Optimization of Stealthwatch Network Security System for the Detection and Mitigation of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack: Application to Smart Grid System

The Smart Grid is an enhancement of the traditional grid system and employs new technologies and sophisticated communication techniques for electrical power transmission and distribution. The Smart Grid’s communication network shares information about status of its several integrated IEDs (Intelligent Electronic Devices). However, the IEDs connected throughout the Smart Grid, open opportunities for attackers to interfere with the communications and utilities resources or take clients’ private data. This development has introduced new cyber-security challenges for the Smart Grid and is a very concerning issue because of emerging cyber-threats and security incidents that have occurred recently all over the world. The purpose of this research is to detect and mitigate Distributed Denial of Service [DDoS] with application to the Electrical Smart Grid System by deploying an optimized Stealthwatch Secure Network analytics tool. In this paper, the DDoS attack in the Smart Grid communication networks was modeled using Stealthwatch tool. The simulated network consisted of Secure Network Analytic tools virtual machines (VMs), electrical Grid network communication topology, attackers and Target VMs. Finally, the experiments and simulations were performed, and the research results showed that Stealthwatch analytic tool is very effective in detecting and mitigating DDoS attacks in the Smart Grid System without causing any blackout or shutdown of any internal systems as compared to other tools such as GNS3, NeSSi2, NISST Framework, OMNeT++, INET Framework, ReaSE, NS2, NS3, M5 Simulator, OPNET, PLC & TIA Portal management Software which do not have the capability to do so. Also, using Stealthwatch tool to create a security baseline for Smart Grid environment, contributes to risk mitigation and sound security hygiene.

Distributed generator-based distribution system service restoration strategy and model-free control methods

The rapid growth of distributed generator(DG)capacities has introduced additional controllable assets to improve the performance of distribution systems in terms of service restoration.Renewable DGs are of particular interest to utility companies,but the stochastic nature of intermittent renewable DGs could have a negative impact on the electric grid if they are not properly handled.In this study,we investigate distribution system service restoration using DGs as the primary power source,and we develop an effective approach to handle the uncertainty of renewable DGs under extreme conditions.The distribution system service restoration problem can be described as a mixed-integer second-order cone programming model by modifying the radial topology constraints and power flow equations.The uncertainty of renewable DGs will be modeled using a chance-constrained approach.Furthermore,the forecast errors and noises in real-time operation are solved using a novel model-free control algorithm that can automatically track the trajectory of real-time DG output.The proposed service restoration strategy and model-free control algorithm are validated using an IEEE 123-bus test system.

Research on the Spatial Distribution of Ecosystem Service Value in Guangxi and Its Ecological Protection Countermeasure

90 counties (cities) in Guangxi Province being taken as the tested region,the ecosystem service value of those counties (cities) was measured with the data of land-using in 2005 by means of the Table of Terrestrial Ecosystem Services Value in China.The result indicated that the value of the ecosystem services per unit was divided into 3 categories:the first category with high ecosystem services value,the second category with medium ecosystem services value and the third category with low ecosystem services value.The region of the first category was mainly distributed in the mountain area of northern,northwestern,eastern and northeast part of Guangxi;the second category,in the hilly area of southern part and the mountain area in the southwestern part of Guangxi and the third category,in the basin area of central Guangxi,the karst area of western and northwestern Guangxi Province.

A Machine Learning-Based Distributed Denial of Service Detection Approach for Early Warning in Internet Exchange Points

