Detection of Sparse Anomalies in High-Dimensional Network Telescope Signals

Abstract

Network operators and system administrators are increasingly overwhelmed with incessant cyber-security threats ranging from malicious network reconnaissance to attacks such as distributed denial of service and data breaches. A large number of these attacks could be prevented if the network operators were better equipped with threat intelligence information that would allow them to block or throttle nefarious scanning activities. Network telescopes or "darknets" offer a unique window into observing Internet-wide scanners and other malicious entities, and they could offer early warning signals to operators that would be critical for infrastructure protection and/or attack mitigation. A network telescope consists of unused or "dark" IP spaces that serve no users, and solely passively observes any Internet traffic destined to the "telescope sensor" in an attempt to record ubiquitous network scanners, malware that forage for vulnerable devices, and other dubious activities. Hence, monitoring network telescopes for timely detection of coordinated and heavy scanning activities is an important, albeit challenging, task. The challenges mainly arise due to the non-stationarity and the dynamic nature of Internet traffic and, more importantly, the fact that one needs to monitor high-dimensional signals (e.g., all TCP/UDP ports) to search for "sparse" anomalies. We propose statistical methods to address both challenges in an efficient and "online" manner; our work is validated both with synthetic data as well as real-world data from a large network telescope.