MirGuard: Towards a Robust Provenance-based Intrusion Detection System Against Graph Manipulation Attacks

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Sang, Anyuan, Zhou, Lu, Yang, Li, Jia, Junbo, Yang, Huipeng, Feng, Pengbin, Ma, Jianfeng
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Sang, Anyuan
Zhou, Lu
Yang, Li
Jia, Junbo
Yang, Huipeng
Feng, Pengbin
Ma, Jianfeng
author_facet Sang, Anyuan
Zhou, Lu
Yang, Li
Jia, Junbo
Yang, Huipeng
Feng, Pengbin
Ma, Jianfeng
contents Learning-based Provenance-based Intrusion Detection Systems (PIDSes) have become essential tools for anomaly detection in host systems due to their ability to capture rich contextual and structural information, as well as their potential to detect unknown attacks. However, recent studies have shown that these systems are vulnerable to graph manipulation attacks, where attackers manipulate the graph structure to evade detection. While some previous approaches have discussed this type of attack, none have fully addressed it with a robust detection solution, limiting the practical applicability of PIDSes. To address this challenge, we propose MirGuard, a robust anomaly detection framework that combines logic-aware multi-view augmentation with contrastive representation learning. Rather than applying arbitrary structural perturbations, MirGuard introduces Logic-Aware Noise Injection (LNI) to generate semantically valid graph views, ensuring that all augmentations preserve the underlying causal semantics of the provenance data. These views are then used in a Logic-Preserving Contrastive Learning framework, which encourages the model to learn representations that are invariant to benign transformations but sensitive to adversarial inconsistencies. Comprehensive evaluations on multiple provenance datasets demonstrate that MirGuard significantly outperforms state-of-the-art detectors in robustness against various graph manipulation attacks without sacrificing detection performance and efficiency. Our work represents the first targeted study to enhance PIDS against such adversarial threats, providing a robust and effective solution to modern cybersecurity challenges.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_10639
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle MirGuard: Towards a Robust Provenance-based Intrusion Detection System Against Graph Manipulation Attacks
Sang, Anyuan
Zhou, Lu
Yang, Li
Jia, Junbo
Yang, Huipeng
Feng, Pengbin
Ma, Jianfeng
Cryptography and Security
Learning-based Provenance-based Intrusion Detection Systems (PIDSes) have become essential tools for anomaly detection in host systems due to their ability to capture rich contextual and structural information, as well as their potential to detect unknown attacks. However, recent studies have shown that these systems are vulnerable to graph manipulation attacks, where attackers manipulate the graph structure to evade detection. While some previous approaches have discussed this type of attack, none have fully addressed it with a robust detection solution, limiting the practical applicability of PIDSes. To address this challenge, we propose MirGuard, a robust anomaly detection framework that combines logic-aware multi-view augmentation with contrastive representation learning. Rather than applying arbitrary structural perturbations, MirGuard introduces Logic-Aware Noise Injection (LNI) to generate semantically valid graph views, ensuring that all augmentations preserve the underlying causal semantics of the provenance data. These views are then used in a Logic-Preserving Contrastive Learning framework, which encourages the model to learn representations that are invariant to benign transformations but sensitive to adversarial inconsistencies. Comprehensive evaluations on multiple provenance datasets demonstrate that MirGuard significantly outperforms state-of-the-art detectors in robustness against various graph manipulation attacks without sacrificing detection performance and efficiency. Our work represents the first targeted study to enhance PIDS against such adversarial threats, providing a robust and effective solution to modern cybersecurity challenges.
title MirGuard: Towards a Robust Provenance-based Intrusion Detection System Against Graph Manipulation Attacks
topic Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.10639