An ontology-based system to identify complex network attacks

Abstract — Intrusion Detection Systems are tools used to detect attacks against networks. Many of these attacks are a sequence of multiple simple attacks. These complex attacks are more difficult to identify because (a) they are difficult to predict, (b) almost anything could be an attack, and (c) there are a huge number of possibilities. The problem is that the expertise of what constitutes an attack lies in the tacit knowledge of experienced network engineers. By providing an ontological representation of what constitutes a network attack human expertise to be codified and tested. The details of this representation are explained. An implementation of the representation has been developed. Lastly, the use of the representation in an Intrusion Detection System for complex attack detection has been demonstrated using use cases. Keywords- Computer network security; Intrusion Detection System; Ontolog