Explainable Lightweight Block Attention Module Framework for Network-Based IoT Attack Detection

Abstract

In the rapidly evolving landscape of internet usage, ensuring robust cybersecurity measures has become a paramount concern across diverse fields. Among the numerous cyber threats, denial of service (DoS) and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks pose significant risks, as they can render websites and servers inaccessible to their intended users. Conventional intrusion detection methods encounter substantial challenges in effectively identifying and mitigating these attacks due to their widespread nature, intricate patterns, and computational complexities. However, by harnessing the power of deep learning-based techniques, our proposed dense channel-spatial attention model exhibits exceptional accuracy in detecting and classifying DoS and DDoS attacks. The successful implementation of our proposed framework addresses the challenges posed by imbalanced data and exhibits its potential for real-world applications. By leveraging the dense channel-spatial attention mechanism, our model can precisely identify and classify DoS and DDoS attacks, bolstering the cybersecurity defenses of websites and servers. The high accuracy rates achieved across different datasets reinforce the robustness of our approach, underscoring its efficacy in enhancing intrusion detection capabilities. As a result, our framework holds promise in bolstering cybersecurity measures in real-world scenarios, contributing to the ongoing efforts to safeguard against cyber threats in an increasingly interconnected digital landscape. Comparative analysis with current intrusion detection methods reveals the superior performance of our model. We achieved accuracy rates of 99.38%, 99.26%, and 99.43% for Bot-IoT, CICIDS2017, and UNSW_NB15 datasets, respectively. These remarkable results demonstrate the capability of our approach to accurately detect and classify various types of DoS and DDoS assaults. By leveraging the inherent strengths of deep learning, such as pattern recognition and feature extraction, our model effectively overcomes the limitations of traditional methods, enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of intrusion detection systems.