Perceptrons
Explainable Attention-Guided Stacked Graph Neural Networks for Malware Detection
Shokouhinejad, Hossein, Razavi-Far, Roozbeh, Higgins, Griffin, Ghorbani, Ali A
Malware detection in modern computing environments demands models that are not only accurate but also interpretable and robust to evasive techniques. Graph neural networks (GNNs) have shown promise in this domain by modeling rich structural dependencies in graph-based program representations such as control flow graphs (CFGs). However, single-model approaches may suffer from limited generalization and lack interpretability, especially in high-stakes security applications. In this paper, we propose a novel stacking ensemble framework for graph-based malware detection and explanation. Our method dynamically extracts CFGs from portable executable (PE) files and encodes their basic blocks through a two-step embedding strategy. A set of diverse GNN base learners, each with a distinct message-passing mechanism, is used to capture complementary behavioral features. Their prediction outputs are aggregated by a meta-learner implemented as an attention-based multilayer perceptron, which both classifies malware instances and quantifies the contribution of each base model. To enhance explainability, we introduce an ensemble-aware post-hoc explanation technique that leverages edge-level importance scores generated by a GNN explainer and fuses them using the learned attention weights. This produces interpretable, model-agnostic explanations aligned with the final ensemble decision. Experimental results demonstrate that our framework improves classification performance while providing insightful interpretations of malware behavior.
Model Selection for Bayesian Autoencoders: Supplementary Material Ba-Hien Tran EURECOM (France) Simone Rossi
In this section, we review some key results on the Wasserstein distance. The formulation in Eq. 6 is obtained by employing We use a single multi layer perceptron (MLP) layer with normalized output as the h function. Calculating the Wasserstein distance with the empirical distribution function is computationally attractive. Metropolis steps to accommodate numerical errors stemming from the integration. F .1 Experimental environment In our experiments, we use 4 workstations, which have the following specifications: GPU: NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB.
Channel-Wise MLPs Improve the Generalization of Recurrent Convolutional Networks
We investigate the impact of channel-wise mixing via multi-layer perceptrons (MLPs) on the generalization capabilities of recurrent convolutional networks. Specifically, we compare two architectures: DARC (Depth Aware Recurrent Convolution), which employs a simple recurrent convolutional structure, and DAMP (Depth Aware Multi-layer Perceptron), which extends DARC with a gated MLP for channel mixing. Using the Re-ARC benchmark, we find that DAMP significantly outperforms DARC in both in-distribution and out-of-distribution generalization under exact-match grading criteria. These results suggest that explicit channel mixing through MLPs enables recurrent convolutional networks to learn more robust and generalizable computational patterns. Our findings have implications for neural program synthesis and highlight the potential of DAMP as a target architecture for hypernetwork approaches.
Log2Sig: Frequency-Aware Insider Threat Detection via Multivariate Behavioral Signal Decomposition
Kong, Kaichuan, Liu, Dongjie, Jin, Xiaobo, Li, Zhiying, Geng, Guanggang
--Insider threat detection presents a significant challenge due to the deceptive nature of malicious behaviors, which often resemble legitimate user operations. However, existing approaches typically model system logs as flat event sequences, thereby failing to capture the inherent frequency dynamics and multiscale disturbance patterns embedded in user behavior . T o address these limitations, we propose Log2Sig, a robust anomaly detection framework that transforms user logs into multivariate behavioral frequency signals, introducing a novel representation of user behavior . Log2Sig employs Multivariate V ariational Mode Decomposition (MVMD) to extract Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMFs), which reveal behavioral fluctuations across multiple temporal scales. Based on this, the model further performs joint modeling of behavioral sequences and frequency-decomposed signals: the daily behavior sequences are encoded using a Mamba-based temporal encoder to capture long-term dependencies, while the corresponding frequency components are linearly projected to match the encoder's output dimension. These dual-view representations are then fused to construct a comprehensive user behavior profile, which is fed into a multilayer perceptron for precise anomaly detection. Experimental results on the CERT r4.2 and r5.2 datasets demonstrate that Log2Sig significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in both accuracy and F1 score. Insider threats have emerged as a pressing security issue in enterprise information systems due to their stealthy nature, prolonged attack cycles, and fragmented behavioral patterns.
