Game-Theoretic Modeling of Hybrid Defense Strategies Against DRDoS Traffic in 5G Networks

The proliferation of Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks in the Internet of Things (IoT) and the emergence of variants such as Distributed Reflection Denial-of-Service (DRDoS) attacks severely threaten the fifth-generation (5G) networks. More importantly, as attack methods continue to escalate, attackers can obtain deployed critical defense strategies through continuous probing, increasing the defense difficulty. We propose a hybrid strategy model and corresponding Software Defined Network (SDN) paradigm-based framework based on existing defense strategies to deploy it flexibly and conveniently into the 3GPP-defined 5G architecture. In addition, after quantifying the proposed hybrid strategy's defense capacity, the Stackelberg game is employed to model the hybrid strategy and solve the optimal packet sampling rate. The simulation shows that the optimal packet sampling rate is effective and robust and can force a rational attacker to give up DRDoS attacks and achieve the effect of subduing the enemy without fighting.