Information theory based detection against network behavior mimicking DDoS attacks

DDoS is a spy-on-spy game between attackers and detectors. Attackers are mimicking network traffic patterns to disable the detection algorithms which are based on these features. It is an open problem of discriminating the mimicking DDoS attacks from massive legitimate network accessing. We observed that the zombies use controlled function(s) to pump attack packages to the victim, therefore, the attack flows to the victim are always share some properties, e.g. packages distribution behaviors, which are not possessed by legitimate flows in a short time period. Based on this observation, once there appear suspicious flows to a server, we start to calculate the distance of the package distribution behavior among the suspicious flows. If the distance is less than a given threshold, then it is a DDoS attack, otherwise, it is a legitimate accessing. Our analysis and the preliminary experiments indicate that the proposed method- can discriminate mimicking flooding attacks from legitimate accessing efficiently and effectively. <br /

Chaos theory based detection against network mimicking DDoS attacks

DDoS attack traffic is difficult to differentiate from legitimate network traffic during transit from the attacker, or zombies, to the victim. In this paper, we use the theory of network self-similarity to differentiate DDoS flooding attack traffic from legitimate self-similar traffic in the network. We observed that DDoS traffic causes a strange attractor to develop in the pattern of network traffic. From this observation, we developed a neural network detector trained by our DDoS prediction algorithm. Our preliminary experiments and analysis indicate that our proposed chaotic model can accurately and effectively detect DDoS attack traffic. Our approach has the potential to not only detect attack traffic during transit, but to also filter it.<br /

SENATUS: An Approach to Joint Traffic Anomaly Detection and Root Cause Analysis

In this paper, we propose a novel approach, called SENATUS, for joint traffic anomaly detection and root-cause analysis. Inspired from the concept of a senate, the key idea of the proposed approach is divided into three stages: election, voting and decision. At the election stage, a small number of \nop{traffic flow sets (termed as senator flows)}senator flows are chosen\nop{, which are used} to represent approximately the total (usually huge) set of traffic flows. In the voting stage, anomaly detection is applied on the senator flows and the detected anomalies are correlated to identify the most possible anomalous time bins. Finally in the decision stage, a machine learning technique is applied to the senator flows of each anomalous time bin to find the root cause of the anomalies. We evaluate SENATUS using traffic traces collected from the Pan European network, GEANT, and compare against another approach which detects anomalies using lossless compression of traffic histograms. We show the effectiveness of SENATUS in diagnosing anomaly types: network scans and DoS/DDoS attacks

Chaos Theory Based Detection against Network Mimicking DDoS Attacks

DDoS attack traffic is difficult to differentiate from legitimate network traffic during transit from the attacker, or zombies, to the victim. In this paper, we use the theory of network self-similarity to differentiate DDoS flooding attack traffic from legitimate self-similar traffic in the network. We observed that DDoS traffic causes a strange attractor to develop in the pattern of network traffic. From this observation, we developed a neural network detector trained by our DDoS prediction algorithm. Our preliminary experiments and analysis indicate that our proposed chaotic model can accurately and effectively detect DDoS attack traffic. Our approach has the potential to not only detect attack traffic during transit, but to also filter it

Discriminating DDoS flows from flash crowds using information distance

Discriminating DDoS flooding attacks from flash crowds poses a tough challenge for the network security community. Because of the vulnerability of the original design of the Internet, attackers can easily mimic the patterns of legitimate network traffic to fly under the radar. The existing fingerprint or feature based algorithms are incapable to detect new attack strategies. In this paper, we aim to differentiate DDoS attack flows from flash crowds. We are motivated by the following fact: the attack flows are generated by the same prebuilt program (attack tools), however, flash crowds come from randomly distributed users all over the Internet. Therefore, the flow similarity among DDoS attack flows is much stronger than that among flash crowds. We employ abstract distance metrics, the Jeffrey distance, the Sibson distance, and the Hellinger distance to measure the similarity among flows to achieve our goal. We compared the three metrics and found that the Sibson distance is the most suitable one for our purpose. We apply our algorithm to the real datasets and the results indicate that the proposed algorithm can differentiate them with an accuracy around 65%.<br /

