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Application of AI in Cyberattack Detection: A Review

Boateng YJ, Mim NJ, Akhter N, Naha R, Mahanti A, Barros A

Sensors (Basel, Switzerland), 2026

Abstract

In today's fast-changing digital environment, cyber-physical systems face escalating security challenges due to increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful enabler of modern cyberattack detection, offering scalable, accurate, and adaptive solutions to counter dynamic threats. This paper provides a comprehensive review of recent advancements in AI-based cyberattack detection, focusing on Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning (DL), Reinforcement Learning (RL), Federated Learning (FL), and emerging techniques such as generative AI, neuro-symbolic AI, swarm intelligence, lightweight AI, and quantum Computing. We evaluate the strengths and limitations of these approaches, highlighting their performance on benchmark datasets. The review discusses traditional signature-based Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) and their limitations against novel attack patterns, contrasted with AI-driven anomaly-based and hybrid detection methods that improve detection rates for unknown and zero-day attacks. Key challenges, including computational costs, data quality, privacy concerns, and model interpretability, are analysed alongside the role of Explainable AI (XAI) in enhancing trust and transparency. The impact of computational resources, dataset representativeness, and evaluation metrics on AI model performance is also explored. Furthermore, we investigate the potential of lightweight AI for resource-constrained environments like IoT and edge…

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