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Lagrangian Neural Networks (LNNs) are a powerful tool for addressing physical systems, particularly those governed by conservation laws. LNNs can parametrize the Lagrangian of a system to predict trajectories with nearly conserved energy. These techniques have proven effective in unconstrained systems as well as those with holonomic constraints. In this work, we adapt LNN techniques to mechanical systems with nonholonomic constraints. We test our approach on some well-known examples with nonholonomic constraints, showing that incorporating these restrictions into the neural network's learning improves not only trajectory estimation accuracy but also ensures adherence to constraints and exhibits better energy behavior compared to the unconstrained counterpart.

This study investigates the prevalence and underlying causes of work-related stress and burnout among cybersecurity professionals using a quantitative survey approach guided by the Job Demands-Resources model. Analysis of responses from 50 cybersecurity practitioners reveals an alarming reality: 44% report experiencing severe work-related stress and burnout, while an additional 28% are uncertain about their condition. The demanding nature of cybersecurity roles, unrealistic expectations, and unsupportive organizational cultures emerge as primary factors fueling this crisis. Notably, 66% of respondents perceive cybersecurity jobs as more stressful than other IT positions, with 84% facing additional challenges due to the pandemic and recent high-profile breaches. The study finds that most cybersecurity experts are reluctant to report their struggles to management, perpetuating a cycle of silence and neglect. To address this critical issue, the paper recommends that organizations foster supportive work environments, implement mindfulness programs, and address systemic challenges. By prioritizing the mental health of cybersecurity professionals, organizations can cultivate a more resilient and effective workforce to protect against an ever-evolving threat landscape., Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, 6 tables

Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) enables computations on encrypted data, preserving confidentiality without the need for decryption. However, FHE is often hindered by significant performance overhead, particularly for high-precision and complex data like images. Due to serious efficiency issues, traditional FHE methods often encrypt images by monolithic data blocks (such as pixel rows), instead of pixels. However, this strategy compromises the advantages of homomorphic operations and disables pixel-level image processing. In this study, we address these challenges by proposing and implementing a pixel-level homomorphic encryption approach, iCHEETAH, based on the CKKS scheme. To enhance computational efficiency, we introduce three novel caching mechanisms to pre-encrypt radix values or frequently occurring pixel values, substantially reducing redundant encryption operations. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our approach achieves up to a 19-fold improvement in encryption speed compared to the original CKKS, while maintaining high image quality. Additionally, real-world image applications such as mean filtering, brightness enhancement, image matching and watermarking are tested based on FHE, showcasing up to a 91.53% speed improvement. We also proved that our method is IND-CPA (Indistinguishability under Chosen Plaintext Attack) secure, providing strong encryption security. These results underscore the practicality and efficiency of iCHEETAH, marking a significant advancement in privacy-preserving image processing at scale., Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures

The rapid evolution of mobile networks from 5G to 6G has necessitated the development of autonomous network management systems, such as Zero-Touch Networks (ZTNs). However, the increased complexity and automation of these networks have also escalated cybersecurity risks. Existing Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) leveraging traditional Machine Learning (ML) techniques have shown effectiveness in mitigating these risks, but they often require extensive manual effort and expert knowledge. To address these challenges, this paper proposes an Automated Machine Learning (AutoML)-based autonomous IDS framework towards achieving autonomous cybersecurity for next-generation networks. To achieve autonomous intrusion detection, the proposed AutoML framework automates all critical procedures of the data analytics pipeline, including data pre-processing, feature engineering, model selection, hyperparameter tuning, and model ensemble. Specifically, it utilizes a Tabular Variational Auto-Encoder (TVAE) method for automated data balancing, tree-based ML models for automated feature selection and base model learning, Bayesian Optimization (BO) for hyperparameter optimization, and a novel Optimized Confidence-based Stacking Ensemble (OCSE) method for automated model ensemble. The proposed AutoML-based IDS was evaluated on two public benchmark network security datasets, CICIDS2017 and 5G-NIDD, and demonstrated improved performance compared to state-of-the-art cybersecurity methods. This research marks a significant step towards fully autonomous cybersecurity in next-generation networks, potentially revolutionizing network security applications., Comment: Accepted to the Workshop on Autonomous Cybersecurity, ACM CCS 2024; Code is available at Github link: https://github.com/Western-OC2-Lab/AutonomousCyber-AutoML-based-Autonomous-Intrusion-Detection-System

Most of the intrusion detection methods in computer networks are based on traffic flow characteristics. However, this approach may not fully exploit the potential of deep learning algorithms to directly extract features and patterns from raw packets. Moreover, it impedes real-time monitoring due to the necessity of waiting for the processing pipeline to complete and introduces dependencies on additional software components. In this paper, we investigate deep learning methodologies capable of detecting attacks in real-time directly from raw packet data within network traffic. We propose a novel approach where packets are stacked into windows and separately recognised, with a 2D image representation suitable for processing with computer vision models. Our investigation utilizes the CIC IDS-2017 dataset, which includes both benign traffic and prevalent real-world attacks, providing a comprehensive foundation for our research., Comment: Submitted to Computer Science Journal

Siren represents a pioneering research effort aimed at fortifying cybersecurity through strategic integration of deception, machine learning, and proactive threat analysis. Drawing inspiration from mythical sirens, this project employs sophisticated methods to lure potential threats into controlled environments. The system features a dynamic machine learning model for real-time analysis and classification, ensuring continuous adaptability to emerging cyber threats. The architectural framework includes a link monitoring proxy, a purpose-built machine learning model for dynamic link analysis, and a honeypot enriched with simulated user interactions to intensify threat engagement. Data protection within the honeypot is fortified with probabilistic encryption. Additionally, the incorporation of simulated user activity extends the system's capacity to capture and learn from potential attackers even after user disengagement. Siren introduces a paradigm shift in cybersecurity, transforming traditional defense mechanisms into proactive systems that actively engage and learn from potential adversaries. The research strives to enhance user protection while yielding valuable insights for ongoing refinement in response to the evolving landscape of cybersecurity threats., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures

In 2021, the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program allocated $42.45 billion to enhance high-speed internet access across the United States. As part of this funding initiative, The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) developed a national coverage map to guide the allocation of BEAD funds. This map was the key determinant to direct BEAD investments to areas in need of broadband infrastructure improvements. The FCC encouraged public participation in refining this coverage map through the submission of "challenges" to either locations on the map or the status of broadband at any location on the map. These challenges allowed citizens and organizations to report discrepancies between the map's data and actual broadband availability, ensuring a more equitable distribution of funds. In this paper, we present a study analyzing the nature and distribution of these challenges across different access technologies and geographic areas. Among several other insights, we observe, for example, that the majority of challenges (about 58%) were submitted against terrestrial fixed wireless technologies as well as that the state of Nebraska had the strongest engagement in the challenge process with more than 75% of its broadband-serviceable locations having submitted at least one challenge., Comment: 9 pages, 14 tables, working draft

In goal-oriented communications, the objective of the receiver is often to apply a Deep-Learning model, rather than reconstructing the original data. In this context, direct learning over compressed data, without any prior decoding, holds promise for enhancing the time-efficient execution of inference models at the receiver. However, conventional entropic-coding methods like Huffman and Arithmetic break data structure, rendering them unsuitable for learning without decoding. In this paper, we propose an alternative approach in which entropic coding is realized with Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes. We hypothesize that Deep Learning models can more effectively exploit the internal code structure of LDPC codes. At the receiver, we leverage a specific class of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), specifically Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), trained for image classification. Our numerical results indicate that classification based on LDPC-coded bit-planes surpasses Huffman and Arithmetic coding, while necessitating a significantly smaller learning model. This demonstrates the efficiency of classification directly from LDPC-coded data, eliminating the need for any form of decompression, even partial, prior to applying the learning model., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, conference paper, submitted to the EUSIPCO 2024 Conference

The fifth generation of the telecommunication networks (5G) established the service-oriented paradigm on the mobile networks. In this new context, the 5G Core component has become extremely flexible so, in addition to serving mobile networks, it can also be used to connect devices from the so-called non-3GPP networks, which contains technologies such as WiFi. The implementation of this connectivity requires specific protocols to ensure authentication and reliability. Given these characteristics and the possibility of convergence, it is necessary to carefully choose the encryption algorithms and authentication methods used by non-3GPP user equipment. In light of the above, this paper highlights key findings resulting from an analysis on the subject conducted through a test environment which could be used in the context of the Eduroam federation.

Honeypots are designed to trap the attacker with the purpose of investigating its malicious behavior. Owing to the increasing variety and sophistication of cyber attacks, how to capture high-quality attack data has become a challenge in the context of honeypot area. All-round honeypots, which mean significant improvement in sensibility, countermeasure and stealth, are necessary to tackle the problem. In this paper, we propose a novel honeypot architecture termed HoneyDOC to support all-round honeypot design and implementation. Our HoneyDOC architecture clearly identifies three essential independent and collaborative modules, Decoy, Captor and Orchestrator. Based on the efficient architecture, a Software-Defined Networking (SDN) enabled honeypot system is designed, which supplies high programmability for technically sustaining the features for capturing high-quality data. A proof-of-concept system is implemented to validate its feasibility and effectiveness. The experimental results show the benefits by using the proposed architecture comparing to the previous honeypot solutions., Comment: None

We propose an efficient cross-cameras surveillance system called,STAC, that leverages spatio-temporal associations between multiple cameras to provide real-time analytics and inference under constrained network environments. STAC is built using the proposed omni-scale feature learning people reidentification (reid) algorithm that allows accurate detection, tracking and re-identification of people across cameras using the spatio-temporal characteristics of video frames. We integrate STAC with frame filtering and state-of-the-art compression for streaming technique (that is, ffmpeg libx264 codec) to remove redundant information from cross-camera frames. This helps in optimizing the cost of video transmission as well as compute/processing, while maintaining high accuracy for real-time query inference. The introduction of AICity Challenge 2023 Data [1] by NVIDIA has allowed exploration of systems utilizing multi-camera people tracking algorithms. We evaluate the performance of STAC using this dataset to measure the accuracy metrics and inference rate for reid. Additionally, we quantify the reduction in video streams achieved through frame filtering and compression using FFmpeg compared to the raw camera streams. For completeness, we make available our repository to reproduce the results, available at https://github.com/VolodymyrVakhniuk/CS444_Final_Project.

We examine the relationship of graded (multi)modal logic to counting (multichannel) message passing automata with applications to the Weisfeiler-Leman algorithm. We introduce the notion of graded multimodal types, which are formulae of graded multimodal logic that encode the local information of a pointed Kripke-model. We also introduce message passing automata that carry out a generalization of the Weisfeiler-Leman algorithm for distinguishing non-isomorphic graph nodes. We show that the classes of pointed Kripke-models recognizable by these automata are definable by a countable (possibly infinite) disjunction of graded multimodal formulae and vice versa. In particular, this equivalence also holds between recursively enumerable disjunctions and recursively enumerable automata. We also show a way of carrying out the Weisfeiler-Leman algorithm with a formula of first order logic that has been augmented with H\"artig's quantifier and greatest fixed points.

Traffic from distributed training of machine learning (ML) models makes up a large and growing fraction of the traffic mix in enterprise data centers. While work on distributed ML abounds, the network traffic generated by distributed ML has received little attention. Using measurements on a testbed network, we investigate the traffic characteristics generated by the training of the ResNet-50 neural network with an emphasis on studying its short-term burstiness. For the latter we propose metrics that quantify traffic burstiness at different time scales. Our analysis reveals that distributed ML traffic exhibits a very high degree of burstiness on short time scales, exceeding a 60:1 peak-to-mean ratio on time intervals as long as 5~ms. We observe that training software orchestrates transmissions in such a way that burst transmissions from different sources within the same application do not result in congestion and packet losses. An extrapolation of the measurement data to multiple applications underscores the challenges of distributed ML traffic for congestion and flow control algorithms.

