Papers for

network security analysts

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Temporal link prediction improves by tracking who is active

Your Temporal Link Predictor Is Blind to Who Is Active: A Missing Factor That Transfers Across Models

Abstract: An interaction has two parts: someone decides to act, and then chooses whom to act on. Temporal link prediction has concentrated on the second, and we show that it is blind to the first by construction: a standard negative keeps the real source and swaps the destination, and we prove that this cancels the source's activity exactly from the optimal score, so no model trained and evaluated this way is ever rewarded for learning it. Under the harder historical and inductive negatives, whose sources differ, the same factor becomes the dominant signal. We model it with Source Node Activity Modeling (SNAM), a self-exciting event intensity fitted by an exact point-process likelihood to decayed interaction counts the history states already contain; it has fewer than 20 parameters. On their own, never looking at the destination, these parameters beat DyGFormer and TPNet on four of five datasets under historical negatives. Added to the frozen scores of TPNet, TGN, DyGFormer and DSRD, four models of different design, without retraining anything, they raise AP on almost every backbone-dataset pair in both settings, by up to 25 points. Our full model ranks first overall against eleven baselines on 13 datasets and three protocols, and on million-event streams trains an epoch 9-100x faster than TPNet and DyGFormer. We conclude that source activity is a blind spot of temporal link prediction, and a cheap, transferable one to close. Code is available at https://github.com/Erutaner/Your-Temporal-Link-Predictor-Is-Blind-to-Who-Is-Active.

Sun 4 OctMachine LearningSocial and Information Networks
The gist
Temporal link prediction tries to guess who will interact with whom in the future based on past interactions. The authors found that current methods ignore an important factor: how active the person initiating the interaction is. They developed a simple model to track source activity, which alone sometimes outperforms more complex methods. Adding this factor to existing models improves their accuracy across many tests and speeds up training significantly.
Open → 2610.04869v1

Graph neural networks improve confidence calibration with local structure

HoTS: Homophily-Aware Temperature Scaling for Graph Neural Network Calibration

Abstract: For graph node classification, calibrated class probabilities are needed when confidence scores, usually the maximum predicted class probability, are used to rank predictions, defer uncertain nodes to human review, or control risk. Existing post-hoc calibrators either apply one global temperature or use graph-aware modules without a principled structural form. We study how local graph structure should enter node-level calibration. Our first results show that a logit-only temperature rule is insufficient when nodes with identical logits but different local homophily require different optimal temperatures. We then analyze a population-concentration contextual stochastic block model with Gaussian features and a one-layer linear GCN. Under equidistant class means, the Bayes posterior over class-template scores is a temperature-scaled softmax whose inverse-temperature is governed by a homophily-dependent signal strength. In the positive-signal homophilic regime, the resulting temperature decreases approximately inversely with normalized local homophily. This law motivates Homophily-aware Temperature Scaling (HoTS), a simple post-hoc calibrator that assigns each node a positive scalar temperature from entropy-based logit concentration and estimated local homophily. HoTS has three temperature parameters, preserves the predicted class, and learns the strength of the structural correction from calibration data. Across 18 node-classification benchmarks, two GNN backbones, and eight calibration baselines, HoTS achieves the best mean Expected Calibration Error (ECE) of 4.79%, the best average rank, and the most reliable confidence ranking in selective classification. Code is available at https://github.com/inu0104/HoTS.

Sat 26 SeptMachine Learning
The gist
When computers try to guess labels for things connected in a network, they also give confidence scores. These scores need to be accurate to know when to trust them or ask for human help. The authors found that knowing how similar a node’s neighbors are (called homophily) helps better adjust these confidence scores. They created a new method called HoTS that uses local network info to make these confidence scores more accurate across many tests.
Open → 2609.32426v1

Collaborative system improves detection of streaming data anomalies

Collaborative Streaming Anomaly Detection with Interactive Explanations and Ensemble Consensus

Abstract: We present a collaborative streaming anomaly detection system for high-speed data streams that explicitly integrates human analysts into the decision loop. The system combines heterogeneous detectors and aggregates their outputs through a normalization-based weighted consensus, complemented by artifact-aware rules to stabilize anomaly scoring under deployment. To improve interpretability, it derives surrogate models that approximate the ensemble consensus and expose human-readable sensor conditions associated with anomalous behavior. Analysts can actively intervene by reviewing anomaly episodes, adjusting consensus behavior, and refining surrogate rules used for anomaly prediction, producing a human-adjusted ensemble. We evaluate the approach on an industrial stream with 260\,000 events and 3 anomalous episodes, showing robust detection and actionable human-AI interaction.

Sun 20 SeptMachine Learning
The gist
Detecting unusual patterns in fast-moving data streams is hard because machines and humans see information differently. The authors describe a new system where different automated detectors’ opinions are combined, and human analysts can interactively adjust and understand these guesses. This system also builds simple explanations that help people see why something looks suspicious. They tested it on industrial data showing it can reliably find rare problems while letting humans guide the process.
Open → 2609.23883v1

Logic reveals how filter bubbles form and persist online

Logics of Filter Bubbles

Abstract: Filter bubbles can be understood as configurations characterized by within-group proximity and separation from outsiders. Personalized feeds may form or preserve such configurations. We develop hybrid-style logics for reasoning about filter bubbles. The static logic characterizes bubble-shaped configurations, while its dynamic extension captures their formation and persistence under personalized feeds. We provide sound and strongly complete axiomatizations for the static and dynamic logics and prove their decidability.

