A Comparative Study of Dictionary Matching with Gaps: Limitations, Techniques and Challenges

• Published in: Algorithmica Vol. 84; no. 3; pp. 590 - 638
• Main Authors: Levy, Avivit, Shalom, B. Riva
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.03.2022; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Algorithm Analysis and Problem Complexity; Algorithms; Comparative studies; Computer Science; Computer Systems Organization and Communication Networks; Cybersecurity; Data Structures and Information Theory; Dictionaries; Matching; Mathematics of Computing; Special Issue from London Stringology Days & London Algorithmic Workshop; Theory of Computation; Online dictionary matching with gaps; Dictionary matching; Parameterized matching; Pattern matching
• ISSN: 0178-4617; 1432-0541
• DOI: 10.1007/s00453-021-00851-6

Cyber security is a critical modern concern. Network intrusion detection systems (NIDS) perform protocol analysis, content searching and content matching, in order to detect harmful software. The high performance demands of NIDS applications in both speed and space consumption, as well as the diverse characteristics of the scenario conditions, have motivated a recent line of research on several formal problems all within the broad scope of dictionary matching with gaps . The goal of this paper is to supply a comparative survey of this line of research in terms of the problems, the formally proven limitations of any solution suggested, the techniques developed to deal with the limitations and different problems, to supply complementary techniques, and finally, to point out existing challenges still to be handled by future work.