The Zero-touch network and Service Management (ZSM) framework represents an emerging paradigm in the management of the fifth-generation (5G) and Beyond (5G+) networks, offering automated self-management and self-healing capabilities to address the escalating complexity and the growing data volume of modern networks. ZSM frameworks leverage advanced technologies such as Machine Learning (ML) to enable intelligent decision-making and reduce human intervention. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of Zero-Touch Networks (ZTNs) within the ZSM framework, covering network optimization, traffic monitoring, energy efficiency, and security aspects of next-generational networks. The paper explores the challenges associated with ZSM, particularly those related to ML, which necessitate the need to explore diverse network automation solutions. In this context, the study investigates the application of Automated ML (AutoML) in ZTNs, to reduce network management costs and enhance performance. AutoML automates the selection and tuning process of a ML model for a given task. Specifically, the focus is on AutoML's ability to predict application throughput and autonomously adapt to data drift. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed AutoML pipeline over traditional ML in terms of prediction accuracy. Integrating AutoML and ZSM concepts significantly reduces network configuration and management efforts, allowing operators to allocate more time and resources to other important tasks. The paper also provides a high-level 5G system architecture incorporating AutoML and ZSM concepts. This research highlights the potential of ZTNs and AutoML to revolutionize the management of 5G+ networks, enabling automated decision-making and empowering network operators to achieve higher efficiency, improved performance, and enhanced user experience., Comment: 115 pages, 12 figures, 15 tables, submitted to Computer Networks

The influence of opinion leaders impacts different aspects of social finance. How to analyse the utility of opinion leaders' influence in realizing assets on the blockchain and adopt a compliant regulatory scheme is worth exploring and pondering. Taking Musk's call on social media to buy Dogecoin as an example, this paper uses an event study to empirically investigate the phenomenon in which opinion leaders use ICOs (initial coin offerings) to exert influence. The results show that opinion leaders can use ICOs to influence the price of token assets with money and data traffic in their social network. They can obtain excess returns and reduce the cost of realization so that the closed loop of influence realization will be accelerated. Based on this phenomenon and the results of its impact, we use the ChainLink Oracle with Active Sensor Networks(CO-ASnet) to design a safe and applicable decentralized regulatory scheme that can constructively provide risk assessment strategies and early warning measures for token issuance. The influence realization of opinion leaders in blockchain issuance is bound to receive widespread attention, and this paper will provide an exemplary reference for regulators and enterprises to explore the boundaries of blockchain financial product development and governance., Comment: This is a study that remains to be optimised and continued to be updated, and all authors have agreed to request a retraction

Rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) is a multiple access scheme to mitigate the effects of the multi-user interference (MUI) in multi-antenna systems. In this study, we leverage the interference management capabilities of RSMA to tackle the issue of inter-carrier interference (ICI) in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) waveform. We formulate a sum-rate maximization problem to find the optimal subcarrier and power allocation for downlink transmission in a two-user system using RSMA and OFDM. A weighted minimum mean-square error (WMMSE)-based algorithm is proposed to obtain a solution for the formulated non-convex problem. We show that the marriage of rate-splitting (RS) with OFDM provides complementary strengths to cope with peculiar characteristic of wireless medium and its performance-limiting challenges including inter-symbol interference (ISI), MUI, ICI, and inter-numerology interference (INI). The sum-rate performance of the proposed OFDM-RSMA scheme is numerically compared with that of conventional orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) and OFDM-non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA). It is shown that the proposed OFDM-RSMA outperforms OFDM-NOMA and OFDMA in diverse propagation channel conditions owing to its flexible structure and robust interference management capabilities., Comment: Submitted to IEEE for possible publication

This paper provides the first systematic analysis of a synergistic threat model encompassing memory corruption vulnerabilities and microarchitectural side-channel vulnerabilities. We study speculative shield bypass attacks that leverage speculative execution attacks to leak secrets that are critical to the security of memory corruption mitigations (i.e., the shields), and then use the leaked secrets to bypass the mitigation mechanisms and successfully conduct memory corruption exploits, such as control-flow hijacking. We start by systematizing a taxonomy of the state-of-the-art memory corruption mitigations focusing on hardware-software co-design solutions. The taxonomy helps us to identify 10 likely vulnerable defense schemes out of 20 schemes that we analyze. Next, we develop a graph-based model to analyze the 10 likely vulnerable defenses and reason about possible countermeasures. Finally, we present three proof-of-concept attacks targeting an already-deployed mitigation mechanism and two state-of-the-art academic proposals., Comment: 14 pages

In the prevailing convergence of traditional infrastructure-based deployment (i.e., Telco and industry operational networks) towards evolving deployments enabled by 5G and virtualization, there is a keen interest in elaborating effective security controls to protect these deployments in-depth. By considering key enabling technologies like 5G and virtualization, evolving networks are democratized, facilitating the establishment of point presences integrating different business models ranging from media, dynamic web content, gaming, and a plethora of IoT use cases. Despite the increasing services provided by evolving networks, many cybercrimes and attacks have been launched in evolving networks to perform malicious activities. Due to the limitations of traditional security artifacts (e.g., firewalls and intrusion detection systems), the research on digital forensic data analytics has attracted more attention. Digital forensic analytics enables people to derive detailed information and comprehensive conclusions from different perspectives of cybercrimes to assist in convicting criminals and preventing future crimes. This chapter presents a digital analytics framework for network anomaly detection, including multi-perspective feature engineering, unsupervised anomaly detection, and comprehensive result correction procedures. Experiments on real-world evolving network data show the effectiveness of the proposed forensic data analytics solution., Comment: Electronic version of an article published as [Book Series: World Scientific Series in Digital Forensics and Cybersecurity, Volume 2, Innovations in Digital Forensics, 2023, Pages 99-137] [DOI:10.1142/9789811273209_0004] \c{opyright} copyright World Scientific Publishing Company [https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811273209_0004]

We investigate the descriptive complexity of a class of neural networks with unrestricted topologies and piecewise polynomial activation functions. We consider the general scenario where the running time is unlimited and floating-point numbers are used for simulating reals. We characterize these neural networks with a rule-based logic for Boolean networks. In particular, we show that the sizes of the neural networks and the corresponding Boolean rule formulae are polynomially related. In fact, in the direction from Boolean rules to neural networks, the blow-up is only linear. We also analyze the delays in running times due to the translations. In the translation from neural networks to Boolean rules, the time delay is polylogarithmic in the neural network size and linear in time. In the converse translation, the time delay is linear in both factors. We also obtain translations between the rule-based logic for Boolean networks, the diamond-free fragment of modal substitution calculus and a class of recursive Boolean circuits where the number of input and output gates match.

