An Active Cyber Defense method and system is provided for detecting and stopping malicious cyber activity including for example Drive-By Exploits, Malicious Binaries, Data Exfiltration, Social Engineering and Credential Stealing Attacks. The system disclosed herein can be configured to detect and block multi protocol network-based cyber attacks targeting different platforms or operating systems. The system can also be configured to be scalable. The system as disclosed herein can conduct real time inspection of network traffic and can self-learn and adapt as needed to a changing cyber threat landscape.