Online-Semisupervised Neural Anomaly Detector to Identify MQTT-Based Attacks in Real Time

Industry 4.0 focuses on continuous interconnection services, allowing for the continuous and uninterrupted exchange of signals or information between related parties. The application of messaging protocols for transferring data to remote locations must meet specific specifications such as asynchronous communication, compact messaging, operating in conditions of unstable connection of the transmission line of data, limited network bandwidth operation, support multilevel Quality of Service (QoS), and easy integration of new devices. The Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol is used in software applications that require asynchronous communication. It is a light and simplified protocol based on publish-subscribe messaging and is placed functionally over the TCP/IP protocol. It is designed to minimize the required communication bandwidth and system requirements increasing reliability and probability of successful message transmission, making it ideal for use in Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication or networks where bandwidth is limited, delays are long, coverage is not reliable, and energy consumption should be as low as possible. Despite the fact that the advantage that MQTT offers its way of operating does not provide a serious level of security in how to achieve its interconnection, as it does not require protocol dependence on one intermediate third entity, the interface is dependent on each application. This paper presents an innovative real-time anomaly detection system to detect MQTT-based attacks in cyber-physical systems. This is an online-semisupervised learning neural system based on a small number of sampled patterns that identify crowd anomalies in the MQTT protocol related to specialized attacks to undermine cyber-physical systems.