Title
Encryption-agnostic classifiers of traffic originators and their application to anomaly detection
Abstract
This paper presents an approach that leverages classical machine learning techniques to identify the tools from the packets sniffed, both for clear-text and encrypted traffic. This research aims to overcome the limitations to security monitoring systems posed by the widespread adoption of encrypted communications. By training three distinct classifiers, this paper shows that it is possible to detect, with excellent accuracy, the category of tools that generated the analyzed traffic (e.g., browsers vs. network stress tools), the actual tools (e.g., Firefox vs. Chrome vs. Edge), and the individual tool versions (e.g., Chrome 48 vs. Chrome 68). The paper provides hints that the classifiers are helpful for early detection of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, duplication of entire websites, and identification of sudden changes in users' behavior, which might be the consequence of malware infection or data exfiltration.
Year
DOI
Venue
2022
10.1016/j.compeleceng.2021.107621
COMPUTERS & ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Network traffic anomaly, Intrusion detection, Machine learning, DoS attacks, Web crawling
Journal
97
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
0045-7906
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Daniele Canavese100.34
Leonardo Regano2112.17
Cataldo Basile311414.90
Gabriele Ciravegna433.23
Antonio Lioy500.34