The recent growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) has resulted in a rise in IoT based DDoS attacks. This paper presents a solution to the detection of botnet activity within consumer IoT devices and networks. A novel application of Deep Learning is used to develop a detection model based on a Bidirectional Long Short Term Memory based Recurrent Neural Network (BLSTM-RNN). Word Embedding is used for text recognition and conversion of attack packets into tokenised integer format. The developed BLSTM-RNN detection model is compared to a LSTM-RNN for detecting four attack vectors used by the mirai botnet, and evaluated for accuracy and loss. The paper demonstrates that although the bidirectional approach adds overhead to each epoch and increases processing time, it proves to be a better progressive model over time. A labelled dataset was generated as part of this research, and is available upon request.

applied across a wide range of problem domains requiring processing, analysis and interpretation of data obtained from heterogeneous resources.

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An IoT botnet detection model is designed to detect anomalous attack traffic utilised by the mirai botnet malware. The model uses a novel application of Deep Bidirectional Long Short Term Memory based Recurrent Neural Network (BLSTM-RNN), in conjunction with Word Embedding, to convert string data found in captured packets, into a format usable by the BLSTM-RNN. In doing so, this paper presents a solution to the problem of detecting and making consumers situationally aware when their IoT devices are infected, and forms part of a botnet. The proposed model addresses the issue of detection, and returns high accuracy and low loss metrics for four attack vectors used by the mirai botnet malware, with only one attack vector shown to be difficult to detect and predict. A labelled dataset was generated and used for all experiments, to test and validate the accuracy and data loss in the detection model. This dataset is available upon request.

This paper looks at potential vulnerabilities of the Smart Grid energy infrastructure to data injection cyber-attacks and the means of addressing these vulnerabilities through intelligent data analysis. Efforts are being made by multiple groups to provide to defence-in-depth to Smart Grid systems by developing attack detection algorithms utilising artificial neural networks that evaluate data communication between system components. The first priority of such algorithms is the detection of anomalous commands or data states; however, anomalous data states may also result from physical situations legitimately encountered by equipment. This work aims at not only detecting and alerting on anomalies, but at intelligent learning of the system behaviour to distinguish between malicious interference and anomalous system states occurring due to maintenance activity or natural phenomena, such as for instance a nearby lightning strike causing a short-circuit fault.