An artificial immune system-inspired multiobjective evolutionary algorithm with application to the detection of distributed computer network intrusions

Contemporary signature-based intrusion detection systems are reactive in nature and are storage-limited. Their operation depends upon identifying an instance of an intrusion or virus and encoding it into a signature that is stored in its anomaly database, providing a window of vulnerability to computer systems during this time. Further, the maximum size of an Internet Protocol-based message requires a huge database in order to maintain possible signature combinations. To tighten this response cycle within storage constraints, this paper presents an innovative artificial immune system (AIS) integrated with a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA). This new distributed intrusion detection system (IDS) design is intended to measure the vector of tradeoff solutions among detectors with regard to two independent objectives: best classification fitness and multiobjective hypervolume size. AIS antibody detectors promiscuously monitor network traffic for exact and variant abnormal system events based on only the detector's own data structure and the application domain truth set. Applied to the MIT-DARPA 1999 insider intrusion detection data set, this new software engineered AIS-MOEA IDS called jREMISA correctly classifies normal and abnormal events at a relative high statistical level which is directly attributed to finding the proper detector affinity threshold.