Detection of Unknown DDoS Attack Using Convolutional Neural Networks Featuring Geometrical Metric

Abstract

DDoS attacks remain a persistent cybersecurity threat, blocking services to legitimate users and causing significant damage to reputation, finances, and potential customers. For the detection of DDoS attacks, machine learning techniques such as supervised learning have been extensively employed, but their effectiveness declines when the framework confronts patterns exterior to the dataset. In addition, DDoS attack schemes continue to improve, rendering conventional data model-based training ineffectual. We have developed a novelty open-set recognition framework for DDoS attack detection to overcome the challenges of traditional methods. Our framework is built on a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) construction featuring geometrical metric (CNN-Geo), which utilizes deep learning techniques to enhance accuracy. In addition, we have integrated an incremental learning module that can efficiently incorporate novel unknown traffic identified by telecommunication experts through the monitoring process. This unique approach provides an effective solution for identifying and alleviating DDoS. The module continuously improves the model’s performance by incorporating new knowledge and adapting to new attack patterns. The proposed model can detect unknown DDoS attacks with a detection rate of over 99% on conventional attacks from CICIDS2017. The model’s accuracy is further enhanced by 99.8% toward unknown attacks with the open datasets CICDDoS2019.