GELAX: IoT botnet detection using dynamic graph pruning and anchored explainable AI

Abstract Internet of Things (IoT) networks are increasingly targeted by advanced botnet attacks, posing serious risks to security and system stability. However, many existing intrusion detection systems (IDS) struggle to balance detection accuracy, real-time efficiency, and interpretability—especially in resource-constrained environments. In this paper, we introduce GELAX, a novel detection framework that combines Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), Dynamic Graph Pruning, and Anchored Explainable AI t