The Internet service provider(ISP)is the heart of any country’s Internet infrastructure and plays an important role in connecting to theWorld WideWeb.Internet exchange point(IXP)allows the interconnection of two or more separate network infrastructures.All Internet traffic entering a country should pass through its IXP.Thus,it is an ideal location for performing malicious traffic analysis.Distributed denial of service(DDoS)attacks are becoming a more serious daily threat.Malicious actors in DDoS attacks control numerous infected machines known as botnets.Botnets are used to send numerous fake requests to overwhelm the resources of victims and make them unavailable for some periods.To date,such attacks present a major devastating security threat on the Internet.This paper proposes an effective and efficient machine learning(ML)-based DDoS detection approach for the early warning and protection of the Saudi Arabia Internet exchange point(SAIXP)platform.The effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach are verified by selecting an accurate ML method with a small number of input features.A chi-square method is used for feature selection because it is easier to compute than other methods,and it does not require any assumption about feature distribution values.Several ML methods are assessed using holdout and 10-fold tests on a public large-size dataset.The experiments showed that the performance of the decision tree(DT)classifier achieved a high accuracy result(99.98%)with a small number of features(10 features).The experimental results confirmthe applicability of using DT and chi-square for DDoS detection and early warning in SAIXP.

Adaptive Butterfly Optimization Algorithm(ABOA)Based Feature Selection and Deep Neural Network(DNN)for Detection of Distributed Denial-of-Service(DDoS)Attacks in Cloud

Cloud computing technology provides flexible,on-demand,and completely controlled computing resources and services are highly desirable.Despite this,with its distributed and dynamic nature and shortcomings in virtualization deployment,the cloud environment is exposed to a wide variety of cyber-attacks and security difficulties.The Intrusion Detection System(IDS)is a specialized security tool that network professionals use for the safety and security of the networks against attacks launched from various sources.DDoS attacks are becoming more frequent and powerful,and their attack pathways are continually changing,which requiring the development of new detection methods.Here the purpose of the study is to improve detection accuracy.Feature Selection(FS)is critical.At the same time,the IDS’s computational problem is limited by focusing on the most relevant elements,and its performance and accuracy increase.In this research work,the suggested Adaptive butterfly optimization algorithm(ABOA)framework is used to assess the effectiveness of a reduced feature subset during the feature selection phase,that was motivated by this motive Candidates.Accurate classification is not compromised by using an ABOA technique.The design of Deep Neural Networks(DNN)has simplified the categorization of network traffic into normal and DDoS threat traffic.DNN’s parameters can be finetuned to detect DDoS attacks better using specially built algorithms.Reduced reconstruction error,no exploding or vanishing gradients,and reduced network are all benefits of the changes outlined in this paper.When it comes to performance criteria like accuracy,precision,recall,and F1-Score are the performance measures that show the suggested architecture outperforms the other existing approaches.Hence the proposed ABOA+DNN is an excellent method for obtaining accurate predictions,with an improved accuracy rate of 99.05%compared to other existing approaches.

Iterative Dichotomiser Posteriori Method Based Service Attack Detection in Cloud Computing

Cloud computing(CC)is an advanced technology that provides access to predictive resources and data sharing.The cloud environment represents the right type regarding cloud usage model ownership,size,and rights to access.It introduces the scope and nature of cloud computing.In recent times,all processes are fed into the system for which consumer data and cache size are required.One of the most security issues in the cloud environment is Distributed Denial of Ser-vice(DDoS)attacks,responsible for cloud server overloading.This proposed sys-tem ID3(Iterative Dichotomiser 3)Maximum Multifactor Dimensionality Posteriori Method(ID3-MMDP)is used to overcome the drawback and a rela-tively simple way to execute and for the detection of(DDoS)attack.First,the pro-posed ID3-MMDP method calls for the resources of the cloud platform and then implements the attack detection technology based on information entropy to detect DDoS attacks.Since because the entropy value can show the discrete or aggregated characteristics of the current data set,it can be used for the detection of abnormal dataflow,User-uploaded data,ID3-MMDP system checks and read risk measurement and processing,bug ratingfile size changes,orfile name changes and changes in the format design of the data size entropy value.Unique properties can be used whenever the program approaches any data error to detect abnormal data services.Finally,the experiment also verifies the DDoS attack detection capability algorithm.

