HCRNNIDS: Hybrid Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network-Based Network Intrusion Detection System

Nowadays, network attacks are the most crucial problem of modern society. All networks, from small to large, are vulnerable to network threats. An intrusion detection (ID) system is critical for mitigating and identifying malicious threats in networks. Currently, deep learning (DL) and machine learning (ML) are being applied in different domains, especially information security, for developing effective ID systems. These ID systems are capable of detecting malicious threats automatically and on time. However, malicious threats are occurring and changing continuously, so the network requires a very advanced security solution. Thus, creating an effective and smart ID system is a massive research problem. Various ID datasets are publicly available for ID research. Due to the complex nature of malicious attacks with a constantly changing attack detection mechanism, publicly existing ID datasets must be modified systematically on a regular basis. So, in this paper, a convolutional recurrent neural network (CRNN) is used to create a DL-based hybrid ID framework that predicts and classifies malicious cyberattacks in the network. In the HCRNNIDS, the convolutional neural network (CNN) performs convolution to capture local features, and the recurrent neural network (RNN) captures temporal features to improve the ID system’s performance and prediction. To assess the efficacy of the hybrid convolutional recurrent neural network intrusion detection system (HCRNNIDS), experiments were done on publicly available ID data, specifically the modern and realistic CSE-CIC-DS2018 data. The simulation outcomes prove that the proposed HCRNNIDS substantially outperforms current ID methodologies, attaining a high malicious attack detection rate accuracy of up to 97.75% for CSE-CIC-IDS2018 data with 10-fold cross-validation.