Hardware Realization of Artificial Neural Network Based Intrusion Detection & Prevention System

Abstract

In the 21st century with the exponential growth of the Internet, the vulnerability of the network which connects us is on the rise at a very fast pace. Today organizations are spending millions of dollars to protect their sensitive data from different vulnerabilities that they face every day. In this paper, a new methodology towards implementing an Intrusion Detection & Prevention System (IDPS) based on Artificial Neural Network (ANN) onto Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is proposed. This system not only detects different network attacks but also prevents them from being propagated. The parallel structure of an ANN makes it potentially fast for the computation of certain tasks. FPGA platforms are the optimum and best choice for the modern digital systems nowadays. The same feature makes ANN well suited for implementation in FPGA technology. Hardware realization of ANN to a large extent depends on the efficient implementation of a single neuron. However FPGA realization of ANNs with a large number of neurons is still a challenging task. The proposed multilayer ANN based IDPS uses multiple neurons for higher performance and greater accuracy. Simulation of the design in MATLAB SIMULINK 2010b by using Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) CUP dataset shows a very good performance. Subsequently MATLAB HDL coder was used to generate VHDL code for the proposed design that produced Intellectual Property (IP) cores for Xilinx Targeted Design Platforms. For evaluation purposes the proposed design was synthesized, implemented and tested onto Xilinx Virtex-7 2000T FPGA device.