Abnormal Transactions Detection in the Ethereum Network Using Semi-Supervised Generative Adversarial Networks

Numerous abnormal transactions have been exposed as a result of targeted attacks on Ethereum, such as the Ethereum Decentralized Autonomous Organization attack. Exploiting vulnerabilities in smart contracts, malicious users can pursue their own illicit objectives through abnormal transactions. Consequently, identifying these malevolent users, implicated in fraudulent activities and their attribution, becomes exceedingly complex. Cryptocurrency transactions used for malicious purposes, employing pseudo-anonymous accounts to send and receive ransom payments and accumulating funds under various identities, further highlight the need to control and detect these abnormal transactions for maintaining a high level of security within the Ethereum network. Although existing Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) help mitigate abnormal transaction occurrences, their performance necessitates improvement. To address this issue, this study presents a novel approach, named Abnormal Transactions Detection Using a Semi-Supervised Generative Adversarial Network (ATD-SGAN), which efficiently detects abnormal attacks within the Ethereum network. ATD-SGAN leverages a semi-supervised generative adversarial network for this purpose. The results demonstrate that ATD-SGAN significantly enhances the performance of state-of-the-art IDSs. It achieves an increase in detection accuracy from 3.78% to 11.05% and reduces the false alarm rate from 42.29% to 0.15%. Moreover, ATD-SGAN notably improves the F1-measure, ranging from 10.39% to 3.79%, compared to the current IDSs.