Transfer and CNN-Based De-Authentication (Disassociation) DoS Attack Detection in IoT Wi-Fi Networks

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of billions of interconnected devices embedded with sensors, software, and communication technologies. Wi-Fi is one of the main wireless communication technologies essential for establishing connections and facilitating communication in IoT environments. However, IoT networks are facing major security challenges due to various vulnerabilities, including de-authentication and disassociation DoS attacks that exploit IoT Wi-Fi network vulnerabilities. Traditional intrusion detection systems (IDSs) improved their cyberattack detection capabilities by adapting machine learning approaches, especially deep learning (DL). However, DL-based IDSs still need improvements in their accuracy, efficiency, and scalability to properly address the security challenges including de-authentication and disassociation DoS attacks tailored to suit IoT environments. The main purpose of this work was to overcome these limitations by designing a transfer learning (TL) and convolutional neural network (CNN)-based IDS for de-authentication and disassociation DoS attack detection with better overall accuracy compared to various current solutions. The distinctive contributions include a novel data pre-processing, and de-authentication/disassociation attack detection model accompanied by effective real-time data collection and parsing, analysis, and visualization to generate our own dataset, namely, the Wi-Fi Association_Disassociation Dataset. To that end, a complete experimental setup and extensive research were carried out with performance evaluation through multiple metrics and the results reveal that the suggested model is more efficient and exhibits improved performance with an overall accuracy of 99.360% and a low false negative rate of 0.002. The findings from the intensive training and evaluation of the proposed model, and comparative analysis with existing models, show that this work allows improved early detection and prevention of de-authentication and disassociation attacks, resulting in an overall improved network security posture for all Wi-Fi-enabled real-world IoT infrastructures.