Digital Twin-Enabled Lightweight Attack Detection for Software-Defined Edge Networks

Yigit, Yagmur; Gursu, Kerem; Al-Dubai, Ahmed; Maglaras, Leandros A.; Canberk, Berk

Abstract

With the development of software-defined edge networks, network management has become more flexible and realtime. However, this advancement has also led to critical security concerns, especially when detecting attacks efficiently in resourceconstraint environments. Existing solutions often suffer from high computational load, making them unsuitable for the fast, dynamic environments of resource-constrained edge environments. To tackle this issue, we introduce a lightweight attack detection system that combines digital twins with advanced machine learning techniques. Our approach uses a stacked sparse autoencoder (ssAE) for feature extraction and reduction and a hybrid CNNGRU model for accurate attack classification. The simulation results show that our solution significantly outperforms existing models, which are ANOVA-DNN, AE-MLP and CNN-LSTM. It achieves the highest detection accuracy at 99.72% and a suitable low time-cost at 0.215 ms, providing a good balance between accuracy and speed. Moreover, it delivers the lowest computational load compared to others, which makes it ideal for deployment in real-time resource-limited environments.

Citation

Yigit, Y., Gursu, K., Al-Dubai, A., Maglaras, L. A., & Canberk, B. (2025, March). Digital Twin-Enabled Lightweight Attack Detection for Software-Defined Edge Networks. Presented at IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), Milan, Italy

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC)
• Start Date: Mar 24, 2025
• End Date: Mar 27, 2025
• Acceptance Date: Dec 21, 2024
• Online Publication Date: May 9, 2025
• Publication Date: 2025
• Deposit Date: Apr 2, 2025
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Series ISSN: 1558-2612
• Book Title: 2025 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/WCNC61545.2025.10978524
• Keywords: SDN, Edge Network, Digital Twin, Security, IDS
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/4231007
• Publisher URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/conhome/1000817/all-proceedings