Khan-GCL: Kolmogorov-Arnold Network Based Graph Contrastive Learning with Hard Negatives
Wang, Zihu, Xu, Boxun, Geng, Hejia, Li, Peng
Graph contrastive learning (GCL) has demonstrated great promise for learning generalizable graph representations from unlabeled data. However, conventional GCL approaches face two critical limitations: (1) the restricted expressive capacity of multilayer perceptron (MLP) based encoders, and (2) suboptimal negative samples that either from random augmentations-failing to provide effective 'hard negatives'-or generated hard negatives without addressing the semantic distinctions crucial for discriminating graph data. To this end, we propose Khan-GCL, a novel framework that integrates the Kolmogorov-Arnold Network (KAN) into the GCL encoder architecture, substantially enhancing its representational capacity. Furthermore, we exploit the rich information embedded within KAN coefficient parameters to develop two novel critical feature identification techniques that enable the generation of semantically meaningful hard negative samples for each graph representation. These strategically constructed hard negatives guide the encoder to learn more discriminative features by emphasizing critical semantic differences between graphs. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance compared to existing GCL methods across a variety of datasets and tasks.
Quantum Neural Network applications to Protein Binding Affinity Predictions
Teixeira, Erico Souza, Fernandes, Lucas Barros, Inรกcio, Yara Rodrigues
Binding energy is a fundamental thermodynamic property that governs molecular interactions, playing a crucial role in fields such as healthcare and the natural sciences. It is particularly relevant in drug development, vaccine design, and other biomedical applications. Over the years, various methods have been developed to estimate protein binding energy, ranging from experimental techniques to computational approaches, with machine learning making significant contributions to this field. Although classical computing has demonstrated strong results in constructing predictive models, the variation of quantum computing for machine learning has emerged as a promising alternative. Quantum neural networks (QNNs) have gained traction as a research focus, raising the question of their potential advantages in predicting binding energies. To investigate this potential, this study explored the feasibility of QNNs for this task by proposing thirty variations of multilayer perceptron-based quantum neural networks. These variations span three distinct architectures, each incorporating ten different quantum circuits to configure their quantum layers. The performance of these quantum models was compared with that of a state-of-the-art classical multilayer perceptron-based artificial neural network, evaluating both accuracy and training time. A primary dataset was used for training, while two additional datasets containing entirely unseen samples were employed for testing. Results indicate that the quantum models achieved approximately 20% higher accuracy on one unseen dataset, although their accuracy was lower on the other datasets. Notably, quantum models exhibited training times several orders of magnitude shorter than their classical counterparts, highlighting their potential for efficient protein binding energy prediction.
Generating Light-based Fingerprints for Indoor Localization
Lee, Hsun-Yu, Lin, Jie, Wu, Fang-Jing
Radio-frequency solutions (e.g., Wi-Fi, RFID, UWB) are widely adopted but remain vulnerable to multipath fading, interference, and uncontrollable coverage variation. We explore an orthogonal modality--visible light communication (VLC)--and demonstrate that the spectral signatures captured by a low-cost AS7341 sensor can serve as robust location fingerprints. We introduce a two-stage framework that (i) trains a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) on real spectral measurements and (ii) enlarges the training corpus with synthetic samples produced by T abGAN. The augmented dataset reduces the mean localization error from 62.9 cm to 49.3 cm--a 20% improvement--while requiring only 5% additional data-collection effort. Experimental results obtained on 42 reference points in a U-shaped laboratory confirm that GAN-based augmentation mitigates data-scarcity issues and enhances generalization.
Estimation of Aerodynamics Forces in Dynamic Morphing Wing Flight
Gupta, Bibek, Kim, Mintae, Park, Albert, Sihite, Eric, Sreenath, Koushil, Ramezani, Alireza
Accurate estimation of aerodynamic forces is essential for advancing the control, modeling, and design of flapping-wing aerial robots with dynamic morphing capabilities. In this paper, we investigate two distinct methodologies for force estimation on Aerobat, a bio-inspired flapping-wing platform designed to emulate the inertial and aerodynamic behaviors observed in bat flight. Our goal is to quantify aerodynamic force contributions during tethered flight, a crucial step toward closed-loop flight control. The first method is a physics-based observer derived from Hamiltonian mechanics that leverages the concept of conjugate momentum to infer external aerodynamic forces acting on the robot. This observer builds on the system's reduced-order dynamic model and utilizes real-time sensor data to estimate forces without requiring training data. The second method employs a neural network-based regression model, specifically a multi-layer perceptron (MLP), to learn a mapping from joint kinematics, flapping frequency, and environmental parameters to aerodynamic force outputs. We evaluate both estimators using a 6-axis load cell in a high-frequency data acquisition setup that enables fine-grained force measurements during periodic wingbeats. The conjugate momentum observer and the regression model demonstrate strong agreement across three force components (Fx, Fy, Fz).