Anomaly network intrusion detection system based on NetFlow using machine/deep learning

Introduction/purpose: Anomaly detection-based Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDSs) have emerged as a valuable tool, particularly in military fields, for protecting networks against cyberattacks, specifically focusing on Netflow data, to identify normal and abnormal patterns. This study investigates the effectiveness of anomaly-based machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) models in NIDSs using the publicly available NF-UQ-NIDS dataset, which utilizes Netflow data, with the aim of enhancing network protection. Methods: The authors Sarhan, M., Layeghy, S., Moustafa, N. and Portmann, M. in the conference paper Big Data Technologies and Applications, in 2021, involve a preprocessing step where 8 features are selected for the training phase out of the 12 available features. Notably, the IP source and destination addresses, as well as their associated ports, are specifically excluded. The novelty of this paper lies in the preprocessing of the excluded features and their inclusion in the training phase, employing various classification ML and DL algorithms such as ExtraTrees, ANN, simple CNN, and VGG16 for binary classification. Results: The performance of the classification models is evaluated using metrics such as accuracy, recall, etc., which provide a comprehensive analysis of the obtained results. The results show that the ExtraTrees ML model outperforms all other models when using our preprocessing features, achieving a classification accuracy of 99.09%, compared to 97.25% in the reference dataset. Conclusion: The study demonstrates the effectiveness of anomalybased ML and DL models in NIDSs using Netflow data.