Securing the Backbone: Analyzing Cyber-Attacks on Infrastructure Using the UNSW-NB15 Benchmark

A weak point in the system's security chain could put the entire system in danger and provide attackers with possibilities.Some destructive effects of cyber-attacks could be a compromise on the privacy of people's data, which could render an organization or country's physical systems unworkable, destroy those systems, or provide control of those systems to an outside party.The detrimental impacts of cyber-attacks were also addressed and discussed in detail.This study examines cyber-attacks against infrastructure by utilizing the UNSW-NB15 benchmark network intrusion dataset.A thorough analysis has revealed prevalent instances of common attack types such as Normal, Generic, Exploits, Reconnaissance, Backdoors, Worms, and Shell codes each accompanied by their corresponding event frequencies.Additionally, subcategories within the top three categories were meticulously examined to ascertain the most widespread attacks.The research findings underscore the prevalent preference among cyber attackers for employing traditional methods, where "normal attacks" comprise over 80% of all documented incidents.Generic attacks and exploit attacks are positioned at 8.6% and 1.7%, respectively.In the domain of Generic attacks, the scrutiny of subcategories highlights Session Initial Protocols (SIP) as notably vulnerable to attacks, eclipsing all others with a ranking of 37%.Meanwhile, within the category of Exploit attacks, subcategory analysis underscores browsers as more prone to attacks than any other subcategories.Moreover, the analysis reveals that office documents are also vulnerable targets for cyber-attacks.