Enhancing Automata Learning with Statistical Machine Learning: A Network Security Case Study

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Ayoughi, Negin, Nejati, Shiva, Sabetzadeh, Mehrdad, Saavedra, Patricio
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866913429726429184
author Ayoughi, Negin
Nejati, Shiva
Sabetzadeh, Mehrdad
Saavedra, Patricio
author_facet Ayoughi, Negin
Nejati, Shiva
Sabetzadeh, Mehrdad
Saavedra, Patricio
contents Intrusion detection systems are crucial for network security. Verification of these systems is complicated by various factors, including the heterogeneity of network platforms and the continuously changing landscape of cyber threats. In this paper, we use automata learning to derive state machines from network-traffic data with the objective of supporting behavioural verification of intrusion detection systems. The most innovative aspect of our work is addressing the inability to directly apply existing automata learning techniques to network-traffic data due to the numeric nature of such data. Specifically, we use interpretable machine learning (ML) to partition numeric ranges into intervals that strongly correlate with a system's decisions regarding intrusion detection. These intervals are subsequently used to abstract numeric ranges before automata learning. We apply our ML-enhanced automata learning approach to a commercial network intrusion detection system developed by our industry partner, RabbitRun Technologies. Our approach results in an average 67.5% reduction in the number of states and transitions of the learned state machines, while achieving an average 28% improvement in accuracy compared to using expertise-based numeric data abstraction. Furthermore, the resulting state machines help practitioners in verifying system-level security requirements and exploring previously unknown system behaviours through model checking and temporal query checking. We make our implementation and experimental data available online.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_11141
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Enhancing Automata Learning with Statistical Machine Learning: A Network Security Case Study
Ayoughi, Negin
Nejati, Shiva
Sabetzadeh, Mehrdad
Saavedra, Patricio
Cryptography and Security
Software Engineering
Intrusion detection systems are crucial for network security. Verification of these systems is complicated by various factors, including the heterogeneity of network platforms and the continuously changing landscape of cyber threats. In this paper, we use automata learning to derive state machines from network-traffic data with the objective of supporting behavioural verification of intrusion detection systems. The most innovative aspect of our work is addressing the inability to directly apply existing automata learning techniques to network-traffic data due to the numeric nature of such data. Specifically, we use interpretable machine learning (ML) to partition numeric ranges into intervals that strongly correlate with a system's decisions regarding intrusion detection. These intervals are subsequently used to abstract numeric ranges before automata learning. We apply our ML-enhanced automata learning approach to a commercial network intrusion detection system developed by our industry partner, RabbitRun Technologies. Our approach results in an average 67.5% reduction in the number of states and transitions of the learned state machines, while achieving an average 28% improvement in accuracy compared to using expertise-based numeric data abstraction. Furthermore, the resulting state machines help practitioners in verifying system-level security requirements and exploring previously unknown system behaviours through model checking and temporal query checking. We make our implementation and experimental data available online.
title Enhancing Automata Learning with Statistical Machine Learning: A Network Security Case Study
topic Cryptography and Security
Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.11141