An improved wavelet analysis method for detecting DDoS attacks

Wavelet Analysis method is considered as one of the most efficient methods for detecting DDoS attacks. However, during the peak data communication hours with a large amount of data transactions, this method is required to collect too many samples that will greatly increase the computational complexity. Therefore, the real-time response time as well as the accuracy of attack detection becomes very low. To address the above problem, we propose a new DDoS detection method called Modified Wavelet Analysis method which is based on the existing Isomap algorithm and wavelet analysis. In the paper, we present our new model and algorithm for detecting DDoS attacks and demonstrate the reasons of why we enlarge the Hurst's value of the self-similarity in our new approach. Finally we present an experimental evaluation to demonstrate that the proposed method is more efficient than the other traditional methods based on wavelet analysis. © 2010 IEEE

An Enhanced Entropy Approach to Detect and Prevent DDoS in Cloud Environment

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack launched in Cloud computing environment resulted in loss of sensitive information, Data corruption and even rarely lead to service shutdown. Entropy based DDoS mitigation approach analyzes the heuristic data and acts dynamically according to the traffic behavior to effectively segregate the characteristics of incoming traffic. Heuristic data helps in detecting the traffic condition to mitigate the flooding attack. Then, the traffic data is analyzed to distinguish legitimate and attack characteristics. An additional Trust mechanism has been deployed to differentiate legitimate and aggressive legitimate users. Hence, Goodput of Datacenter has been improved by detecting and mitigating the incoming traffic threats at each stage. Simulation results proved that the Enhanced Entropy approach behaves better at DDoS attack prone zones. Profit analysis also proved that the proposed mechanism is deployable at Datacenter for attack mitigation and resource protection which eventually results in beneficial service at slenderized revenu

Real time DDoS detection using fuzzy estimators

We propose a method for DDoS detection by constructing a fuzzy estimator on the mean packet inter arrival times. We divided the problem into two challenges, the first being the actual detection of the DDoS event taking place and the second being the identification of the offending IP addresses. We have imposed strict real time constraints for the first challenge and more relaxed constraints for the identification of addresses. Through empirical evaluation we confirmed that the detection can be completed within improved real time limits and that by using fuzzy estimators instead of crisp statistical descriptors we can avoid the shortcomings posed by assumptions on the model distribution of the traffic. In addition we managed to obtain results under a 3 sec detection window. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Denial of Service in Web-Domains: Building Defenses Against Next-Generation Attack Behavior

The existing state-of-the-art in the field of application layer Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection is generally designed, and thus effective, only for static web domains. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first that studies the problem of application layer DDoS defense in web domains of dynamic content and organization, and for next-generation bot behaviour. In the first part of this thesis, we focus on the following research tasks: 1) we identify the main weaknesses of the existing application-layer anti-DDoS solutions as proposed in research literature and in the industry, 2) we obtain a comprehensive picture of the current-day as well as the next-generation application-layer attack behaviour and 3) we propose novel techniques, based on a multidisciplinary approach that combines offline machine learning algorithms and statistical analysis, for detection of suspicious web visitors in static web domains. Then, in the second part of the thesis, we propose and evaluate a novel anti-DDoS system that detects a broad range of application-layer DDoS attacks, both in static and dynamic web domains, through the use of advanced techniques of data mining. The key advantage of our system relative to other systems that resort to the use of challenge-response tests (such as CAPTCHAs) in combating malicious bots is that our system minimizes the number of these tests that are presented to valid human visitors while succeeding in preventing most malicious attackers from accessing the web site. The results of the experimental evaluation of the proposed system demonstrate effective detection of current and future variants of application layer DDoS attacks