5G aviation networks using novel AI approach for DDoS detection

The advent of Fifth Generation (5G) technology has ushered in a new era of advancements in the aviation sector. However, the introduction of smart infrastructure has significantly altered the threat landscape at airports, leading to an increased vulnerability due to the proliferation of endpoints. Consequently, there is an urgent requirement for an automated detection system capable of promptly identifying and thwarting network intrusions. This research paper proposes a deep learning methodology that merges a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) with a Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) to effectively detect various types of cyber threats using tabular-based image data. To transform time series features into 2D texture images, Gramian Angular Fields (GAFs) are utilized. These images are then stacked to form an N-channel image, which is fed into the CNN-GRU architecture for sequence analysis and identification of potential threats. The provide solution GAF-CNN-GRU achieved an accuracy of 98.6% on the Cranfield Embedded Systems Attack Dataset. We further achieved Precision, Recall and F1-scores of 97.84%, 91% and 94.3%. To evaluate model robustness we further tested this approach, using a benchmark random selection of input features, on the Canadian Institute for Cyber-Security (CIC) 2019 Distributed Denial-of-service attack (DDoS) Dataset achieving an Accuracy of 89.08%. Following feature optimisation our approach was able to achieve an accuracy of 98.36% with Precision, Recall and F1 scores of 93.09%, 95.45% and 94.56% respectively.