The History, Trend, Types, and Mitigation of Distributed Denial of Service Attacks

Over time, the world has transformed digitally and there is total dependence on the internet. Many more gadgets are continuously interconnected in the internet ecosystem. This fact has made the Internet a global information source for every being. Despite all this, attacker knowledge by cybercriminals has advanced and resulted in different attack methodologies on the internet and its data stores. This paper will discuss the origin and significance of Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). These kinds of attacks remain the most effective methods used by the bad guys to cause substantial damage in terms of operational, reputational, and financial damage to organizations globally. These kinds of attacks have hindered network performance and availability. The victim’s network is flooded with massive illegal traffic hence, denying genuine traffic from passing through for authorized users. The paper will explore detection mechanisms, and mitigation techniques for this network threat.

Adaptive Cloud Intrusion Detection System Based on Pruned Exact Linear Time Technique

Cloud computing environments,characterized by dynamic scaling,distributed architectures,and complex work-loads,are increasingly targeted by malicious actors.These threats encompass unauthorized access,data breaches,denial-of-service attacks,and evolving malware variants.Traditional security solutions often struggle with the dynamic nature of cloud environments,highlighting the need for robust Adaptive Cloud Intrusion Detection Systems(CIDS).Existing adaptive CIDS solutions,while offering improved detection capabilities,often face limitations such as reliance on approximations for change point detection,hindering their precision in identifying anomalies.This can lead to missed attacks or an abundance of false alarms,impacting overall security effectiveness.To address these challenges,we propose ACIDS(Adaptive Cloud Intrusion Detection System)-PELT.This novel Adaptive CIDS framework leverages the Pruned Exact Linear Time(PELT)algorithm and a Support Vector Machine(SVM)for enhanced accuracy and efficiency.ACIDS-PELT comprises four key components:(1)Feature Selection:Utilizing a hybrid harmony search algorithm and the symmetrical uncertainty filter(HSO-SU)to identify the most relevant features that effectively differentiate between normal and anomalous network traffic in the cloud environment.(2)Surveillance:Employing the PELT algorithm to detect change points within the network traffic data,enabling the identification of anomalies and potential security threats with improved precision compared to existing approaches.(3)Training Set:Labeled network traffic data forms the training set used to train the SVM classifier to distinguish between normal and anomalous behaviour patterns.(4)Testing Set:The testing set evaluates ACIDS-PELT’s performance by measuring its accuracy,precision,and recall in detecting security threats within the cloud environment.We evaluate the performance of ACIDS-PELT using the NSL-KDD benchmark dataset.The results demonstrate that ACIDS-PELT outperforms existing cloud intrusion detection techniques in terms of accuracy,precision,and recall.This superiority stems from ACIDS-PELT’s ability to overcome limitations associated with approximation and imprecision in change point detection while offering a more accurate and precise approach to detecting security threats in dynamic cloud environments.

Threshold-Based Software-Defined Networking(SDN)Solution for Healthcare Systems against Intrusion Attacks

The healthcare sector holds valuable and sensitive data.The amount of this data and the need to handle,exchange,and protect it,has been increasing at a fast pace.Due to their nature,software-defined networks(SDNs)are widely used in healthcare systems,as they ensure effective resource utilization,safety,great network management,and monitoring.In this sector,due to the value of thedata,SDNs faceamajor challengeposed byawide range of attacks,such as distributed denial of service(DDoS)and probe attacks.These attacks reduce network performance,causing the degradation of different key performance indicators(KPIs)or,in the worst cases,a network failure which can threaten human lives.This can be significant,especially with the current expansion of portable healthcare that supports mobile and wireless devices for what is called mobile health,or m-health.In this study,we examine the effectiveness of using SDNs for defense against DDoS,as well as their effects on different network KPIs under various scenarios.We propose a threshold-based DDoS classifier(TBDC)technique to classify DDoS attacks in healthcare SDNs,aiming to block traffic considered a hazard in the form of a DDoS attack.We then evaluate the accuracy and performance of the proposed TBDC approach.Our technique shows outstanding performance,increasing the mean throughput by 190.3%,reducing the mean delay by 95%,and reducing packet loss by 99.7%relative to normal,with DDoS attack traffic.

