Federated learning for network attack detection using attention-based graph neural networks

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 19088 - 16
• Main Authors: Jianping, Wu, Guangqiu, Qiu, Chunming, Wu, Weiwei, Jiang, Jiahe, Jin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 17.08.2024; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 704/172/169/895; 704/844/4081; Accuracy; Collaboration; Data integrity; Deep learning; Graphs; Humanities and Social Sciences; Information technology; Intrusion detection systems; Laboratories; Language; Large language models; Machine learning; multidisciplinary; Neural networks; Privacy; Science; Science (multidisciplinary)
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-70032-2

Federated Learning is an effective solution to address the issues of data isolation and privacy leakage in machine learning. However, ensuring the security of network devices and architectures deploying federated learning remains a challenge due to network attacks. This paper proposes an attention-based Graph Neural Network for detecting cross-level and cross-department network attacks. This method enables collaborative model training while protecting data privacy on distributed devices. By organizing network traffic information in chronological order and constructing a graph structure based on log density, enhances the accuracy of network attack detection. The introduction of an attention mechanism and the construction of a Federated Graph Attention Network (FedGAT) model are used to evaluate the interactivity between nodes in the graph, thereby improving the precision of internal network interactions. Experimental results demonstrate that our method achieves comparable accuracy and robustness to traditional detection methods while prioritizing privacy protection and data security.