Benchmarking datasets for Anomaly-based Network Intrusion Detection: KDD CUP 99 alternatives

Machine Learning has been steadily gaining traction for its use in Anomaly-based Network Intrusion Detection Systems (A-NIDS). Research into this domain is frequently performed using the KDDCUP99 dataset as a benchmark. Several studies question its usability while constructing a contemporary NIDS, due to the skewed response distribution, non-stationarity, and failure to incorporate modern attacks.

In this paper, we compare the performance for KDD-99 alternatives when trained using classification models commonly found in literature: Neural Network, Support Vector Machine, Decision Tree, Random Forest, Naive Bayes and K-Means. Applying the SMOTE oversampling technique and random undersampling, we create a balanced version of NSL-KDD and prove that skewed target classes in KDD-99 and NSL-KDD hamper the efficacy of classifiers on minority classes (U2R and R2L), leading to possible security risks.

We explore UNSW-NB15, a modern substitute to KDD-99 with greater uniformity of pattern distribution. We benchmark this dataset before and after SMOTE oversampling to observe the effect on minority performance.

Our results indicate that classifiers trained on UNSW-NB15 match or better the Weighted F1-Score of those trained on NSL-KDD and KDD-99 in the binary case, thus advocating UNSW-NB15 as a modern substitute to these datasets.