SHIELD: APT Detection and Intelligent Explanation Using LLM

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Gandhi, Parth Atulbhai, Wudali, Prasanna N., Amaru, Yonatan, Elovici, Yuval, Shabtai, Asaf
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866929698342174720
author Gandhi, Parth Atulbhai
Wudali, Prasanna N.
Amaru, Yonatan
Elovici, Yuval
Shabtai, Asaf
author_facet Gandhi, Parth Atulbhai
Wudali, Prasanna N.
Amaru, Yonatan
Elovici, Yuval
Shabtai, Asaf
contents Advanced persistent threats (APTs) are sophisticated cyber attacks that can remain undetected for extended periods, making their mitigation particularly challenging. Given their persistence, significant effort is required to detect them and respond effectively. Existing provenance-based attack detection methods often lack interpretability and suffer from high false positive rates, while investigation approaches are either supervised or limited to known attacks. To address these challenges, we introduce SHIELD, a novel approach that combines statistical anomaly detection and graph-based analysis with the contextual analysis capabilities of large language models (LLMs). SHIELD leverages the implicit knowledge of LLMs to uncover hidden attack patterns in provenance data, while reducing false positives and providing clear, interpretable attack descriptions. This reduces analysts' alert fatigue and makes it easier for them to understand the threat landscape. Our extensive evaluation demonstrates SHIELD's effectiveness and computational efficiency in real-world scenarios. SHIELD was shown to outperform state-of-the-art methods, achieving higher precision and recall. SHIELD's integration of anomaly detection, LLM-driven contextual analysis, and advanced graph-based correlation establishes a new benchmark for APT detection.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_02342
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SHIELD: APT Detection and Intelligent Explanation Using LLM
Gandhi, Parth Atulbhai
Wudali, Prasanna N.
Amaru, Yonatan
Elovici, Yuval
Shabtai, Asaf
Cryptography and Security
Advanced persistent threats (APTs) are sophisticated cyber attacks that can remain undetected for extended periods, making their mitigation particularly challenging. Given their persistence, significant effort is required to detect them and respond effectively. Existing provenance-based attack detection methods often lack interpretability and suffer from high false positive rates, while investigation approaches are either supervised or limited to known attacks. To address these challenges, we introduce SHIELD, a novel approach that combines statistical anomaly detection and graph-based analysis with the contextual analysis capabilities of large language models (LLMs). SHIELD leverages the implicit knowledge of LLMs to uncover hidden attack patterns in provenance data, while reducing false positives and providing clear, interpretable attack descriptions. This reduces analysts' alert fatigue and makes it easier for them to understand the threat landscape. Our extensive evaluation demonstrates SHIELD's effectiveness and computational efficiency in real-world scenarios. SHIELD was shown to outperform state-of-the-art methods, achieving higher precision and recall. SHIELD's integration of anomaly detection, LLM-driven contextual analysis, and advanced graph-based correlation establishes a new benchmark for APT detection.
title SHIELD: APT Detection and Intelligent Explanation Using LLM
topic Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.02342