The development of an electronic voting system that would replace traditional election procedures is a research topic of great interest for many years. Blockchain technology could provide some guarantees and fulfill strong requirements for electronic voting platforms, such as transparency, immutability, and confidentiality. From time to time research is conducted to address problems in voting systems. Many research works attempt to implement secure and reliable voting systems, which address known security, anonymity, and fraud issues that might threaten such systems. This paper presents a proposal of a secure electronic voting system, the EtherVote, using the Ethereum Blockchain network that focuses deeply on the field of identification of eligible citizens. The proposed system will be entirely based on Blockchain without any central authority servers or databases, thus improving security, privacy, and election cost. Limitations, problems, and solutions are discussed, in order to make the proposed electronic voting system ideal and ready to use for national elections., Comment: 2 pages, Poster presented in ACM 5th summit on Gender Equality in Computing, GEC 2023, Athens University of Economics and Business, Athens, Greece, 27 June 2023

A previously unknown form of compromising emanations has been discovered. LED status indicators on data communication equipment, under certain conditions, are shown to carry a modulated optical signal that is significantly correlated with information being processed by the device. Physical access is not required; the attacker gains access to all data going through the device, including plaintext in the case of data encryption systems. Experiments show that it is possible to intercept data under realistic conditions at a considerable distance. Many different sorts of devices, including modems and Internet Protocol routers, were found to be vulnerable. A taxonomy of compromising optical emanations is developed, and design changes are described that will successfully block this kind of "Optical TEMPEST" attack., Comment: 26 pages, 11 figures

Modern heterogeneous supercomputing systems are comprised of CPUs, GPUs, and high-speed network interconnects. Communication libraries supporting efficient data transfers involving memory buffers from the GPU memory typically require the CPU to orchestrate the data transfer operations. A new offload-friendly communication strategy, stream-triggered (ST) communication, was explored to allow offloading the synchronization and data movement operations from the CPU to the GPU. A Message Passing Interface (MPI) one-sided active target synchronization based implementation was used as an exemplar to illustrate the proposed strategy. A latency-sensitive nearest neighbor microbenchmark was used to explore the various performance aspects of the implementation. The offloaded implementation shows significant on-node performance advantages over standard MPI active RMA (36%) and point-to-point (61%) communication. The current multi-node improvement is less (23% faster than standard active RMA but 11% slower than point-to-point), but plans are in progress to purse further improvements., Comment: 12 pages, 17 figures

Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS) have been extensively investigated by monitoring real network traffic and analyzing suspicious activities. However, there are limitations in detecting specific types of attacks with NIDS, such as Advanced Persistent Threats (APT). Additionally, NIDS is restricted in observing complete traffic information due to encrypted traffic or a lack of authority. To address these limitations, a Host-based Intrusion Detection system (HIDS) evaluates resources in the host, including logs, files, and folders, to identify APT attacks that routinely inject malicious files into victimized nodes. In this study, a hybrid network intrusion detection system that combines NIDS and HIDS is proposed to improve intrusion detection performance. The feature flattening technique is applied to flatten two-dimensional host-based features into one-dimensional vectors, which can be directly used by traditional Machine Learning (ML) models. A two-stage collaborative classifier is introduced that deploys two levels of ML algorithms to identify network intrusions. In the first stage, a binary classifier is used to detect benign samples. All detected attack types undergo a multi-class classifier to reduce the complexity of the original problem and improve the overall detection performance. The proposed method is shown to generalize across two well-known datasets, CICIDS 2018 and NDSec-1. Performance of XGBoost, which represents conventional ML, is evaluated. Combining host and network features enhances attack detection performance (macro average F1 score) by 8.1% under the CICIDS 2018 dataset and 3.7% under the NDSec-1 dataset. Meanwhile, the two-stage collaborative classifier improves detection performance for most single classes, especially for DoS-LOIC-UDP and DoS-SlowHTTPTest, with improvements of 30.7% and 84.3%, respectively, when compared with the traditional ML XGBoost., Comment: 20 pages, 11 figures, 4 tables

In applications such as end-to-end encrypted instant messaging, secure email, and device pairing, users need to compare key fingerprints to detect impersonation and adversary-in-the-middle attacks. Key fingerprints are usually computed as truncated hashes of each party's view of the channel keys, encoded as an alphanumeric or numeric string, and compared out-of-band, e.g. manually, to detect any inconsistencies. Previous work has extensively studied the usability of various verification strategies and encoding formats, however, the exact effect of key fingerprint length on the security and usability of key fingerprint verification has not been rigorously investigated. We present a 162-participant study on the effect of numeric key fingerprint length on comparison time and error rate. While the results confirm some widely-held intuitions such as general comparison times and errors increasing significantly with length, a closer look reveals interesting nuances. The significant rise in comparison time only occurs when highly similar fingerprints are compared, and comparison time remains relatively constant otherwise. On errors, our results clearly distinguish between security non-critical errors that remain low irrespective of length and security critical errors that significantly rise, especially at higher fingerprint lengths. A noteworthy implication of this latter result is that Signal/WhatsApp key fingerprints provide a considerably lower level of security than usually assumed., Comment: Accepted to International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES 2023)

The concept of extended cloud requires efficient network infrastructure to support ecosystems reaching form the edge to the cloud(s). Standard approaches to network load balancing deliver static solutions that are insufficient for the extended clouds, where network loads change often. To address this issue, a genetic algorithm based load optimizer is proposed and implemented. Next, its performance is experimentally evaluated and it is shown that it outperforms other existing solutions., Comment: Accepted for the conference -- The International Conference on Computational Science ICCS2023

Rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) is a multiple access technique generalizing conventional techniques, such as, space-division multiple access (SDMA), non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), and physical layer multi-casting, which aims to address multi-user interference (MUI) in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. In this study, we leverage the interference management capabilities of RSMA to tackle the issue of inter-carrier interference (ICI) in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) waveform. We formulate a problem to find the optimal subcarrier and power allocation for downlink transmission in a two-user system using RSMA and OFDM and propose a weighted minimum mean-square error (WMMSE)-based algorithm to obtain a solution. The sum-rate performance of the proposed OFDM-RSMA scheme is compared with that of conventional orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) and OFDM-NOMA by numerical results. It is shown that the proposed OFDM-RSMA outperforms OFDM-NOMA and OFDMA under ICI in diverse propagation channel conditions owing to its flexible structure and robust interference management capabilities., Comment: Updated version of published paper in IEEE Communications Letters with correction in optimization problem (17b)

We consider distributed algorithms in the realistic scenario where distributed message passing is operated via circuits. We show that within this setting, modal substitution calculus MSC captures the expressive power of circuits. The translations between circuits and MSC-programs are linear in both directions. Furthermore, we show that the colouring algorithm based on Cole-Vishkin can be specified via logarithmic size programs.

Recent advances in web technologies make it more difficult than ever to detect and block web tracking systems. In this work, we propose ASTrack, a novel approach to web tracking detection and removal. ASTrack uses an abstraction of the code structure based on Abstract Syntax Trees to selectively identify web tracking functionality shared across multiple web services. This new methodology allows us to: (i) effectively detect web tracking code even when using evasion techniques (e.g., obfuscation, minification, or webpackaging); and (ii) safely remove those portions of code related to tracking purposes without affecting the legitimate functionality of the website. Our evaluation with the top 10k most popular Internet domains shows that ASTrack can detect web tracking with high precision (98%), while discovering about 50k tracking code pieces and more than 3,400 new tracking URLs not previously recognized by most popular privacy-preserving tools (e.g., uBlock Origin). Moreover, ASTrack achieved a 36% reduction in functionality loss in comparison with the filter lists, one of the safest options available. Using a novel methodology that combines computer vision and manual inspection, we estimate that full functionality is preserved in more than 97% of the websites., Comment: This paper has been accepted for publication at IEEE INFOCOM 2023. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses

Accurate localization of a large number of objects over a wide area is one of the keys to the pervasive interaction with the Internet of Things. This paper presents Hawkeye, a new mmWave backscatter that, for the first time, offers over (i) hundred-scale simultaneous 3D localization at (ii) subcentimeter accuracy for over an (iii) hectometer distance. Hawkeye generally applies to indoors and outdoors as well as under mobility. Hawkeye tag's Van Atta Array design with retro-reflectivity in both elevation and azimuth planes offers 3D localization and effectively suppresses the multipath. Hawkeye localization algorithm is a lightweight signal processing compatible with the commodity FMCW radar. It uniquely leverages the interplay between the tag signal and clutter, and leverages the spetral leakage for fine-grained positioning. Prototype evaluations in corridor, lecture room, and soccer field reveal 6.7 mm median accuracy at 160 m range, and simultaneously localizes 100 tags in only 33.2 ms. Hawkeye is reliable under temperature change with significant oscillator frequency offset., Comment: Submitted to ACM MobiSys '23

This article shows a brief history of Techno-Economic Assessment (TEA) in Communications, a proposed redefinition of TEA as well as the new challenges derived from a dynamic context with cloud-native virtualized networks, the Helium Network & alike blockchain-based decentralized networks, the new network as a platform (NaaP) paradigm, carbon pricing, network sharing, and web3, metaverse and blockchain technologies. The authors formulate the research question and show the need to improve TEA models to integrate and manage all this increasing complexity. This paper also proposes the characteristics TEA models should have and their current degree of compliance for several use cases: 5G and beyond, software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN), secure access service edge (SASE), secure service edge (SSE), and cloud cybersecurity risk assessment. The authors also present TEA extensibility to request for proposals (RFP) processes and other industries, to conclude that there is an urgent need for agile and effective TEA in Comms that allows industrialization of agile decision-making for all market stakeholders to choose the optimal solution for any technology, scenario and use case., Comment: 18 pages, 1 figure, 2 tables

Bluetooth is a communication technology used to wirelessly exchange data between devices. In the last few years there have been found a great number of security vulnerabilities, and adversaries are taking advantage of them causing harm and significant loss. Numerous system security updates have been approved and installed in order to sort out security holes and bugs, and prevent attacks that could expose personal or other valuable information. But those updates are not sufficient and appropriate and new bugs keep showing up. In Bluetooth technology, pairing is identified as the step where most bugs are found and most attacks target this particular process part of Bluetooth. A new technology that has been proved bulletproof when it comes to security and the exchange of sensitive information is Blockchain. Blockchain technology is promising to be incorporated well in a network of smart devices, and secure an Internet of Things (IoT), where Bluetooth technology is being extensively used. This work presents a vulnerability discovered in Bluetooth pairing process, and proposes a Blockchain solution approach to secure pairing and mitigate this vulnerability. The paper first introduces the Bluetooth technology and delves into how Blockchain technology can be a solution to certain security problems. Then a solution approach shows how Blockchain can be integrated and implemented to ensure the required level of security. Certain attack incidents on Bluetooth vulnerable points are examined and discussion and conclusions give the extension of the security related problems., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures

Industry 5.0 aims at maximizing the collaboration between humans and machines. Machines are capable of automating repetitive jobs, while humans handle creative tasks. As a critical component of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) systems for service delivery, network data stream analytics often encounter concept drift issues due to dynamic IIoT environments, causing performance degradation and automation difficulties. In this paper, we propose a novel Multi-Stage Automated Network Analytics (MSANA) framework for concept drift adaptation in IIoT systems, consisting of dynamic data pre-processing, the proposed Drift-based Dynamic Feature Selection (DD-FS) method, dynamic model learning & selection, and the proposed Window-based Performance Weighted Probability Averaging Ensemble (W-PWPAE) model. It is a complete automated data stream analytics framework that enables automatic, effective, and efficient data analytics for IIoT systems in Industry 5.0. Experimental results on two public IoT datasets demonstrate that the proposed framework outperforms state-of-the-art methods for IIoT data stream analytics., Comment: Published in IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (Q1, IF: 11.648); Code is available at Github link: https://github.com/Western-OC2-Lab/MSANA-Online-Data-Stream-Analytics-And-Concept-Drift-Adaptation