Mitigating while Accessing:A Lightweight Defense Framework Against Link Flooding Attacks in SDN

Link flooding attack(LFA)is a type of covert distributed denial of service(DDoS)attack.The attack mechanism of LFAs is to flood critical links within the network to cut off the target area from the Internet.Recently,the proliferation of Internet of Things(IoT)has increased the quantity of vulnerable devices connected to the network and has intensified the threat of LFAs.In LFAs,attackers typically utilize low-speed flows that do not reach the victims,making the attack difficult to detect.Traditional LFA defense methods mainly reroute the attack traffic around the congested link,which encounters high complexity and high computational overhead due to the aggregation of massive attack traffic.To address these challenges,we present an LFA defense framework which can mitigate the attack flows at the border switches when they are small in scale.This framework is lightweight and can be deployed at border switches of the network in a distributed manner,which ensures the scalability of our defense system.The performance of our framework is assessed in an experimental environment.The simulation results indicate that our method is effective in detecting and mitigating LFAs with low time complexity.

Cyberattack Ramifications, The Hidden Cost of a Security Breach

In this in-depth exploration, I delve into the complex implications and costs of cybersecurity breaches. Venturing beyond just the immediate repercussions, the research unearths both the overt and concealed long-term consequences that businesses encounter. This study integrates findings from various research, including quantitative reports, drawing upon real-world incidents faced by both small and large enterprises. This investigation emphasizes the profound intangible costs, such as trade name devaluation and potential damage to brand reputation, which can persist long after the breach. By collating insights from industry experts and a myriad of research, the study provides a comprehensive perspective on the profound, multi-dimensional impacts of cybersecurity incidents. The overarching aim is to underscore the often-underestimated scope and depth of these breaches, emphasizing the entire timeline post-incident and the urgent need for fortified preventative and reactive measures in the digital domain.

Formalized Description of Distributed Denial of Service Attack

The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack is one of the dangers in intrusion modes. It's difficult to defense and can cause serious damage to the system. Based on a careful study of the attack principles and characteristics, an object-oriented formalized description is presented, which contains a three-level framework and offers full specifications of all kinds of DDoS modes and their features and the relations between one another. Its greatest merit lies in that it contributes to analyzing, checking and judging DDoS. Now this formalized description has been used in a special IDS and it works very effectively.(

The Double Edge Sword Based Distributed Executor Service

Scalability is one of the most important quality attribute of softwareintensive systems,because it maintains an effective performance parallel to the large fluctuating and sometimes unpredictable workload.In order to achieve scalability,thread pool system(TPS)(which is also known as executor service)has been used extensively as a middleware service in software-intensive systems.TPS optimization is a challenging problem that determines the optimal size of thread pool dynamically on runtime.In case of distributed-TPS(DTPS),another issue is the load balancing b/w available set of TPSs running at backend servers.Existing DTPSs are overloaded either due to an inappropriate TPS optimization strategy at backend servers or improper load balancing scheme that cannot quickly recover an overload.Consequently,the performance of software-intensive system is suffered.Thus,in this paper,we propose a new DTPS that follows the collaborative round robin load balancing that has the effect of a double-edge sword.On the one hand,it effectively performs the load balancing(in case of overload situation)among available TPSs by a fast overload recovery procedure that decelerates the load on the overloaded TPSs up to their capacities and shifts the remaining load towards other gracefully running TPSs.And on the other hand,its robust load deceleration technique which is applied to an overloaded TPS sets an appropriate upper bound of thread pool size,because the pool size in each TPS is kept equal to the request rate on it,hence dynamically optimizes TPS.We evaluated the results of the proposed system against state of the art DTPSs by a clientserver based simulator and found that our system outperformed by sustaining smaller response times.

