comprehensive evaluation of experiments of DNNs and other classical machine learning classifiers are shown on various publicly available benchmark malware datasets. The optimal network parameters and network topologies for DNNs are chosen through the following hyperparameter selection methods with KDDCup 99 dataset. All the experiments of DNNs are run till 1,000 epochs with the learning rate varying in the range [0.01-0.5]. The DNN model which performed well on KDDCup 99 is applied on other datasets, such as NSL-KDD, UNSW-NB15, Kyoto, WSN-DS, and CICIDS 2017, to conduct the benchmark. Our DNN model learns the abstract and high-dimensional feature representation of the IDS data by passing them into many hidden layers. Through a rigorous experimental testing, it is confirmed that DNNs perform well in comparison with the classical machine learning classifiers. Finally, we propose a highly scalable and hybrid DNNs framework called scale-hybrid-IDS-AlertNet which can be used in real-time to effectively monitor the network traffic and host-level events to proactively alert possible cyberattacks.

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Deep Learning Approach for Intelligent Intrusion Detection System

Anti-virus vendors are confronted with a multitude of potentially malicious samples today. Receiving thousands of new samples every day is not uncommon. The signatures that detect confirmed malicious threats are mainly still created manually, so it is important to discriminate between samples that pose a new unknown threat and those that are mere variants of known malware.This survey article provides an overview of techniques based on dynamic analysis that are used to analyze potentially malicious samples. It also covers analysis programs that leverage these It also covers analysis programs that employ these techniques to assist human analysts in assessing, in a timely and appropriate manner, whether a given sample deserves closer manual inspection due to its unknown malicious behavior.

/pdf/a-survey-on-automated-dynamic-malware-analysis-techniques-2b10kp3xz0.pdf

A survey on automated dynamic malware-analysis techniques and tools

A Survey of Network-based Intrusion Detection Data Sets

Redundant and irrelevant features in data have caused a long-term problem in network traffic classification. These features not only slow down the process of classification but also prevent a classifier from making accurate decisions, especially when coping with big data. In this paper, we propose a mutual information based algorithm that analytically selects the optimal feature for classification. This mutual information based feature selection algorithm can handle linearly and nonlinearly dependent data features. Its effectiveness is evaluated in the cases of network intrusion detection. An Intrusion Detection System (IDS), named Least Square Support Vector Machine based IDS (LSSVM-IDS), is built using the features selected by our proposed feature selection algorithm. The performance of LSSVM-IDS is evaluated using three intrusion detection evaluation datasets, namely KDD Cup 99, NSL-KDD and Kyoto 2006+ dataset. The evaluation results show that our feature selection algorithm contributes more critical features for LSSVM-IDS to achieve better accuracy and lower computational cost compared with the state-of-the-art methods.

Building an Intrusion Detection System Using a Filter-Based Feature Selection Algorithm

With the rapid evolution and proliferation of botnets, large-scale cyber attacks such as DDoS, spam emails are also becoming more and more dangerous and serious cyber threats. Because of this, network based security technologies such as Network based Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDSs), Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPSs), firewalls have received remarkable attention to defend our crucial computer systems, networks and sensitive information from attackers on the Internet. In particular, there has been much effort towards high-performance NIDSs based on data mining and machine learning techniques. However, there is a fatal problem in that the existing evaluation dataset, called KDD Cup 99' dataset, cannot reflect current network situations and the latest attack trends. This is because it was generated by simulation over a virtual network more than 10 years ago. To the best of our knowledge, there is no alternative evaluation dataset. In this paper, we present a new evaluation dataset, called Kyoto 2006+, built on the 3 years of real traffic data (Nov. 2006 ~ Aug. 2009) which are obtained from diverse types of honeypots. Kyoto 2006+ dataset will greatly contribute to IDS researchers in obtaining more practical, useful and accurate evaluation results. Furthermore, we provide detailed analysis results of honeypot data and share our experiences so that security researchers are able to get insights into the trends of latest cyber attacks and the Internet situations.

