The VNF Cybersecurity Dataset for Research (VNFCYBERDATA)

Abstract

Virtualisation has received widespread adoption and deployment across a wide range of enterprises and industries throughout the years. Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) is a technical concept that presents a method for dynamically delivering virtualised network functions as virtualised or software components. Virtualised Network Function (VNF) has distinct advantages, but it also faces serious security challenges. Cyberattacks such as Denial of Service (DoS), malware/rootkit injection, port scanning, and so on can target VNF appliances just like any other network infrastructure. To create exceptional training exercises for machine or deep learning (ML/DL) models to combat cyberattacks in VNF, a suitable dataset (VNFCYBERDATA) exhibiting an actual reflection, or one that is reasonably close to an actual reflection, of the problem that the ML/DL model could address is required. This article describes a real VNF dataset that contains over seven million data points and twenty-five cyberattacks generated from five VNF appliances. To facilitate a realistic examination of VNF traffic, the dataset includes both benign and malicious traffic.