Co-Maintained Database Based on Blockchain for IDSs: A Lifetime Learning Framework

Abstract

Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is one of the most important approaches in cyber security to protect networks against both inner and outer threats. Apart from traditional networks, IDSs have been implemented in various emerging networks, such as mobile networks and Vehicle Ad hoc Networks (VANETs). However, a critical problem in IDSs is that the detection capacity is gradually decaying with the emergence of unknown attacks. It is necessary to constantly retrain IDSs with a more extensive database, but the security institutes usually lack the motivation to persistently update and maintain the database for public. Thus, in this paper, a lifetime learning framework is proposed for IDSs with a blockchain-based database (bc-DB). In the proposed framework, the blockchain-based database is multilaterally maintained by the security institutes and universities using Data Coins (DCoins) as the incentives. In addition, a Lifetime Learning IDS (LL-IDS) is further designed as the supplement of the bc-DB for common IDS users. For the LL-IDS, the Growing Hierarchical Self-Organizing Map with probabilistic relabeling (GHSOM-pr) having flexible and hierarchical architecture is employed as the classifier, which grows to make itself perfectly fit the changeable bc-DB. Security analysis and simulation experiments show that the proposed lifetime learning framework are both secure and effective in attacks detection.