A Novel Framework for DDoS Attacks Detection Using Hybrid LSTM Techniques

The recent development of cloud computing offers various services on demand for organization and individual users,such as storage,shared computing space,networking,etc.Although Cloud Computing provides various advantages for users,it remains vulnerable to many types of attacks that attract cyber criminals.Distributed Denial of Service(DDoS)is the most common type of attack on cloud computing.Consequently,Cloud computing professionals and security experts have focused on the growth of preventive processes towards DDoS attacks.Since DDoS attacks have become increasingly widespread,it becomes difficult for some DDoS attack methods based on individual network flow features to distinguish various types of DDoS attacks.Further,the monitoring pattern of traffic changes and accurate detection of DDoS attacks are most important and urgent.In this research work,DDoS attack detection methods based on deep belief network feature extraction and Hybrid Long Short-Term Memory(LSTM)model have been proposed with NSL-KDD dataset.In Hybrid LSTM method,the Particle Swarm Optimization(PSO)technique,which is combined to optimize the weights of the LSTM neural network,reduces the prediction error.This deep belief network method is used to extract the features of IP packets,and it identifies DDoS attacks based on PSO-LSTM model.Moreover,it accurately predicts normal network traffic and detects anomalies resulting from DDoS attacks.The proposed PSO-LSTM architecture outperforms the classification techniques including standard Support Vector Machine(SVM)and LSTM in terms of attack detection performance along with the results of the measurement of accuracy,recall,f-measure,precision.

Game-theoretical Model for Dynamic Defense Resource Allocation in Cyber-physical Power Systems Under Distributed Denial of Service Attacks

Electric power grids are evolving into complex cyber-physical power systems(CPPSs)that integrate advanced information and communication technologies(ICTs)but face increasing cyberspace threats and attacks.This study considers CPPS cyberspace security under distributed denial of service(DDoS)attacks and proposes a nonzero-sum game-theoretical model with incomplete information for appropriate allocation of defense resources based on the availability of limited resources.Task time delay is applied to quantify the expected utility as CPPSs have high time requirements and incur massive damage DDoS attacks.Different resource allocation strategies are adopted by attackers and defenders under the three cases of attack-free,failed attack,and successful attack,which lead to a corresponding consumption of resources.A multidimensional node value analysis is designed to introduce physical and cybersecurity indices.Simulation experiments and numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model for the appropriate allocation of defense resources in CPPSs under limited resource availability.

Smart Contract Based DDoS Attack Traceability Audit Mechanism in Intelligent IoT

In this paper,we focus on providing data provenance auditing schemes for distributed denial of service(DDoS)defense in intelligent internet of things(IoT).To achieve effective DDoS defense,we introduce a two-layer collaborative blockchain framework to support data auditing.Specifically,using data scattered among intelligent IoT devices,switch gateways self-assemble a layer of blockchain in the local autonomous system(AS),and the main chain with controller participation can be aggregated by its associated layer of blocks once a cycle,to obtain a global security model.To optimize the processing delay of the security model,we propose a process of data pre-validation with the goal of ensuring data consistency while satisfying overhead requirements.Since the flood of identity spoofing packets,it is difficult to solve the identity consistency of data with traditional detection methods,and accountability cannot be pursued afterwards.Thus,we proposed a Packet Traceback Telemetry(PTT)scheme,based on in-band telemetry,to solve the problem.Specifically,the PTT scheme is executed on the distributed switch side,the controller to schedule and select routing policies.Moreover,a tracing probabilistic optimization is embedded into the PTT scheme to accelerate path reconstruction and save device resources.Simulation results show that the PTT scheme can reconstruct address spoofing packet forward path,reduce the resource consumption compared with existing tracing scheme.Data tracing audit method has fine-grained detection and feasible performance.

