Unveiling the Black Box: A Multi-Layer Framework for Explaining Reinforcement Learning-Based Cyber Agents
For cybersecurity defenders and RL developers, this framework addresses the need for explainability in opaque RL-based cyberattack agents, enabling better anticipation and analysis of autonomous threats.
The paper proposes a multi-layer explainability framework for RL-based cyberattack agents that reveals strategic (MDP-level) and tactical (policy-level) reasoning, providing interpretable insights into agent behavior across CyberBattleSim environments. The framework is agent- and environment-agnostic, supporting red-team simulation, policy debugging, and threat modeling.
Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents are increasingly used to simulate sophisticated cyberattacks, but their decision-making processes remain opaque, hindering trust, debugging, and defensive preparedness. In high-stakes cybersecurity contexts, explainability is essential for understanding how adversarial strategies are formed and evolve over time. In this paper, we propose a unified, multi-layer explainability framework for RL-based attacker agents that reveals both strategic (Markov Decision Process (MDP)-level) and tactical (policy-level) reasoning. At the MDP-level, we model cyberattacks as a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) to expose exploration-exploitation dynamics and phase-aware behavioural shifts. At the policy-level, we analyse the temporal evolution of Q-values and use Prioritised Experience Replay (PER) to surface critical learning transitions and evolving action preferences. Evaluated across CyberBattleSim environments of increasing complexity, our framework offers interpretable insights into agent behaviour at scale. Unlike previous explainable RL methods, which are {predominantly} post-hoc, domain-specific, or limited in depth, our approach is both agent- and environment-agnostic, {supporting use cases such as red-team simulation, RL policy debugging, phase-aware threat modelling and anticipatory defence planning.} By transforming black-box learning into actionable behavioural intelligence, our framework enables both defenders and developers to better anticipate, analyse, and respond to autonomous cyber threats.