Fri 18 SeptLogic in Computer ScienceSocial and Information Networks
The gist
Filter bubbles are groups where people see mostly similar information and are separated from different views, often caused by personalized online feeds. The paper explains how to use special logical rules to describe and study these bubbles. The authors created a system to understand both how these bubbles stay the same and how they develop over time. They also made sure their approach is correct and can be fully worked out using logical methods.
Open → 2609.21565v1

Quantum graph homomorphism problem proven undecidable for key graph families

Schrijver-Delsarte rigidity in association schemes and undecidability of quantum graph homomorphism

Abstract: We prove RE-completeness of the quantum homomorphism problem parameterised by families of graphs derived from the classic metric association schemes. These include Kneser graphs, $q$-Kneser graphs, and the complements of Johnson, Grassmann, and Hamming graphs. Our proof develops a spectral method for establishing non-contextuality of quantum polymorphisms. It combines an equality analysis of Roberson's bound on the projective packing number in terms of Schrijver's theta with a structural argument inspired by Erdős-Ko-Rado theory.

Thu 17 SeptComputational ComplexityDiscrete Mathematics
The gist
Some problems about assigning one graph’s points to another’s using quantum rules are super hard to solve–so hard that no computer can always decide them. The authors show this undecidability for special graphs often studied in math and computer science, like Kneser and Johnson graphs. They do this by blending tools from quantum theory, graph structure, and combinatorics. Their method includes analyzing certain numerical bounds called the theta numbers and using ideas from a field studying sets with special overlap properties.
Open → 2609.20678v1

Deep learning improves cyberattack detection in low earth orbit satellites

Temporal and Multimodal Deep Learning for Cyberattack Detection in LEO Satellite Systems

Abstract: The growing reliance on Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communication systems has increased the need for intelligent methods capable of detecting cyberattacks across complex and dynamic space environments. Unlike conventional network intrusion detection, satellite systems generate heterogeneous information across radio-frequency (RF) links, onboard hardware, and orbital operations. However, many existing approaches either rely on terrestrial intrusion datasets or evaluate individual observations independently, limiting their ability to capture temporal attack behavior specific to LEO satellites. In this work, we conduct a systematic study of deep-learning-based cyberattack detection using the recently introduced satellite-specific UNSW-IoTSAT dataset. We investigate structured learning architectures that preserve hardware, orbital, and RF information, including a Subsystem-Fusion MLP and a hierarchical multimodal Transformer that models both cross-subsystem interactions and temporal evolution. We further evaluate leakage-resistant row-level and temporal settings, along with cross-satellite generalization, to characterize how model architecture and evaluation protocol influence satellite cyberattack detection. Experimental results demonstrate the value of structured multimodal modeling and rigorous evaluation, with the hierarchical Transformer achieving up to 91.66% accuracy and 85.63% macro F1 under the leakage-resistant evaluation protocol.

Wed 9 SeptCryptography and SecurityArtificial IntelligenceMachine Learning
The gist
Low Earth Orbit satellites face cyberattacks that are hard to detect because their data comes from many different sources like radio signals, onboard hardware, and orbital operations. The authors propose deep learning models that combine these different types of data and look at how attacks evolve over time. They tested their approach on a special dataset for satellite cyberattacks and showed their model can detect attacks with high accuracy even when tested under strict conditions where information leakage is minimized.
Open → 2609.10746v1

Limits to detecting memory in network contacts affect epidemic predictions

Fundamental limits to identifying node and tie memory in temporal networks: marginal artefacts and spreading dynamics

Abstract: Temporal-network models attribute memory in contact data to either node self-excitation (branching ratio n_node) or tie reinforcement (kappa), carrying major consequences for epidemic spreading. We prove that when event initiators are observed, the two mechanisms are orthogonal: the Fisher information is block-diagonal and neither trades off against the other. In undirected proximity data, where initiators are unobserved, marginalising over them couples the mechanisms into a structural confound that survives posterior smoothing. On empirical proximity, messaging, and email records, however, a cruder failure dominates: fitted node memory is pinned to the inter-event marginal law and remains virtually invariant across latent label posterior samples (coefficient of variation below 1%). An inter-event-order shuffle test and burstiness-memory diagnostics reveal that exponential-Hawkes node memory is recovered from none, while tie reinforcement remains identifiable throughout. This near-unidentifiability is intrinsic, not an artefact of the exponential kernel: refitting flexible scale-free (sum-of-exponentials) kernels on synthetic power-law self-exciting processes fails to distinguish genuine node memory from memoryless renewal controls, with identical collapses recurring on algorithmic networks (edit bots, cloud microservices) and cortical spiking. Downstream epidemic consequences are quantitative: simulations fitted to empirical contact records under-predict outbreak sizes by up to a factor of 2.5 and shift the epidemic threshold. We conclude that observational temporal networks face a two-fold identifiability boundary: contact directionality is essential to decouple tie reinforcement, whereas heavy-tailed node self-excitation is intrinsically unidentifiable from contact timings alone.

Wed 9 SeptSocial and Information Networks
The gist
This paper finds that figuring out how network contacts remember past interactions is harder than expected. When we know who starts each contact, we can clearly separate two memory types; if not, they get mixed up and confused. In many real-world networks, one kind of memory related to individual nodes is nearly impossible to identify from contact times alone. This misidentification matters because it causes simulations of disease spreading to underestimate how big outbreaks can get.
Open → 2609.10399v1