IoT Threat Detection Testbed Using Generative Adversarial Networks

The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm provides persistent sensing and data collection capabilities and is becoming increasingly prevalent across many market sectors. However, most IoT devices emphasize usability and function over security, making them very vulnerable to malicious exploits. This concern is evidenced by the increased use of compromised IoT devices in large scale bot networks (botnets) to launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against high value targets. Unsecured IoT systems can also provide entry points to private networks, allowing adversaries relatively easy access to valuable resources and services. Indeed, these evolving IoT threat vectors (ranging from brute force attacks to remote code execution exploits) are posing key challenges. Moreover, many traditional security mechanisms are not amenable for deployment on smaller resource-constrained IoT platforms. As a result, researchers have been developing a range of methods for IoT security, with many strategies using advanced machine learning (ML) techniques. Along these lines, this paper presents a novel generative adversarial network (GAN) solution to detect threats from malicious IoT devices both inside and outside a network. This model is trained using both benign IoT traffic and global darknet data and further evaluated in a testbed with real IoT devices and malware threats.