A hybrid intrusion detection system design for computer network security

Intrusions detection systems (IDSs) are systems that try to detect attacks as they occur or after the attacks took place. IDSs collect network traffic information from some point on the network or computer system and then use this information to secure the network. Intrusion detection systems can be misuse-detection or anomaly detection based. Misuse-detection based IDSs can only detect known attacks whereas anomaly detection based IDSs can also detect new attacks by using heuristic methods. In this paper we propose a hybrid IDS by combining the two approaches in one system. The hybrid IDS is obtained by combining packet header anomaly detection (PHAD) and network traffic anomaly detection (NETAD) which are anomaly-based IDSs with the misuse-based IDS Snort which is an open-source project. The hybrid IDS obtained is evaluated using the MIT Lincoln Laboratories network traffic data (IDEVAL) as a testbed. Evaluation compares the number of attacks detected by misuse-based IDS on its own, with the hybrid IDS obtained combining anomaly-based and misuse-based IDSs and shows that the hybrid IDS is a more powerful system. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.