With the wide spread of sensors and smart devices in recent years, the data generation speed of the Internet of Things (IoT) systems has increased dramatically. In IoT systems, massive volumes of data must be processed, transformed, and analyzed on a frequent basis to enable various IoT services and functionalities. Machine Learning (ML) approaches have shown their capacity for IoT data analytics. However, applying ML models to IoT data analytics tasks still faces many difficulties and challenges, specifically, effective model selection, design/tuning, and updating, which have brought massive demand for experienced data scientists. Additionally, the dynamic nature of IoT data may introduce concept drift issues, causing model performance degradation. To reduce human efforts, Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) has become a popular field that aims to automatically select, construct, tune, and update machine learning models to achieve the best performance on specified tasks. In this paper, we conduct a review of existing methods in the model selection, tuning, and updating procedures in the area of AutoML in order to identify and summarize the optimal solutions for every step of applying ML algorithms to IoT data analytics. To justify our findings and help industrial users and researchers better implement AutoML approaches, a case study of applying AutoML to IoT anomaly detection problems is conducted in this work. Lastly, we discuss and classify the challenges and research directions for this domain., Comment: Published in Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence (Elsevier, IF:7.8); Code/An AutoML tutorial is available at Github link: https://github.com/Western-OC2-Lab/AutoML-Implementation-for-Static-and-Dynamic-Data-Analytics

The Swapped Dragonfly with M routers per group and K global ports per router is denoted D3(K;M) [1]. It has n=KMM routers and is a partially populated Dragonfly. A Swapped Dragonfly with K and M restricted is studied in this paper. There are four cases. matrix product: If K is a perfect square, a matrix product of size n can be performed in squareroot n rounds. all-to-all exchange: If K and M have a common factor s, an all-to-all exchange can be performed in n/s rounds. broadcast: If D3(K,M) is equipped with a synchronized source-vector header it can perform x broadcast in 3x/M rounds. ascend-descend: If K and M are powers of 2 an ascend-descend algorithm can be performed at twice the cost of the algorithm on a Boolean hypercube of size n. In each case the algorithm on the Swapped Dragonfly is free of link conflicts and is compared with algorithms on a hypercube as well as on the fully populated Dragonfly. The results on the Swapped Dragonfly are more applicable than the special cases because D3(K,M) contains emulations of every Swapped Dragonfly with J less than equal to K and/or L less than or equal to M. Keywords: Swapped Interconnection Network, Matrix Product, All-to-all, Universal Exchange, Boolean Hypercube, Ascend-descend algorithm, Broad- cast, Edge-disjoint spanning tree. References [1] R. Draper. The Swapped Dragonfly , ArXiv for Computer Science:2202.01843. 1, Comment: 8 pages

Today, the audit and diagnosis of the causal relationships between the events in a trigger-action-based event chain (e.g., why is a light turned on in a smart home?) in the Internet of Things (IoT) platforms are untrustworthy and unreliable. The current IoT platforms lack techniques for transparent and tamper-proof ordering of events due to their device-centric logging mechanism. In this paper, we develop a framework that facilitates tamper-proof transparency and event order in an IoT platform by proposing a Blockchain protocol and adopting the vector clock system, both tailored for the resource-constrained heterogeneous IoT devices, respectively. To cope with the unsuited storage (e.g., ledger) and computing power (e.g., proof of work puzzle) requirements of the Blockchain in the commercial off-the-shelf IoT devices, we propose a partial consistent cut protocol and engineer a modular arithmetic-based lightweight proof of work puzzle, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first Blockchain designed for resource-constrained heterogeneous IoT platforms. Our event ordering protocol based on the vector clock system is also novel for the IoT platforms. We implement our framework using an IoT gateway and 30 IoT devices. We experiment with 10 concurrent trigger-action-based event chains while each chain involves 20 devices, and each device participates in 5 different chains. The results show that our framework may order these events in 2.5 seconds while consuming only 140 mJ of energy per device. The results hence demonstrate the proposed platform as a practical choice for many IoT applications such as smart home, traffic monitoring, and crime investigation., Comment: 12 pages, 13 eps figures

Vehicle-to-Everything communications (V2X) are becoming increasingly popular as a solution for safer roads and better traffic management. One of the essential protocols in V2X is the Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) protocol suite. DSRC includes the IEEE 802.11p protocol that operates at the medium access control (MAC) and physical (PHY) layers. Upon collision, the IEEE 802.11p MAC layer applies a carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) mechanism that randomly selects a backoff time to re-check the channel activity and then retransmit. However, the random selection of the backoff time may lead to further packet collisions that decrease the utilization of the communication channel, which suffers from a limited bandwidth in the first place. This paper proposes a fuzzy model based on rational decision-making, which we call F-802.11p, to improve the IEEE 802.11p protocol backoff time selection by limiting the IEEE 802.11p beacon messages to better use of the available bandwidth. A simulation study presents the evaluation of our work compared to IEEE 802.11p. We deployed the simulation software in two scenarios: the Veins Framework map and the map of New Administrative Cairo in Egypt. We base our comparison on slots backoff, times into backoff, PHY busy time, MAC busy time, total lost packets, and generated/received beacon messages. Simulation results show that both protocols have comparable results in slots backoff, times into back off, and the generated beacon messages. At the same time, our F-802.11p significantly outperforms the IEEE 802.11p in PHY busy time, MAC busy time, total lost packets, and the received beacon messages in both scenarios., Comment: 22 pages, 17 figures, 4 tables

Modern heterogeneous supercomputing systems are comprised of compute blades that offer CPUs and GPUs. On such systems, it is essential to move data efficiently between these different compute engines across a high-speed network. While current generation scientific applications and systems software stacks are GPU-aware, CPU threads are still required to orchestrate data moving communication operations and inter-process synchronization operations. A new GPU stream-aware MPI communication strategy called stream-triggered (ST) communication is explored to allow offloading both computation and communication control paths to the GPU. The proposed ST communication strategy is implemented on HPE Slingshot Interconnects over a new proprietary HPE Slingshot NIC (Slingshot 11) using the supported triggered operations feature. Performance of the proposed new communication strategy is evaluated using a microbenchmark kernel called Faces, based on the nearest-neighbor communication pattern in the CORAL-2 Nekbone benchmark, over a heterogeneous node architecture consisting of AMD CPUs and GPUs., Comment: 11 pages, 12 figures

