X-GANet: An Explainable Graph-Based Framework for Robust Network Intrusion Detection
Mainak Basak, Dong-Wook Kim, Myung-Mook Han, Gun-Yoon Shin · Applied Sciences · 2025
Modern networks are increasingly targeted by sophisticated cyber threats, making effective intrusion detection a critical challenge. Traditional intrusion detection systems (IDSs) often struggle with capturing the complex relationships within network traffic and suffer from a lack of explainability in their decision-making processes. To address these limitations, we propose X-GANet, Explainable Graph Anomaly Network, a novel graph-based intrusion detection framework that models network traffic as a graph and leverages deep representation learning for precise threat identification. The model extracts both flow-based and structural features, aligns multi-view representations through contrastive learning, and employs a transformer-based embedding module for enhanced feature extraction. An adaptive graph detection fusion mechanism ensures effective graph-level representation and detection techniques for robust attack classification. Experimental results obtained from benchmark intrusion detection datasets demonstrate that X-GANet significantly improves detection performance while maintaining interpretability, making it a promising solution for real-world cybersecurity applications.