PCAP-Backdoor: Backdoor Generator in Network Traffic for Intrusion Detection Systems
Ajesh Koyatan Chathoth, Karandeep Parashar, Anfeng Peng, Stephen Lee · ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems · 2026
The rapid expansion of connected devices has made them prime targets for cyberattacks. To address these threats, deep learning-based, data-driven intrusion detection systems (IDS) have emerged as powerful tools for detecting and mitigating such attacks. These IDSs analyze network traffic to identify unusual patterns and anomalies that may indicate potential security breaches. However, prior research has shown that deep learning models are vulnerable to backdoor attacks, where attackers inject triggers into the model to manipulate its behavior and cause misclassifications of network traffic. In this article, we explore the susceptibility of deep learning-based IDS systems to backdoor attacks in the context of network traffic analysis. We introduce PCAP - Backdoor , a novel technique that facilitates backdoor attacks on PCAP datasets. Our experiments on real-world Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and Internet of Things (IoT) network traffic datasets demonstrate that attackers can effectively backdoor a model by poisoning as little as 2% or less of the entire training dataset. Moreover, we show that an attacker can introduce a trigger into benign traffic during model training yet cause the backdoored model to misclassify malicious traffic when the trigger is present. Finally, we highlight the difficulty of detecting this trigger-based backdoor, even when using existing backdoor defense techniques.