Computer Communications最新文献

{"title":"Optimizing Key Value Indicators in Intent-Based Networks through Digital Twins aided service orchestration mechanisms","authors":"Federica de Trizio ,&nbsp;Giancarlo Sciddurlo ,&nbsp;Ilaria Cianci ,&nbsp;Giuseppe Piro ,&nbsp;Gennaro Boggia","doi":"10.1016/j.comcom.2024.107977","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.comcom.2024.107977","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>For many years, the orchestration of network resources and services has been addressed by considering homogeneous communication infrastructures and simple Service Level Agreements (SLAs), generally defined through a list of traditional Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Unfortunately, state-of-the-art solutions risk being quite ineffective for future telecommunication systems. Beyond 5G networks, for instance, are emerging as complex and heterogeneous ecosystems where resources belonging to diverse network domains with evolving capabilities can be dynamically exposed to support much more complex and cross-domain services and applications. At the same time, SLAs will be defined by also considering novel performance demands, including security, economic, and environmental needs. Based on these premises, this work proposes a novel orchestration strategy designed to fulfill service requirements expressed through Key Value Indicators (KVIs), while combining the potentials of both Network Digital Twins and Intent-Based Networking. Leveraging insights from Network Digital Twins, multiple service orchestration options are explored to optimize resource utilization. Simultaneously, Intent-Based Networking is adopted to streamline network management via intents, specifying Beyond 5G requirements through KPIs and KVIs. An optimal orchestration scheme has been conceived through a multi-criteria decision-making algorithm and a many-to-many matching game between domains and service requests mapped into intents, aiming to minimize SLA violations over time. The performance of the conceived solution has been investigated through computer simulations in realistic scenarios. The obtained results clearly highlight its effectiveness and demonstrate that it is able to reduce SLA violations (related to latency, throughput, costs, and cyber risk requirements) by up to 22.44% compared to other baseline techniques.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55224,"journal":{"name":"Computer Communications","volume":"228 ","pages":"Article 107977"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142526126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"An efficient Proof-of-Authority consensus scheme against cloning attacks","authors":"Shu-Ping Lu ,&nbsp;Chin-Laung Lei ,&nbsp;Meng-Han Tsai","doi":"10.1016/j.comcom.2024.107975","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.comcom.2024.107975","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Proof-of-Authorization (PoA) consensus algorithms are widely used in permissioned blockchain networks due to their high throughput, security, and efficiency. However, PoA is susceptible to cloning attacks, where attackers copy the authenticator identity and key, thereby compromising the consensus integrity. This study proposes a novel randomized authenticator within the PoA framework to mitigate cloning attacks and solve the leader selection bottleneck. The main contributions include 1) Introducing unpredictability in leader selection through Verifiable Random Functions (VRFs) to prevent identity duplication.2) Dynamic group management using a hierarchical decentralized architecture of distributed ledgers that balances security and performance.3) Using threshold signatures to avoid a single point of failure among validators.4) Comprehensively analyzing attacks, security, randomness, and availability.5) Evaluating the effectiveness of a randomized authenticator by means of OMNET++ simulations to assess efficiency. By integrating randomness into leader selection and robust consensus design, the approach enables reliable and secure dynamic group management in decentralized networks.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55224,"journal":{"name":"Computer Communications","volume":"228 ","pages":"Article 107975"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142526123","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Practical and lightweight defense against website fingerprinting","authors":"Colman McGuan ,&nbsp;Chansu Yu ,&nbsp;Kyoungwon Suh","doi":"10.1016/j.comcom.2024.107976","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.comcom.2024.107976","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Website fingerprinting is a passive network traffic analysis technique that enables an adversary to identify the website visited by a user despite encryption and the use of privacy services such as Tor. Several website fingerprinting defenses built on top of Tor have been proposed to guarantee a user’s privacy by concealing trace features that are important to classification. However, some of