Technology Summary

This invention focuses on addressing challenges in detecting and characterizing malicious scanning activities in network data. It proposes the use of network telescopes, also known as “Darknets,” to capture and analyze unsolicited traffic directed towards unused IP addresses. The data collected from Darknets can help identify patterns of malicious scanning, which are crucial for preventing cyber-threats. However, analyzing Darknet data presents difficulties due to its heterogeneous nature, high dimensionality, and non-linear interactions. To overcome these challenges, the invention introduces a framework involving deep neural networks for dimensionality reduction and clustering. This framework aims to create information-preserving representations of scanner data, enabling the identification of distinct scanning behaviors.