DDoS Attack Detection in Cloud Computing Based on Ensemble Feature Selection and Deep Learning

Intrusion Detection System(IDS)in the cloud Computing(CC)environment has received paramount interest over the last few years.Among the latest approaches,Deep Learning(DL)-based IDS methods allow the discovery of attacks with the highest performance.In the CC environment,Distributed Denial of Service(DDoS)attacks are widespread.The cloud services will be rendered unavailable to legitimate end-users as a consequence of the overwhelming network traffic,resulting in financial losses.Although various researchers have proposed many detection techniques,there are possible obstacles in terms of detection performance due to the use of insignificant traffic features.Therefore,in this paper,a hybrid deep learning mode based on hybridizing Convolutional Neural Network(CNN)with Long-Short-Term Memory(LSTM)is used due to its robustness and efficiency in detecting normal and attack traffic.Besides,the ensemble feature selection,mutualization aggregation between Particle Swarm Optimizer(PSO),Grey Wolf Optimizer(PSO),Krill Hird(KH),andWhale Optimization Algorithm(WOA),is used to select the most important features that would influence the detection performance in detecting DDoS attack in CC.A benchmark dataset proposed by the Canadian Institute of Cybersecurity(CIC),called CICIDS 2017 is used to evaluate the proposed IDS.The results revealed that the proposed IDS outperforms the state-of-the-art IDSs,as it achieved 97.9%,98.3%,97.9%,98.1%,respectively.As a result,the proposed IDS achieves the requirements of getting high security,automatic,efficient,and self-decision detection of DDoS attacks.

Toward Secure Software-Defined Networks Using Machine Learning: A Review, Research Challenges, and Future Directions

Over the past few years,rapid advancements in the internet and communication technologies have led to increasingly intricate and diverse networking systems.As a result,greater intelligence is necessary to effectively manage,optimize,and maintain these systems.Due to their distributed nature,machine learning models are challenging to deploy in traditional networks.However,Software-Defined Networking(SDN)presents an opportunity to integrate intelligence into networks by offering a programmable architecture that separates data and control planes.SDN provides a centralized network view and allows for dynamic updates of flow rules and softwarebased traffic analysis.While the programmable nature of SDN makes it easier to deploy machine learning techniques,the centralized control logic also makes it vulnerable to cyberattacks.To address these issues,recent research has focused on developing powerful machine-learning methods for detecting and mitigating attacks in SDN environments.This paper highlighted the countermeasures for cyberattacks on SDN and how current machine learningbased solutions can overcome these emerging issues.We also discuss the pros and cons of using machine learning algorithms for detecting and mitigating these attacks.Finally,we highlighted research issues,gaps,and challenges in developing machine learning-based solutions to secure the SDN controller,to help the research and network community to develop more robust and reliable solutions.

Detecting and Mitigating DDOS Attacks in SDNs Using Deep Neural Network

Distributed denial of service(DDoS)attack is the most common attack that obstructs a network and makes it unavailable for a legitimate user.We proposed a deep neural network(DNN)model for the detection of DDoS attacks in the Software-Defined Networking(SDN)paradigm.SDN centralizes the control plane and separates it from the data plane.It simplifies a network and eliminates vendor specification of a device.Because of this open nature and centralized control,SDN can easily become a victim of DDoS attacks.We proposed a supervised Developed Deep Neural Network(DDNN)model that can classify the DDoS attack traffic and legitimate traffic.Our Developed Deep Neural Network(DDNN)model takes a large number of feature values as compared to previously proposed Machine Learning(ML)models.The proposed DNN model scans the data to find the correlated features and delivers high-quality results.The model enhances the security of SDN and has better accuracy as compared to previously proposed models.We choose the latest state-of-the-art dataset which consists of many novel attacks and overcomes all the shortcomings and limitations of the existing datasets.Our model results in a high accuracy rate of 99.76%with a low false-positive rate and 0.065%low loss rate.The accuracy increases to 99.80%as we increase the number of epochs to 100 rounds.Our proposed model classifies anomalous and normal traffic more accurately as compared to the previously proposed models.It can handle a huge amount of structured and unstructured data and can easily solve complex problems.