Modern vehicles, including autonomous vehicles and connected vehicles, have adopted an increasing variety of functionalities through connections and communications with other vehicles, smart devices, and infrastructures. However, the growing connectivity of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) also increases the vulnerabilities to network attacks. To protect IoV systems against cyber threats, Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) that can identify malicious cyber-attacks have been developed using Machine Learning (ML) approaches. To accurately detect various types of attacks in IoV networks, we propose a novel ensemble IDS framework named Leader Class and Confidence Decision Ensemble (LCCDE). It is constructed by determining the best-performing ML model among three advanced ML algorithms (XGBoost, LightGBM, and CatBoost) for every class or type of attack. The class leader models with their prediction confidence values are then utilized to make accurate decisions regarding the detection of various types of cyber-attacks. Experiments on two public IoV security datasets (Car-Hacking and CICIDS2017 datasets) demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed LCCDE for intrusion detection on both intra-vehicle and external networks., Comment: Accepted and to appear in IEEE GlobeCom 2022; Code is available at Github link: https://github.com/Western-OC2-Lab/Intrusion-Detection-System-Using-Machine-Learning

The progression of innovation and technology and ease of inter-connectivity among networks has allowed us to evolve towards one of the promising areas, the Internet of Vehicles. Nowadays, modern vehicles are connected to a range of networks, including intra-vehicle networks and external networks. However, a primary challenge in the automotive industry is to make the vehicle safe and reliable; particularly with the loopholes in the existing traditional protocols, cyber-attacks on the vehicle network are rising drastically. Practically every vehicle uses the universal Controller Area Network (CAN) bus protocol for the communication between electronic control units to transmit key vehicle functionality and messages related to driver safety. The CAN bus system, although its critical significance, lacks the key feature of any protocol authentication and authorization. Resulting in compromises of CAN bus security leads to serious issues to both car and driver safety. This paper discusses the security issues of the CAN bus protocol and proposes an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) that detects known attacks on in-vehicle networks. Multiple Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms are employed to provide recognition of known potential cyber-attacks based on messages, timestamps, and data packets traveling through the CAN. The main objective of this paper is to accurately detect cyberattacks by considering time-series features and attack frequency. The majority of the evaluated AI algorithms, when considering attack frequency, correctly identify known attacks with remarkable accuracy of more than 99%. However, these models achieve approximately 92% to 97% accuracy when timestamps are not taken into account. Long Short Term Memory (LSTM), Xgboost, and SVC have proved to the well-performing classifiers.

In recent years, 5G network systems start to offer communication infrastructure for Internet of Things (IoT) applications, especially for health care service pro-viders. In smart health care systems, edge computing enabled Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is an innovative technology to provide online health care monitor-ing facility to patients. Here, energy consumption, along with extending the lifespan of biosensor network, is a key concern. In this contribution, a Chicken Swarm Optimization algorithm, based on Energy Efficient Multi-objective clus-tering scheme is applied in the context of IoMT system. An effective fitness func-tion is designed for cluster head selection., using multiple objectives, such as re-sidual energy, queuing delay, communication cost, link quality and node centrali-ty. Simulated outcomes of the proposed scheme are compared with the existing schemes in terms of parameters such as cluster formation time, energy consump-tion, network lifetime, throughput and propagation delay.

This paper is a summary of the findings from a series of workshops which were held by Thinknet 6G and MUENCHNER KREIS in 2021, with the goal to provide orientation and input for developing a strategic 6G research plan. The topics selected for the workshops are aspects of 6G that we expect will have a significant impact on other industries and on society: - 6G as both a communication infrastructure and a sensing infrastructure - The extensive use of artificial intelligence in 6G - The security and resilience of 6G This paper does not go into the technical details of how to develop and implement 6G. Rather, it provides input from experts from both the wireless industry as well as from other sectors about (mostly) non-technical topics that will need to be addressed in parallel with the technical developments, such as new use cases, regulation, communication with the public, and cross-industry cooperation. We have identified six areas that will have a significant impact on the development and use of 6G, and that organizations must consider as they begin their plans and designs for 6G. Based on these six impact areas and on the discussion in the workshops, we compiled a list of the top 10 recommendations for specific areas where organizations should place their focus when developing their strategic plan for 6G. In addition, for our readers who are involved in 6G research, be it at a university, at a research institute or in industrial research, we also included a summary of the top 10 areas that require additional research, again based on the input received in the workshops. A version of this paper is also available at www.thinknet-6g.de. If you had a copy of the preview version of this paper, the text is exactly the same. Only the layout and graphics have changed., Comment: 20 pages, 1 figure

We identify new opportunities in video streaming, involving the joint consideration of offline video chunking and online rate adaptation. Due to a video's complexity varying over time, certain parts are more likely to cause performance impairments during playback with a particular rate adaptation algorithm. To address such an issue, we propose Segue, which carefully uses variable-length video segments, and augment specific segments with additional bitrate tracks. The key novelty of our approach is in making such decisions based on the video's time-varying complexity and the expected rate adaptation behavior over time. We propose and implement several methods for such adaptation-aware chunking. Our results show that Segue substantially reduces rebuffering and quality fluctuations, while maintaining video quality delivered; Segue improves QoE by 9% on average, and by 22% in low-bandwidth conditions. Finally, we view our problem framing as a first step in a new thread on algorithmic and design innovation in video streaming, and leave the reader with several interesting open questions.

