Graph neural networks based log anomaly detection and explanation

Event logs are widely used to record the status of high-tech systems, making log anomaly detection important for monitoring those systems. Most existing log anomaly detection methods take a log event count matrix or log event sequences as input, exploiting quantitative and/or sequential relationships between log events to detect anomalies. However, only considering quantitative or sequential relationships may result in low detection accuracy. To alleviate this problem, we propose a graph-based method for unsupervised log anomaly detection, dubbed Logs2Graphs, which first converts event logs into attributed, directed, and weighted graphs, and then leverages graph neural networks to perform graph-level anomaly detection. Specifically, we introduce One-Class Digraph Inception Convolutional Networks, abbreviated as OCDiGCN, a novel graph neural network model for detecting graph-level anomalies in a collection of attributed, directed, and weighted graphs. By integrating graph representation and anomaly detection, OCDiGCN learns a specialized representation that leads to high detection accuracy. Crucially, we furnish a concise set of nodes pivotal in OCDiGCN's prediction as explanations for each detected anomaly, offering valuable insights for subsequent root cause analysis. Experiments on five benchmark datasets show that Logs2Graphs exhibits comparable or superior performance when compared to state-of-the-art log anomaly detection methods.