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dc.contributor.advisorPlattner, Bernhard-
dc.contributor.advisorSornette, Didier-
dc.contributor.advisorKind, Andreas-
dc.contributor.authorTellenbach, Bernhard-
dc.date.accessioned2018-07-09T12:25:05Z-
dc.date.available2018-07-09T12:25:05Z-
dc.date.issued2013-
dc.identifier.isbn978-3-8440-2042-7de_CH
dc.identifier.otherurn:nbn:de:101:1-201405257986de_CH
dc.identifier.urihttps://digitalcollection.zhaw.ch/handle/11475/7718-
dc.description.abstractToday, the Internet allows virtually anytime, anywhere access to a seemingly unlimited supply of information and services. Statistics such as the six-fold increase of U.S. online retail sales since 2000 illustrate its growing importance to the global economy, and fuel our demand for rapid, round-the-clock Internet provision. This growth has created a need for systems of control and management to regulate an increasingly complex infrastructure. Unfortunately, the prospect of making fast money from this burgeoning industry has also started to attract criminals. This has driven an increase in, and professionalization of, cyber-crime. As a result, a variety of methods have been designed with the intention of better protecting the Internet, its users and its underlying infrastructure from both accidental and malicious threats. Firewalls, which restrict network access, intrusion detection systems, which locate and prevent unauthorized access, and network monitors, which over see the correct functioning of network infrastructures, have all been developed in order to detect and avert potential problems. These systems can be broadly defined as either reactive or proactive. The reactive approach seeks to identify specific problem patterns. It uses models learnt from theory or practice to locate common dangers as they develop. The number of patterns applied grows as each new problem is encountered. Proactive methods work differently. They start defining an idealized model of the normal behavior of a given system. Any significant deviation from this model is assumed to be an aberrance caused by an external danger. However, this assumption may turn out to be incorrect, having actually not arisen from a disruption or a malicious act. Despite considerable improvements, the development of accurate proactive detection and classification methods is still an area of intense research. This is particularly true of methods fit for high speed networks. To cope with the huge amounts of data at hand, these methods utilize highly aggregated forms of data. Volume measurements and traffic feature distributions such as the number of connections per time unit or the distribution of connection sources form their primary sources of information. Various methods have been developed to detect anomalous changes in these distributions. Among them, entropy based methods have become widely used, and demonstrate considerable success in both research and production systems. Nonetheless, there remain many challenges regarding the use of entropy. In this thesis, we address three of these challenges. In high speed networks, packet sampling methods are widely employed to reduce the amount of traffic data measured. However, we possess no empirical data about how this affects the visibility of anomalies when using entropy or volume metrics. Another area where additional analysis is required is the value of entropy with regard to anomaly detection. A study published by Nychis et al. found that entropies of common traffic feature distributions correlate strongly with simple volume measurements. The authors use this to suggest that they therefore do not contribute much. However, their claims do not match the practical evidence furnished by the many successful applications of this method. The second issue is the characterization and visualization of changes in distributions. In high-speed networks, the sheer quantity of information involved makes the concise representation of changes in distributions essential. However, many of the most commonly used methods, such as the Shannon entropy, are hampered by their limited descriptive power. This stems from the fact that they capture change using a single number. Other methods, including histograms, suffer by the fact that their optimal use depends on parameters which differ across various types of change. The third problem to consider is the way in which the detection and classification capabilities of entropy-based anomaly detectors can be improved. Existing systems do show good detection rates. They can even, to an extent, successfully classify the largest anomalies. However, there remains scope to refine their performance, specifically when dealing with small to medium sized anomalies. Furthermore, studies on distributed denial of service and port scan anomalies from malware point out that parameterized entropies such as the Tsallis entropy might be superior to non-parameterized entropies. However, how these preliminary results can be linked to arbitrary types of anomalies, as well as appropriate detection and classification systems, remains underexplored. In this work we make the following contributions. We analyze the robustness of entropy in the presence of packet sampling. Based on traffic traces from the outbreak of the Blaster and Witty worm, we find that entropy is not only robust but, depending on the traffic mix, might even lead to an improvement in the location of anomalies for sampling rates of up to 1:10,000. Next, we analyze whether the entropy of various traffic feature distributions provides valuable information for anomaly detection. We refute the findings of previous work, which reported a supposedly strong correlation between different feature entropies. Our core contribution is the Traffic Entropy Spectrum (TES), a method for the compact characterization and visualization of traffic feature distributions. We also propose a refined version of the TES, which hones its capabilities with regard to anomaly classification. To demonstrate the descriptive power of the TES, we use traffic data containing real anomalies. Finally, we build the Entropy telescope, a detection and classification system based on the TES. We provide a comprehensive evaluation using three different detection methods, and one classification method. Our evaluation, based on a rich set of artificial anomalies combined with real traffic data, shows that the refined TES outperforms the classical Shannon entropy by up to 20% in detection accuracy and by up to 27% in classification accuracy.de_CH
dc.format.extent215de_CH
dc.language.isoende_CH
dc.publisherShakerde_CH
dc.relation.ispartofseriesKommunikationstechnikde_CH
dc.rightsLicence according to publishing contractde_CH
dc.subjectAnomaly detectionde_CH
dc.subjectAnomaly classificationde_CH
dc.subjectNetwork trafficde_CH
dc.subjectNetflowde_CH
dc.subject.ddc004: Informatikde_CH
dc.titleDetection, classification and visualization of anomalies using generalized entropy metricsde_CH
dc.typeDissertationde_CH
dcterms.typeTextde_CH
zhaw.departementSchool of Engineeringde_CH
zhaw.organisationalunitInstitut für Informatik (InIT)de_CH
zhaw.publisher.placeAachende_CH
dc.identifier.doi10.3929/ethz-a-009795096de_CH
zhaw.originated.zhawNode_CH
zhaw.series.number20929de_CH
zhaw.webfeedInformation Securityde_CH
Appears in collections:Publikationen School of Engineering

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Tellenbach, B. (2013). Detection, classification and visualization of anomalies using generalized entropy metrics [Doctoral dissertation, Shaker]. https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-a-009795096
Tellenbach, B. (2013) Detection, classification and visualization of anomalies using generalized entropy metrics. Doctoral dissertation. Shaker. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-a-009795096.
B. Tellenbach, “Detection, classification and visualization of anomalies using generalized entropy metrics,” Doctoral dissertation, Shaker, Aachen, 2013. doi: 10.3929/ethz-a-009795096.
TELLENBACH, Bernhard, 2013. Detection, classification and visualization of anomalies using generalized entropy metrics. Doctoral dissertation. Aachen: Shaker
Tellenbach, Bernhard. 2013. “Detection, Classification and Visualization of Anomalies Using Generalized Entropy Metrics.” Doctoral dissertation, Aachen: Shaker. https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-a-009795096.
Tellenbach, Bernhard. Detection, Classification and Visualization of Anomalies Using Generalized Entropy Metrics. Shaker, 2013, https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-a-009795096.


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