Ransomware is considered as a significant threat for most enterprises since the past few years. In scenarios wherein users can access all files on a shared server, one infected host can lock the access to all shared files. We propose a tool to detect ransomware infection based on file-sharing traffic analysis. The tool monitors the traffic exchanged between the clients and the file servers and using machine learning techniques it searches for patterns in the traffic that betray ransomware actions while reading and overwriting files. The proposal is designed to work for clear text and for encrypted file-sharing protocols. We compare three machine learning models and choose the best for validation. We train and test the detection model using more than 70 ransomware binaries from 26 different strains and more than 2500 hours of not infected traffic from real users. The results reveal that the proposed tool can detect all ransomware binaries, including those not used in training phase (unseen). This paper provides a validation of the algorithm by studying the false positive rate and the amount of information from user files that the ransomware could encrypt before being detected., Comment: 26 pages, 9 figures

This paper describes the Swapped Dragonfly. It is a two-parameter family of diameter three interconnection networks, D3(K,M), which are linearly scalable in M. Although D3(K,M) is a Dragonfly, it differs from standard Dragonflies in many respects. It has a K by M by M coordinate system (c;d; p). The routers (c,d,p) and (c',p,d) are globally connected using a swap of p and d. If L < K and/or N < M, D3(K;M) contains D3(L,N). The coordinate system enables source vector routing on D3(K,M). A source-vector induces KM squared parallel paths on D3(K,M). Because of this, the Swapped Dragonfly can support conflict-free parallelism over local ports, global ports, routers and source-vectors. In particular, there is an all-to-all algorithm which is not a pairwise exchange algorithm. Keywords: interconnection network, Dragonfly network, swapped network, source-vector routing, all-to-all exchange, Comment: 20 pages 3 figures

Although 5G (Fifth Generation) mobile technology is still in the rollout phase, research and development of 6G (Sixth Generation) wireless have already begun. This paper is an introduction to 6G wireless networks, covering the main drivers for 6G, some of the expected use cases, some of the technical challenges in 6G, example areas that will require research and new technologies, the expected timeline for 6G development and rollout, and a list of some important 6G initiatives world-wide. It was compiled as part of a series of workshops about 6G held by Thinknet 6G and MUENCHNER KREIS in 2021., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, document also available in German, document available in a more attractive format, here: www.thinknet-6g.de

Modern vehicles, including autonomous vehicles and connected vehicles, are increasingly connected to the external world, which enables various functionalities and services. However, the improving connectivity also increases the attack surfaces of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), causing its vulnerabilities to cyber-threats. Due to the lack of authentication and encryption procedures in vehicular networks, Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) are essential approaches to protect modern vehicle systems from network attacks. In this paper, a transfer learning and ensemble learning-based IDS is proposed for IoV systems using convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and hyper-parameter optimization techniques. In the experiments, the proposed IDS has demonstrated over 99.25% detection rates and F1-scores on two well-known public benchmark IoV security datasets: the Car-Hacking dataset and the CICIDS2017 dataset. This shows the effectiveness of the proposed IDS for cyber-attack detection in both intra-vehicle and external vehicular networks., Comment: Accepted and to appear in IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC); Code is available at Github link: https://github.com/Western-OC2-Lab/Intrusion-Detection-System-Using-CNN-and-Transfer-Learning

Event processing is the cornerstone of the dynamic and responsive Internet of Things (IoT). Recent approaches in this area are based on representational state transfer (REST) principles, which allow event processing tasks to be placed at any device that follows the same principles. However, the tasks should be properly distributed among edge devices to ensure fair resources utilization and guarantee seamless execution. This article investigates the use of deep learning to fairly distribute the tasks. An attention-based neural network model is proposed to generate efficient load balancing solutions under different scenarios. The proposed model is based on the Transformer and Pointer Network architectures, and is trained by an advantage actor-critic reinforcement learning algorithm. The model is designed to scale to the number of event processing tasks and the number of edge devices, with no need for hyperparameters re-tuning or even retraining. Extensive experimental results show that the proposed model outperforms conventional heuristics in many key performance indicators. The generic design and the obtained results show that the proposed model can potentially be applied to several other load balancing problem variations, which makes the proposal an attractive option to be used in real-world scenarios due to its scalability and efficiency., Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures

This paper proposes a cascade blockage model for analyzing the vision that a user has of a wireless network. This model, inspired by the classical multiplicative cascade models, has a radial structure meant to analyze blockages seen by the receiver at the origin in different angular sectors. The main novelty is that it is based on the geometry of obstacles and takes the joint blockage phenomenon into account. We show on a couple of simple instances that the Laplace transforms of total interference satisfies a functional equation that can be solved efficiently by an iterative scheme. This is used to analyze the coverage probability of the receiver and the effect of blockage correlation and penetration loss in both dense and sparse blockage environments. Furthermore, this model is used to investigate the effect of blockage correlation on user beamforming techniques. Another functional equation and its associated iterative algorithm are proposed to derive the coverage performance of the best beam selection in this context. In addition, the conditional coverage probability is also derived to evaluate the effect of beam switching. The results not only show that beam selection is quite efficient for multi-beam terminals, but also show how the correlation brought by blockages can be leveraged to accelerate beam sweeping and pairing.

Many common ``consumer'' applications, i.e., applications widely used by non-technical users, are now provided by a very small number of companies, even if that set of companies differ across geographic regions, or rely on a very small number of implementations even if the applications are largely standards-based. While likely only a partial solution, we can draw on earlier regulatory experiences to facilitate competition or at least lessen the impact of the lack thereof., Comment: Interdisciplinary Workshop on (de) Centralization in the Internet (IWCI'21), December 7, 2021

The internet has become a critical communications infrastructure, and access is among the ``assets, systems, and networks, whether physical or virtual, [that] are considered so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof.'' [CISA] But the internet is more than an issue for the nation as a whole. Internet access affects the security, health, safety, and opportunities in life for individuals and communities, and the economic vitality of businesses everywhere. On the one hand, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the success of broadband access in allowing society to function, even during lockdowns. On the other hand, the pandemic has exposed weak, unreliable, or even nonexistent, broadband access and usability in many areas and for many individuals, including especially rural residents and children in many school districts, urban, and rural, as well as a compelling need for universal reach and affordability. It was thus timely that in November 2020, the National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored a series of workshops to identify new research areas to drive the broadband NSF agenda for the next five years. This request followed similar initiatives during the past twenty years, the most recent in 2016. This Broadband Research Workshop Report of 2021 discusses the research questions and challenges that need to be addressed to provide robust, affordable, and meaningful broadband access to every resident of the United States.