Statistical analysis of honeypot data and building of Kyoto 2006+ dataset for NIDS evaluation

We have been developing the Network Incident analysis Center for Tactical Emergency Response (nicter), whose present focus is on detecting and identifying propagating malwares such as worms, viruses, and bots. The nicter presently monitors darknet, a set of unused IP addresses, to observe macroscopic trends of network threats. Meantime, it keeps capturing and analyzing malware executables in the wild for their microscopic analysis. Finally, these macroscopic and microscopic analysis results are correlated in order to identify the root cause of the detected network threats. This paper describes a brief overview of the nicter, and possible contributions to the worldwide observatory of malicious behavior and attack tools (WOMBAT).

nicter: An Incident Analysis System Toward Binding Network Monitoring with Malware Analysis

Malware, such as computer viruses, worms, and bots, has been recognized as one of the major security threats in the Internet environment, and a large amount of research and development is taking place to find effective countermeasures. These countermeasures are mainly based on either macroscopic or microscopic analysis. Macroscopic analysis is based on monitoring the network in order to grasp the global trends of malware propagations while microscopic analysis investigates malware executables to identify the details of how they behave. We have been developing the network incident analysis center for tactical emergency response (NICTER), where both kinds of analysis are highly integrated. By integrating and correlating the results from the both two approaches, the nicter binds phenomena, i.e., scans observed by network monitoring with their root causes, i.e., malwares. Previous analysis of malware has mainly focused on their internal behavior in the system. However, in order to achieve such a goal, it is crucial that the microscopic analysis extracts a malware's external behavior towards the network. We propose a novel way to analyze malware behavior: focus closely on the malware's external behavior. A malware sample is executed on a real machine that is connected to a virtual Internet environment called a "miniature network". Since this analysis environment is totally isolated from the real Internet, the execution of the sample, unlike in previously proposed methods, causes no further unwanted propagation. Furthermore, the behavioral analysis is carried out in two passes. In the first pass, in order to extract a wider variety of network behaviors from the sample, the miniature network responds as interactively as possible. In the second pass, to make only suitable response that will enable us to concentrate on specific behavior, namely scan behaviors, the miniature network is configured on the basis of the first pass result. We also present concrete analysis results that are gained by using the proposed method.

Malware Behavior Analysis in Isolated Miniature Network for Revealing Malware's Network Activity

Considering rapid increase of recent highly organized and sophisticated malwares, practical solutions for the countermeasures against malwares especially related to zero-day attacks should be effectively developed in an urgent manner. Several research activities have been already carried out focusing on statistic calculation of network events by means of global network sensors (so-called macroscopic approach) as well as on direct malware analysis such as code analysis (so-called microscopic approach). However, in the current research activities, it is not clear at all how to inter-correlate between network behaviors obtained from macroscopic approach and malware behaviors obtained from microscopic approach. In this paper, in one side, network behaviors observed from darknet are strictly analyzed to produce scan profiles, and in the other side, malware behaviors obtained from honeypots are correctly analyzed so as to produce a set of profiles containing malware characteristics. To this end, inter-relationship between above two types of profiles is practically discussed and studied so that frequently observed malwares behaviors can be finally identified in view of scan-malware chain.

Practical Correlation Analysis between Scan and Malware Profiles against Zero-Day Attacks Based on Darknet Monitoring

Malware has been recognized as one of the major security threats in the Internet. Previous researches have mainly focused on malware's internal activity in a system. However, it is crucial that the malware analysis extracts a malware's external activity toward the network to correlate with a security incident. We propose a novel way to analyze malware: focus closely on the malware's external (i.e., network) activity. A malware sample is executed on a sandbox that consists of a real machine as victim and a virtual Internet environment. Since this sandbox environment is totally isolated from the real Internet, the execution of the sample causes no further unwanted propagation. The sandbox is configurable so as to extract specific activity of malware, such as scan behaviors. We implement a fully automated malware analysis system with the sandbox, which enables us to carry out the large-scale malware analysis. We present concrete analysis results that are gained by using the proposed system.

https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/transinf/E92.D/5/E92.D_5_945/_pdf

Masashi Eto

Papers

Statistical analysis of honeypot data and building of Kyoto 2006+ dataset for NIDS evaluation

nicter: An Incident Analysis System Toward Binding Network Monitoring with Malware Analysis

Malware Behavior Analysis in Isolated Miniature Network for Revealing Malware's Network Activity

Practical Correlation Analysis between Scan and Malware Profiles against Zero-Day Attacks Based on Darknet Monitoring

Automated Malware Analysis System and Its Sandbox for Revealing Malware's Internal and External Activities