Log2Graph: A graph convolution neural network based method for insider threat detection

Abstract

With the advancement of network security equipment, insider threats gradually replace external threats and become a critical contributing factor for cluster security threats. When detecting and combating insider threats, existing methods often concentrate on users’ behavior and analyze logs recording their operations in an information system. Traditional sequence-based method considers temporal relationships for user actions, but cannot represent complex logical relationships well between various entities and different behaviors. Current machine learning-based approaches, such as graph-based methods, can establish connections among log entries but have limitations in terms of complexity and identifying malicious behavior of user’s inherent intention. In this paper, we propose Log2Graph, a novel insider threat detection method based on graph convolution neural network. To achieve efficient anomaly detection, Log2Graph first retrieves logs and corresponding features from log files through feature extraction. Specifically, we use an auxiliary feature of anomaly index to describe the relationship between entities, such as users and hosts, instead of establishing complex connections between them. Second, these logs and features are augmented through a combination of oversampling and downsampling, to prepare for the next-stage supervised learning process. Third, we use three elaborated rules to construct the graph of each user by connecting the logs according to chronological and logical relationships. At last, the dedicated built graph convolution neural network is used to detect insider threats. Our validation and extensive evaluation results confirm that Log2Graph can greatly improve the performance of insider threat detection compared to existing state-of-the-art methods.