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The salp swarm algorithm (SSA) is a well-known optimization algorithm that is increasingly being utilized to solve many sorts of optimization problems. However, SSA may converge to sub-optimal solutions when it is applied to discrete problems such as the feature selection (FS) problem. This paper presents the enhanced opposition-based learning salp swarm algorithm (EOSSA), which is an improved SSA algorithm for solving the FS problem in intrusion detection systems (IDS). EOSSA incorporates four improvements into the original SSA algorithm. Firstly, the opposition-based learning (OBL) method is used in the initialization step of SSA to boost its population diversity. Secondly, the Elite opposition-based learning (EOBL) is used in the improvement loop of SSA to improve its exploration ability. Third, a variable neighborhood search (VNS) method is used in the improvement loop of SSA to improve its exploration mechanism to improve the local search space. Lastly, the Sigmoid binary transform function is used to convert the continuous candidate solutions produced by SSA into discrete binary solutions. EOSSA was evaluated against eighteen popular optimization algorithms (e.g., improved salp swarm algorithm based on opposition-based learning (ISSA), SSA, particle swarm algorithm (PSO), cuckoo search (CS), bat algorithm (BA), and Harris Hawk Optimization (HHO)) using eleven popular intrusion detection datasets (CICIDS2017, CSE-CIC-IDS2018, CICDDOS2019, CIRA-CIC-DoH, Intrusion detection 2018, UNSW-NB15, NSL-KDD, Phishing Legitimate, Malmem2022, IoT, and LUFlow Network) to Detect IoT Botnet Attacks. Moreover, EOSSA was compared with four machine learning algorithms (Decision Tree (DT), logistic regression (LR), Naive Bayes (NB), and K-Nearest Neighborhood (KNN)). The overall simulation results suggested that the proposed method is superior to the other algorithms in terms of the accuracy and number of selected features. The statistical analysis of the simulation results using the Friedman and Wilcoxon signed-rank test confirms the superiority of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computations that mimic nature are known as nature-inspired computing. Nature presents a wealthy source of thoughts and ideas for computing. The use of natural galvanized techniques has been found to provide machine solutions to complex problems. One of the challenging issues among researchers is high-dimensional data which contains a large number of unwanted, redundant, and irrelevant features. These redundant or unwanted features reduce the accuracy of machine learning models. Therefore, to solve this problem nowadays metaheuristic techniques are being used. The paper presents both surveys as well as comparison of five metaheuristic algorithms for feature selection. A wrapper-based feature selection approach using five nature-inspired techniques for feature selection has been applied. The binary version of the five swarm-based nature-inspired algorithms (NIAs), namely particle swarm optimization, whale optimization algorithm (WOA), grey wolf optimization (GWO), firefly algorithm, and bat algorithm. WOA and GWO are recent algorithms used for finding optimal feature subsets when there is no empirical information. The S-shape transfer function has been used to convert the continuous value to binary form and K-nearest neighbor is used to calculate the classification accuracy of selected feature subsets. To validate the results of the selected NIAs eleven benchmark datasets from the UCI repository are used. The strength of each NIA has been verified using a nonparametric test called the Friedman rank and Holm test. p value obtained shows that WOA is statistically significant and performs better than other models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feature selection is one of the hottest machine learning topics in recent years. The main purposes of it are to simplify the original model, improve the readability of the model, and prevent over-fitting by searching for a suitable subset of features. There are many methods for this problem, including evolutionary algorithms and particle swarm optimization. Among them, the competitive swarm optimizer is a new optimization algorithm proposed in recent years, which is based on particle swarm optimization algorithm, and has achieved good results in high-dimensional feature selection problems, but it also has the problems of high computation time cost and easily being premature. Aiming at these problems, this paper proposes to add the crossover operator and mutation operator in the genetic algorithm to the competitive swarm optimization, so as to improve the generation speed of new individuals in the algorithm and prevent premature population. After testing on UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository, the new algorithm not only improves the computational efficiency, but also avoids the problem that the competitive swarm optimization algorithm is easy to fall into the local optimum, which greatly improves the calculation effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]