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Main Authors: Miguel-Diez, Alberto, Campazas-Vega, Adrián, Álvarez-Aparicio, Claudia, Esteban-Costales, Gonzalo, Guerrero-Higueras, Ángel Manuel
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.08293
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author Miguel-Diez, Alberto
Campazas-Vega, Adrián
Álvarez-Aparicio, Claudia
Esteban-Costales, Gonzalo
Guerrero-Higueras, Ángel Manuel
author_facet Miguel-Diez, Alberto
Campazas-Vega, Adrián
Álvarez-Aparicio, Claudia
Esteban-Costales, Gonzalo
Guerrero-Higueras, Ángel Manuel
contents The constant increase of devices connected to the Internet, and therefore of cyber-attacks, makes it necessary to analyze network traffic in order to recognize malicious activity. Traditional packet-based analysis methods are insufficient because in large networks the amount of traffic is so high that it is unfeasible to review all communications. For this reason, flows is a suitable approach for this situation, which in future 5G networks will have to be used, as the number of packets will increase dramatically. If this is also combined with unsupervised learning models, it can detect new threats for which it has not been trained. This paper presents a systematic review of the literature on unsupervised learning algorithms for detecting anomalies in network flows, following the PRISMA guideline. A total of 63 scientific articles have been reviewed, analyzing 13 of them in depth. The results obtained show that autoencoder is the most used option, followed by SVM, ALAD, or SOM. On the other hand, all the datasets used for anomaly detection have been collected, including some specialised in IoT or with real data collected from honeypots.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_08293
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A systematic literature review of unsupervised learning algorithms for anomalous traffic detection based on flows
Miguel-Diez, Alberto
Campazas-Vega, Adrián
Álvarez-Aparicio, Claudia
Esteban-Costales, Gonzalo
Guerrero-Higueras, Ángel Manuel
Cryptography and Security
Machine Learning
Networking and Internet Architecture
The constant increase of devices connected to the Internet, and therefore of cyber-attacks, makes it necessary to analyze network traffic in order to recognize malicious activity. Traditional packet-based analysis methods are insufficient because in large networks the amount of traffic is so high that it is unfeasible to review all communications. For this reason, flows is a suitable approach for this situation, which in future 5G networks will have to be used, as the number of packets will increase dramatically. If this is also combined with unsupervised learning models, it can detect new threats for which it has not been trained. This paper presents a systematic review of the literature on unsupervised learning algorithms for detecting anomalies in network flows, following the PRISMA guideline. A total of 63 scientific articles have been reviewed, analyzing 13 of them in depth. The results obtained show that autoencoder is the most used option, followed by SVM, ALAD, or SOM. On the other hand, all the datasets used for anomaly detection have been collected, including some specialised in IoT or with real data collected from honeypots.
title A systematic literature review of unsupervised learning algorithms for anomalous traffic detection based on flows
topic Cryptography and Security
Machine Learning
Networking and Internet Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.08293