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Open AccessArticle
Temporal Multi-Query Subgraph Matching in Cybersecurity
by
Min Lu
Min Lu
,
Qianzhen Zhang
Qianzhen Zhang * and
Xianqiang Zhu
Xianqiang Zhu *
National Key Laboratory of Information Systems Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China
*
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Technologies 2025, 13(8), 335; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies13080335 (registering DOI)
Submission received: 5 June 2025
/
Revised: 14 July 2025
/
Accepted: 30 July 2025
/
Published: 1 August 2025
Abstract
Regarding attack scenarios as query graphs and conducting subgraph matching on the data system is an important approach to identify and detect cyber threats. However, existing subgraph matching methods are not suitable for detecting time-evolving attacks since they either focus on single-query graphs or ignore the temporal constraints between multiple queries. In this paper, we model the time-evolving attack detection as a novel temporal multi-query subgraph matching problem and propose an efficient algorithm to address this problem. We first give a compact representation of the temporal query graph by merging all queries into one. Based on the temporal query graph, we propose a concise auxiliary data structure to maintain partial solutions. In addition, we employ a query matching tree to generate an efficient matching order and enumerate matchings based on the order. Extensive experiments over real-world datasets confirm the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach.
Share and Cite
MDPI and ACS Style
Lu, M.; Zhang, Q.; Zhu, X.
Temporal Multi-Query Subgraph Matching in Cybersecurity. Technologies 2025, 13, 335.
https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies13080335
AMA Style
Lu M, Zhang Q, Zhu X.
Temporal Multi-Query Subgraph Matching in Cybersecurity. Technologies. 2025; 13(8):335.
https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies13080335
Chicago/Turabian Style
Lu, Min, Qianzhen Zhang, and Xianqiang Zhu.
2025. "Temporal Multi-Query Subgraph Matching in Cybersecurity" Technologies 13, no. 8: 335.
https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies13080335
APA Style
Lu, M., Zhang, Q., & Zhu, X.
(2025). Temporal Multi-Query Subgraph Matching in Cybersecurity. Technologies, 13(8), 335.
https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies13080335
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