DDoS Mitigation Based on Space-Time Flow Regularities in IoV: A Feature Adaption Reinforcement Learning Approach

With the development of 5G technology, mobile edge computing (MEC) is introduced into the construction of internet of vehicles (IoV). However, the distributed denial of services (DDoS) attacks become a serious problem in IoV under MEC. Although numbers of studies have been done on DDoS detection in common wired or wireless networks, they cannot satisfy the high dynamic requirement and cannot cope with the complex and diverse DDoS attacks in IoV. Fortunately, the data traffic flows in IoV exist potential and predictable space-time regularities. By employing reinforcement learning, we propose a feature adaption reinforcement learning approach based on the space-time flow regularities in IoV for DDoS mitigation, named FAST. In FAST, we elaborately design a combinational action space, and a reward function based on Kalman filter method and historical data traffic flows, which can make FAST to recognize DDoS attacks more quickly and accurately. Then through combining Q-learning and DDQN, FAST can select features and disconnect DDoS attacks adaptively according to the changes of the environment. In experiments, we evaluate the performance of FAST based on Shenzhen taxicab dataset. We simulate and inject DDoS attacks into Shenzhen taxicabs through two DDoS simulation tools named ‘ddosflowgen’ and ‘hping3’. The experimental results show that FAST has a high quality in detecting multiple types of DDoS attacks compared with other detection methods.