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Research Report Summary: Neurosymbolic AI for Enhanced Cyber Attacks
Research Report Summary: Neurosymbolic AI for Enhanced Cyber Attacks
Neurosymbolic Al (Nesy) is an interdisciplinary approach that combines the strengths of two Al paradigms: connectionist (or neural) Al and symbolic Al.
Sarah Garicia
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October 31, 2024

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iWeaver AI summarizes the content of paper arXiv:2408.04996 [pdf, html, other] to help you improve your efficiency 100 times.

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1. Introduction

The paper introduces the concept of neurosymbolic AI (NeSy) as a means to address the challenges in detecting and responding to cyber attacks. It emphasizes the limitations of traditional preventive measures and the need for advanced AI techniques that can provide situational awareness and adaptive responses within a Security Operations Center (SOC).

2. Challenges Faced When Using AI in a SOC

This section outlines the challenges in applying AI across different phases of incident management within a SOC, structured around the MAPE-K model (Monitor, Analyse, Plan, Execute, and Knowledge). Key challenges include achieving high accuracy of ML models in real-world conditions, learning from small labeled datasets, enriching ML models with knowledge, and automating threat hunting.

3. The Case for Neurosymbolic AI

The authors make a case for NeSy by drawing on the distinction between instinctive and reasoned processes in human cognition. They propose a set of NeSy use cases that leverage both neural networks and logical reasoning to address the challenges identified in Chapter 2. These use cases range from improving detection models with symbolic knowledge to enhancing situational awareness through reasoning about outcomes.

4. Proof-of-Concept Experiments

The paper presents two experiments to demonstrate the feasibility of NeSy in cybersecurity. The first experiment shows how a Logic Tensor Network (LTN) can improve an ML-based detection engine by incorporating symbolic knowledge. The second experiment illustrates the use of large language models and Answer Set Programming (ASP) to transform cyber threat intelligence into symbolic forms for better situational awareness.

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, the paper highlights the potential of neurosymbolic AI in enhancing cybersecurity measures. It calls for further research and development in this area and acknowledges the need for more comprehensive datasets that include both event data and symbolic knowledge. The authors also discuss the limitations of current datasets and the importance of creating datasets that better reflect the complexities of real-world cybersecurity challenges.

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the funding support from the European Union as part of the European Defence Fund (EDF) project AInception. They clarify that the views and opinions expressed in the paper are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union.

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What is neurosymbolic AI and why is it important for cybersecurity?

  1. Enhanced Detection Accuracy: NeSy can improve the accuracy of cyber threat detection by integrating domain knowledge into machine learning models. This knowledge can guide the learning process, helping to distinguish between benign and malicious activities more effectively.
  2. Adaptive Learning: Cyber threats are dynamic and evolve continuously. NeSy's ability to learn from new data and adapt to changing patterns is crucial for keeping up with the evolving nature of cyber attacks.
  3. Situational Awareness: By combining learning with reasoning, NeSy can provide a deeper understanding of the context and implications of detected threats, enhancing an organization's situational awareness during an incident.
  4. Automated Hypothesis Generation and Validation: NeSy can facilitate automated threat hunting by generating hypotheses about potential threats and validating them against observed data, which is essential for proactive cybersecurity measures.
  5. Knowledge Integration: Cybersecurity relies heavily on knowledge about threats, vulnerabilities, and assets. NeSy can integrate and reason over this knowledge, providing a more comprehensive approach to threat detection and response.

What are the main challenges of using AI in a Security Operations Center (SOC)?

  1. Optimal Accuracy of ML Models: Achieving high accuracy in real-world conditions is difficult due to the lack of ground truth in event data and the prevalence of concept drift.
  2. Learning with Small Datasets: Training effective AI models requires large amounts of labeled data, which can be scarce in cybersecurity, especially for new or rare threats.
  3. Knowledge Extraction and Integration: Incorporating knowledge about threats, malware, and vulnerabilities into AI models is challenging but necessary to improve detection capabilities.
  4. Automated Threat Hunting: Generating and validating hypotheses for threat hunting using AI is an area that requires further development to support the iterative process of formulating and testing hypotheses against observed data.
  5. Alert Fatigue: The high volume of alerts generated by AI systems can lead to analyst fatigue, as security professionals must sift through numerous false positives to identify genuine threats.
  6. Reliable and Explainable Alerts: AI systems need to provide alerts that are not only accurate but also explainable to ensure trust and proper utilization by security analysts.

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