Improved Multi-Verse Optimizer Feature Selection Technique With Application To Phishing, Spam, and Denial Of Service Attacks

Abstract

Intelligent classification systems proved their merits in different fields including cybersecurity. However, most cybercrime issues are characterized of being dynamic and not static classification problems where the set of discriminative features keep changing with time. This indeed requires revising the cybercrime classification system and pick a group of features that preserve or enhance its performance. Not only this but also the system compactness is regarded as an important factor to judge on the capability of any classification system where cybercrime classification systems are not an exception. The current research proposes an improved feature selection algorithm that is inspired from the well-known multi-verse optimizer (MVO) algorithm. Such an algorithm is then applied to 3 different cybercrime classification problems namely phishing websites, spam, and denial of service attacks. MVO is a population-based approach which stimulates a well-known theory in physics namely multi-verse theory. MVO uses the black and white holes principles for exploration, and wormholes principle for exploitation. A roulette selection schema is used for scientifically modeling the principles of white hole and black hole in exploration phase, which bias to the good solutions, in this case the solutions will be moved toward the best solution and probably to lose the diversity, other solutions may contain important information but didn’t get chance to be improved. Thus, this research will improve the exploration of the MVO by introducing the adaptive neighborhood search operations in updating the MVO solutions. The classification phase has been done using a classifier to evaluate the results and to validate the selected features. Empirical outcomes confirmed that the improved MVO (IMVO) algorithm is capable to enhance the search capability of MVO, and outperform other algorithm involved in comparison.