A Machine Learning-Based Interest Flooding Attack Detection System in Vehicular Named Data Networking

A vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) has significantly improved transportation efficiency with efficient traffic management, driving safety, and delivering emergency messages. However, existing IP-based VANETs encounter numerous challenges, like security, mobility, caching, and routing. To cope with these limitations, named data networking (NDN) has gained significant attention as an alternative solution to TCP/IP in VANET. NDN offers promising features, like intermittent connectivity support, named-based routing, and in-network content caching. Nevertheless, NDN in VANET is vulnerable to a variety of attacks. On top of attacks, an interest flooding attack (IFA) is one of the most critical attacks. The IFA targets intermediate nodes with a storm of unsatisfying interest requests and saturates network resources such as the Pending Interest Table (PIT). Unlike traditional rule-based statistical approaches, this study detects and prevents attacker vehicles by exploiting a machine learning (ML) binary classification system at roadside units (RSUs). In this connection, we employed and compared the accuracy of five (5) ML classifiers: logistic regression (LR), decision tree (DT), K-nearest neighbor (KNN), random forest (RF), and Gaussian naive Bayes (GNB) on a publicly available dataset implemented on the ndnSIM simulator. The experimental results demonstrate that the RF classifier achieved the highest accuracy (94%) in detecting IFA vehicles. On the other hand, we evaluated an attack prevention system on Python that enables intermediate vehicles to accept or reject interest requests based on the legitimacy of vehicles. Thus, our proposed IFA detection technique contributes to detecting and preventing attacker vehicles from compromising the network resources.

Automated summary

A Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET) improves transportation efficiency by efficient traffic management, driving safety, and delivering emergency messages. Named Data Networking (NDN) has gained attention as an alternative to TCP/IP in VANET due to its promising features. However, NDN in VANET is vulnerable to attacks, including the critical Interest Flooding Attack (IFA). This study proposes using machine learning classifiers at roadside units (RSUs) to detect and prevent IFA vehicles, with the Random Forest (RF) classifier achieving the highest accuracy of 94%. The proposed IFA detection technique contributes to network resource protection.