Deep Learning based DDoS Attack Detection in Internet of Things: An Optimized CNN-BiLSTM Architecture with Transfer Learning and Regularization Techniques

Abstract

In recent days, with the rapid advancement of technology in informatics systems, the Internet of Things (IoT) becomes crucial in many aspects of daily life. IoT applications have gained popularity due to the availability of various IoT enabler gadgets, such as smartwatches, smartphones, and so on. However, the vulnerability of IoT devices has led to security challenges, including Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks. These limitations result from the dynamic communication between IoT devices due to their limited data storage and processing resources. The primary research challenge is to create a model that can recognize legitimate traffic while effectively protecting the network against various classes of DDoS attacks. This article proposes a CNN-BiLSTM DDoS detection model by combining three deep-learning algorithms. The models are evaluated using the CICIDS2017 dataset against commonly used performance criteria which the models perform well, achieving an accuracy of around 99.76%, except for the CNN model, which achieves an accuracy of 98.82%. The proposed model performs best, achieving an accuracy of 99.9%.