A Comprehensive Review of Graph Neural Networks for Malware Classification Pipelines: Architectures, Robustness, and Intelligent Security Applications

Abstract

The rapid evolution of cyber threats, particularly malware, has driven the need for advanced detection and classification techniques capable of handling complex and dynamic attack patterns. Traditional signature-based and heuristic approaches are increasingly ineffective against polymorphic and zero-day malware, creating a demand for more adaptive solutions. In this context, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have emerged as a powerful paradigm for modeling structured relationships in malware data, including function call graphs, network traffic flows, and system interactions. Unlike conventional machine learning models, GNNs capture non-Euclidean relationships, enabling superior representation learning and improved classification accuracy. This review analyzes GNN-based malware classification pipelines, focusing on architectural designs, robustness strategies, and security applications. It highlights the integration of graph construction methods, feature extraction, and classification models, while also examining issues such as adversarial robustness, scalability, and explainability. Findings suggest that models like Graph Convolutional Networks, Graph Attention Networks, and hybrid approaches outperform traditional deep learning techniques by leveraging relational dependencies. Despite their promise, challenges such as computational overhead, dataset limitations, and adversarial vulnerabilities remain, indicating the need for lightweight, interpretable, and privacy-preserving GNN frameworks.