DDoS attack detection algorithms based on entropy computing

Abstract

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack poses a severe threat to the Internet. It is difficult to find the exact signature of attacking. Moreover, it is hard to distinguish the difference of an unusual high volume of traffic which is caused by the attack or occurs when a huge number of users occasionally access the target machine at the same time. The entropy detection method is an effective method to detect the DDoS attack. It is mainly used to calculate the distribution randomness of some attributes in the network packets' headers. In this paper, we focus on the detection technology of DDoS attack. We improve the previous entropy detection algorithm, and propose two enhanced detection methods based on cumulative entropy and time, respectively. Experiment results show that these methods could lead to more accurate and effective DDoS detection. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.