Applications of Machine Learning to Threat Intelligence, Intrusion Detection and Malware

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are emerging technologies with applications to many fields. This paper is a survey of use cases of ML for threat intelligence, intrusion detection, and malware analysis and detection. Threat intelligence, especially attack attribution, can benefit from the use of ML classification. False positives from rule-based intrusion detection systems can be reduced with the use of ML models. Malware analysis and classification can be made easier by developing ML frameworks to distill similarities between the malicious programs. Adversarial machine learning will also be discussed, because while ML can be used to solve problems or reduce analyst workload, it also introduces new attack surfaces

Artificial intelligence in the cyber domain: Offense and defense

Artificial intelligence techniques have grown rapidly in recent years, and their applications in practice can be seen in many fields, ranging from facial recognition to image analysis. In the cybersecurity domain, AI-based techniques can provide better cyber defense tools and help adversaries improve methods of attack. However, malicious actors are aware of the new prospects too and will probably attempt to use them for nefarious purposes. This survey paper aims at providing an overview of how artificial intelligence can be used in the context of cybersecurity in both offense and defense.Web of Science123art. no. 41

IDSGAN: Generative Adversarial Networks for Attack Generation against Intrusion Detection

As an important tool in security, the intrusion detection system bears the responsibility of the defense to network attacks performed by malicious traffic. Nowadays, with the help of machine learning algorithms, the intrusion detection system develops rapidly. However, the robustness of this system is questionable when it faces the adversarial attacks. To improve the detection system, more potential attack approaches should be researched. In this paper, a framework of the generative adversarial networks, IDSGAN, is proposed to generate the adversarial attacks, which can deceive and evade the intrusion detection system. Considering that the internal structure of the detection system is unknown to attackers, adversarial attack examples perform the black-box attacks against the detection system. IDSGAN leverages a generator to transform original malicious traffic into adversarial malicious traffic. A discriminator classifies traffic examples and simulates the black-box detection system. More significantly, we only modify part of the attacks' nonfunctional features to guarantee the validity of the intrusion. Based on the dataset NSL-KDD, the feasibility of the model is demonstrated to attack many detection systems with different attacks and the excellent results are achieved. Moreover, the robustness of IDSGAN is verified by changing the amount of the unmodified features.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure