Adversarial Machine Learning Attacks on Multiclass Classification of IoT Network Traffic

Investigating the use of moving target defense (MTD) mechanisms in IoT networks is ongoing research, with unfathomable potential to equip IoT devices and networks with the ability to fend off cyber attacks despite the computational deficiencies many IoT ecosystems typically have. The AI community has extensively studied adversarial threats and attacks on machine learning-based systems, emphasizing the need to address the potential compromise of anomaly-based intrusion detection systems (IDS) through adversarial attacks. Another concept that has gained significant attention in the networking community is Game Theory. Protecting any given network is almost a never-ending battle between the attacker and defender, and hence a natural game of competitors can be modelled based on one’s parametric specifications to gain more insight into how attackers might interact with one’s system. The goal of this thesis is to propose a comprehensive, experimentally verifiable game-theoretic model of MTD in IoT networks to secure the IDS against adversarial attacks. Once a game with state transitions based on given actions can be modelled, reinforcement learning is used to develop policies based on various episodes (rounds) of the game, ultimately optimizing network decisions to minimize successful attacks on machine learning-based IDS. The state-of-the-art ToN-IoT dataset was investigated for MTD feasibility to implement the feature-based MTD approach. The overall performance of the proposed MTD-based IDS was compared to a conventional IDS by analyzing the accuracy curve of the MTD-based IDS and the conventional IDS for varying attacker success rates and resource demands. Our approach has proven effective in securing the IDS against adversarial learning.

Adversarial machine learning is a recent area of study that explores both adversarial attack strategy and detection systems of adversarial attacks, which are inputs specially crafted to outwit the classification of detection systems or disrupt the training process of detection systems. In this research, we performed two adversarial attack scenarios, we used a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to generate synthetic intrusion traffic to test the influence of these attacks on the accuracy of machine learning-based Intrusion Detection Systems(IDSs). We conducted two experiments on adversarial attacks including poisoning and evasion attacks on two different types of machine learning models: Decision Tree and Logistic Regression. The performance of implemented adversarial attack scenarios was evaluated using the CICIDS2017 dataset. Also, it was based on a comparison of the accuracy of machine learning-based IDS before and after attacks. The results show that the proposed evasion attacks reduced the testing accuracy of both network intrusion detection systems models (NIDS). That illustrates our evasion attack scenario negatively affected the accuracy of machine learning-based network intrusion detection systems, whereas the decision tree model was more affected than logistic regression. Furthermore, our poisoning attack scenario disrupted the training process of machine learning-based NIDS, whereas the logistic regression model was more affected than the decision tree.

Untargeted white-box adversarial attack with heuristic defence methods in real-time deep learning based network intrusion detection system

With computing devices and the Internet being indispensable in people's everyday life, malware has posed serious threats to their security, making its detection of utmost concern. To protect legitimate users from the evolving malware attacks, machine learning-based systems have been successfully deployed and offer unparalleled flexibility in automatic malware detection. In most of these systems, resting on the analysis of different content-based features either statically or dynamically extracted from the file samples, various kinds of classifiers are constructed to detect malware. However, besides content-based features, file-to-file relations, such as file co-existence, can provide valuable information in malware detection and make evasion harder. To better understand the properties of file-to-file relations, we construct the file co-existence graph. Resting on the constructed graph, we investigate the semantic relatedness among files, and leverage graph inference, active learning and graph representation learning for malware detection. Comprehensive experimental results on the real sample collections from Comodo Cloud Security Center demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed learning paradigms. As machine learning-based detection systems become more widely deployed, the incentive for defeating them increases. Therefore, we go further insight into the arms race between adversarial malware attack and defense, and aim to enhance the security of machine learning-based malware detection systems. In particular, we first explore the adversarial attacks under different scenarios (i.e., different levels of knowledge the attackers might have about the targeted learning system), and define a general attack strategy to thoroughly assess the adversarial behaviors. Then, considering different skills and capabilities of the attackers, we propose the corresponding secure-learning paradigms to counter the adversarial attacks and enhance the security of the learning systems while not compromising the detection accuracy. We conduct a series of comprehensive experimental studies based on the real sample collections from Comodo Cloud Security Center and the promising results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed secure-learning models, which can be readily applied to other detection tasks.

Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) models are increasingly deployed in critical domains such as computer vision, natural language processing (NLP), automatic speech recognition (ASR), time-series analysis, and cybersecurity. Despite their success, these models remain vulnerable to adversarial attacks that can mislead predictions and undermine system reliability. To address this challenge, we conduct a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of adversarial attacks and defenses in ML/DL, following PRISMA guidelines. Our review analyzes 132 peer-reviewed studies published between 2017 and 2025, identified from leading digital libraries including IEEE, ACM, ScienceDirect, and SpringerLink. The objectives of this study are to: (i) identify state-of-the-art adversarial attack and defense techniques and assess their strengths and limitations; (ii) evaluate how novel threats and countermeasures are addressed across domains; and (iii) propose a unified taxonomy that integrates adversarial attacks, defenses, evaluation metrics, and application domains. Our findings show that adversarial training and certified robustness dominate defense research, but both face trade-offs in scalability and generalizability. Computer vision remains the most studied domain, while NLP, ASR, and time-series research is growing but lacks standardized benchmarks. This review contributes a taxonomy and cross-domain synthesis of adversarial ML research, highlights research gaps, and outlines future directions to advance robustness and support the development of trustworthy AI systems.

The Internet of Flying Things (IoFT) holds significant promise in fields like disaster management and surveillance. However, it is increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks that can compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA) of sensitive data. Despite the growing interest in proposing Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) for IoFT networks, current literature faces key limitations, particularly the shortage of publicly available IoFT datasets with diverse attacks, and the fact that existing IDSs lack robustness against sophisticated adversarial machine learning attacks. This paper is the first study to address these limitations by proposing a more resilient and accurate IDS tailored for IoFT networks (RIDS-IoFT). We introduce a novel IDS that leverages Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to generate a hybrid dataset that combines real IoFT traffic data with GAN-generated adversarial attacks, addressing the dataset diversity issue. Additionally, we introduce an innovative adversarial training method to enhance the system’s defense against evolving threats, such as Fast Gradient Sign Method (FGSM), Basic Iterative Method (BIM), and Carlini & Wagner (C&W) attacks. The proposed RIDS-IoFT was evaluated using four machine learning models, Random Forest (RF), Decision Tree (DT), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Logistic Regression (LR), on two datasets: ECU-IoFT and CICIDS2018. The IDS’s performance was assessed based on its ability to detect both traditional and adversarial attacks. The results show that the Random Forest model achieved the highest detection accuracy, up to 96.5%, demonstrating superior performance across both real and hybrid datasets. The proposed RIDS-IoFT not only enhances detection accuracy but also strengthens resilience against adversarial threats, making it suitable for resource-constrained IoFT environments. In conclusion, this study presents a comprehensive approach to securing IoFT networks by combining real and synthetic data, improving IDS robustness and accuracy against both traditional and adversarial attacks.

Intrusion detection systems are used to detect attacks in a network. Machine learning (ML) approaches have been widely used to build such Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) because they are more accurate when built from a very large and representative dataset. In recent times, one of the benchmark datasets that are used to build ML-based Intrusion Detection models is CICIDS2017 dataset. The dataset is contained in eight groups and was collected from the Canadian Institute on Cyber Security dataset repository. The dataset is available in both PCAP and netflow formats. This study used the netflow records in the CIDIDS2017 dataset as they are found to contain newer attacks,very large and are found useful for traffic analysis. Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) techniques were used to reveal various characteristics of the dataset. The general objective is to provide more insights on the nature, structure and issues with the dataset so as to identify the best ways for using it to achieve improved ML-based IDS models. Furthermore, some of the open problems that can arise from the use of the dataset in any machine learning-based Intrusion Detection systems are highlighted and possible solutions are briefly discussed. The EDA techniques used revealed important relationships among input variables and the target class. The study concluded that the EDA can better influence the decision of future IDS researches that use the dataset. Thus, improved machine learning-based intrusion detection systems can be built from the dataset once it is well understood and pre-processed.

With the rapid advancements and notable achievements across various application domains, Machine Learning (ML) has become a vital element within the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem. Among these use cases is IoT security, where numerous systems are deployed to identify or thwart attacks, including intrusion detection systems (IDSs), malware detection systems (MDSs), and device identification systems (DISs). Machine Learning-based (ML-based) IoT security systems can fulfill several security objectives, including detecting attacks, authenticating users before they gain access to the system, and categorizing suspicious activities. Nevertheless, ML faces numerous challenges, such as those resulting from the emergence of adversarial attacks crafted to mislead classifiers. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the body of knowledge about adversarial attacks and defense mechanisms, with a particular focus on three prominent IoT security systems: IDSs, MDSs, and DISs. The paper starts by establishing a taxonomy of adversarial attacks within the context of IoT. Then, various methodologies employed in the generation of adversarial attacks are described and classified within a two-dimensional framework. Additionally, we describe existing countermeasures for enhancing IoT security against adversarial attacks. Finally, we explore the most recent literature on the vulnerability of three ML-based IoT security systems to adversarial attacks.

Adversarial examples: A survey of attacks and defenses in deep learning-enabled cybersecurity systems

We study two important concepts in adversarial deep learning---adversarial training and generative adversarial network (GAN). Adversarial training is the technique used to improve the robustness of discriminator by combining adversarial attacker and discriminator in the training phase. GAN is commonly used for image generation by jointly optimizing discriminator and generator. We show these two concepts are indeed closely related and can be used to strengthen each other---adding a generator to the adversarial training procedure can improve the robustness of discriminators, and adding an adversarial attack to GAN training can improve the convergence speed and lead to better generators. Combining these two insights, we develop a framework called Rob-GAN to jointly optimize generator and discriminator in the presence of adversarial attacks---the generator generates fake images to fool discriminator; the adversarial attacker perturbs real images to fool the discriminator, and the discriminator wants to minimize loss under fake and adversarial images. Through this end-to-end training procedure, we are able to simultaneously improve the convergence speed of GAN training, the quality of synthetic images, and the robustness of discriminator under strong adversarial attacks. Experimental results demonstrate that the obtained classifier is more robust than the state-of-the-art adversarial training approach, and the generator outperforms SN-GAN on ImageNet-143.

Artificial intelligence systems face important challenges in adversarial machine learning because smooth yet carefully constructed disturbances to data inputs make models display wrong behavior, resulting in prediction mistakes or system malfunctions. The author of this research paper investigates how adversarial attacks affect AI systems within three primary sectors: autonomous driving, security systems, and healthcare. The paper discusses white-box and black-box adversarial attacks while analyzing machine learning model vulnerabilities. The paper evaluates existing defense methods, including adversarial training and robust optimization, and discusses the difficulties of achieving security without affecting model performance. The existing defense approaches perform poorly against state-of-the-art adversarial techniques, so researchers must develop stronger protection methods. The paper ends by providing security solutions for AI systems through explainable AI integration alongside advanced adversarial training methods so AI models can identify and guard against advancing adversarial threats.

With the rise of machine learning (ML) in cybersecurity, adversarial attacks targeting ML models pose new challenges to Indian enterprises. This paper explores the vulnerabilities of machine learning models to adversarial attacks, particularly in critical Indian sectors such as finance, healthcare, and government. The study reviews attack vectors such as evasion, poisoning, and inference attacks, and suggests robust mitigation strategies like adversarial training, gradient masking, and defense distillation. Case studies from Indian organizations implementing adversarial-resistant ML models are analyzed to demonstrate real-world applications and effectiveness.

Rapid digitalization of essential national infrastructure has created new vulnerabilities to cyber threats, leading to major security threats against the nation. The current security measures prove inadequate for keeping pace with developing cyberattacks, so artificial intelligence needs integration for threat detection enhancements and response improvements. The combination of AI-enabled cybersecurity systems gives them the ability to examine huge data collections instantly, monitor irregularities and perform automatic threat response functions to improve national security. Research investigates the system of artificial intelligence to enhance cyber threat response capabilities alongside its specific use for defending crucial infrastructure elements like energy networks as well as financial organizations and government IT infrastructure. Methodology The study combines qualitative approaches with quantitative methods as its research methodology. The analysis includes a structured review of existing frameworks that use AI for cybersecurity purposes with their performance evaluation. The paper evaluates real-world AI deployments across critical infrastructure systems through case studies to reveal successful strategies with encountered problems. The empirical proof of machine learning-based intrusion detection systems is carried out by testing IDS along with real-world dataset assessment to verify AI's threat mitigation effectiveness through the accuracy and precision & recall method. Security experts who perform interviews deliver valuable information about the current use of AI technology in national security applications. The national cybersecurity capabilities gain strength from AI-driven systems because these systems accomplish improved threat detection and swift responses without requiring human involvement. AI deliver its maximum effectiveness only when data privacy issues with adversarial AI attacks and regulatory hurdles, receive proper solutions,

Machine learning is one of the predominant methods used in computer science and has been widely and successfully applied in many areas such as computer vision, pattern recognition, natural language processing, cyber security etc. In cyber security, the application of machine learning algorithms for network intrusion detection system (NIDS) has seen promising results for anomaly detection mostly with the adoption of deep learning and is still growing. However, machine learning algorithms are vulnerable to adversarial attacks resulting in significant performance degradation. Adversarial attacks are security threats that aim to deceive the learning algorithm by manipulating its predictions, and Adversarial machine learning is a research area that studies both the generation and defense of such attacks. Researchers have extensively worked on the adversarial machine learning in computer vision but not many works in Intrusion detection system. However, failure in this critical Intrusion detection area could compromise the security of an entire system, and need much attention. This paper provides a review of the advancement in adversarial machine learning based intrusion detection and explores the various defense techniques applied against. Finally discuss their limitations for future research direction in this emerging area.KeywordsAdversarial attackCyber securityIntrusion detectionMachine learningDeep learningPoisoning attackEvasion attack

This study proposes a lightweight machine learning-based intrusion detection system (IDS) designed for smart grid environments. The framework integrates feature extraction using autoencoders, dataset balancing with SMOTE, and multiple machine learning and deep learning classifiers to detect cyberattacks efficiently. Experimental results on the UNSW-NB15 dataset demonstrate high detection accuracy and short training time, highlighting the suitability of lightweight IDS models for deployment at resource-constrained edge access points in smart grids.