Development of a Network Scan Detection System Combining Sequential Hypothesis Testing with Long-Window and Target-Centric Correlation

Abstract

Network scanning is the reconnaissance step that precedes most intrusions, yet scans that are slow, low-volume or distributed across many sources often evade the fixed-threshold detectors used in practice. This paper evaluates eight open-source scan detection tools against eight functions derived from MITRE ATT&CK techniques T1046, T1595 and T1018, using an ordinal 0–2 scale and a weighted scoring model. Snort 3 obtained the highest weighted score (76.25 of 100), followed by Security Onion (72.50), while slow-scan detection (31.25% mean coverage) and distributed-scan detection (18.75%) were the weakest functions. To close these gaps, we propose NSDS, a network scan detection system that combines a threshold random walk over new destination–port pairs with evidence ageing, a 60 min distinct-failure counter and a target-centric correlation module, and maps detections to a transparent risk score. In a simulation of a network with 464 active sources and five scan scenarios (150 runs of 2 h each), NSDS detected every scan campaign, including slow and distributed scans missed by a fixed-threshold detector and by host-level TRW, while flagging on average 0.03 benign sources per run, compared with 2.04 and 5.73 for the baselines. Validation on real traffic remains future work.

Keywords: port scanning, intrusion detection, network reconnaissance, threshold random walk, distributed scanning, MITRE ATT&CK, risk scoring, network security monitoring

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Как цитировать

Ilzat Khanzatov, Amir Zhumatayev, Akezhan Serkebayev Development of a Network Scan Detection System Combining Sequential Hypothesis Testing with Long-Window and Target-Centric Correlation // Central Asian Scientific Journal. – 2026. – No. 4(32), Vol. 2. – Pp. 265–275.