Neural visualization of network traffic data for intrusion detection

This study introduces and describes a novel intrusion detection system (IDS) called MOVCIDS (mobile visualization connectionist IDS). This system applies neural projection architectures to detect anomalous situations taking place in a computer network. By its advanced visualization facilities, the proposed IDS allows providing an overview of the network traffic as well as identifying anomalous situations tackled by computer networks, responding to the challenges presented by volume, dynamics and diversity of the traffic, including novel (0-day) attacks. MOVCIDS provides a novel point of view in the field of IDSs by enabling the most interesting projections (based on the fourth order statistics; the kurtosis index) of a massive traffic dataset to be extracted. These projections are then depicted through a functional and mobile visualization interface, providing visual information of the internal structure of the traffic data. The interface makes MOVCIDS accessible from any mobile device to give more accessibility to network administrators, enabling continuous visualization, monitoring and supervision of computer networks. Additionally, a novel testing technique has been developed to evaluate MOVCIDS and other IDSs employing numerical datasets. To show the performance and validate the proposed IDS, it has been tested in different real domains containing several attacks and anomalous situations. In addition, the importance of the temporal dimension on intrusion detection, and the ability of this IDS to process it, are emphasized in this workJunta de Castilla and Leon project BU006A08, Business intelligence for production within the framework of the Instituto Tecnologico de Cas-tilla y Leon (ITCL) and the Agencia de Desarrollo Empresarial (ADE), and the Spanish Ministry of Education and Innovation project CIT-020000-2008-2. The authors would also like to thank the vehicle interior manufacturer, Grupo Antolin Ingenieria S. A., within the framework of the project MAGNO2008-1028-CENIT Project funded by the Spanish Government