the best defenses incur a high bandwidth and/or latency overhead. To combat this, new defenses have sought to be both lightweight — i.e., introduce a small amount of bandwidth overhead — and zero-delay to real network traffic. This work introduces a novel zero-delay and lightweight website fingerprinting defense, called BRO, which conceals the feature-rich beginning of a trace while still enabling the obfuscation of features deeper into the trace without spreading the padding budget thin. BRO schedules padding with a randomized beta distribution that can skew to both the extreme left and right, keeping the applied padding clustered to a finite portion of a trace. This work specifically targets deep learning attacks, which continue to be among the most accurate website fingerprinting attacks. Results show that BRO outperforms other well-known website fingerprinting defenses, such as FRONT, with similar bandwidth overhead.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55224,"journal":{"name":"Computer Communications","volume":"228 ","pages":"Article 107976"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142526124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Probing-aided spectrum sensing-based hybrid access strategy for energy harvesting CRNs","authors":"Xiaoying Liu ,&nbsp;Xinyu Kuang ,&nbsp;Yuxin Chen ,&nbsp;Kechen Zheng ,&nbsp;Jia Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.comcom.2024.107973","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.comcom.2024.107973","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>To address the issues of energy supply and spectrum scarcity in Internet of Things (IoT), energy harvesting (EH) and cognitive radio (CR) technologies have been proposed and widely applied. In EH-CR networks (EH-CRNs), miss detection causes significant energy and time wastage of IoT devices, especially secondary users (SUs), and causes serious interference to primary users (PUs). To alleviate this concern, we propose a probing-aided spectrum sensing (PaSS) model for EH-CRNs, where <span><math><mi>M</mi></math></span> pairs of PUs and one pair of SUs coexist. The secondary transmitter (ST) harvests energy from the radio frequency (RF) signals of PUs for opportunistic spectrum access. In the PaSS model, probing operation is employed to further confirm the real state of the spectrum that has been sensed as free in order to avoid the waste of time and energy resulting from miss detection. Based on the PaSS model, we propose a novel hybrid access strategy, where the ST’s actions (i.e., sensing, probing, EH, underlay/overlay transmission mode) depend on the belief vector of <span><math><mi>M</mi></math></span> channels, energy state and data buffer state of the ST. By developing an adjusted double deep Q-network (ADDQN) reinforcement learning algorithm, we aim to find the optimal strategy that minimizes the long-term average number of packet losses (ANPL) and the ANPL minimization problem is an integer programming problem. Simulation results validate the ANPL performance of the ST in the ADDQN-PaSS model, and reveal impacts of network parameters on the performance of the ST, and find that at least 7.9% reduction of ANPL is achieved by using the ADDQN-PaSS model.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55224,"journal":{"name":"Computer Communications","volume":"228 ","pages":"Article 107973"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142526122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Optimizing point-of-sale services in MEC enabled near field wireless communications using multi-agent reinforcement learning","authors":"Ateeq Ur Rehman ,&nbsp;Mashael Maashi ,&nbsp;Jamal Alsamri ,&nbsp;Hany Mahgoub ,&nbsp;Randa Allafi ,&nbsp;Ashit Kumar Dutta ,&nbsp;Wali Ullah Khan ,&nbsp;Ali Nauman","doi":"10.1016/j.comcom.2024.107962","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.comcom.2024.107962","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In the next-generation communication system, near-field communication (NFC) is a key enabler of contactless transactions, including mobile payments, ticketing, and access control. With the growing demand for contactless solutions, NFC technology will play a pivotal role in enabling secure and convenient payment experiences across various sectors. In contrast, Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as phones’ Point of Sale (PoS) constitute limited battery life and finite computational resources that act as a bottleneck to doing the authentication in a minimal amount of time. Because of this, it garnered considerable attention in both academic and industrial realms. To overcome this, in this work we consider the Multiple Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) as an effective solution that provides extensive computation to PoS connected to it. To address the above, this work considers the PoS-enabled multi-MEC network to guarantee NFC communication reliably and effectively. For this, we formulate the joint optimization problem to maximize the probability of successful authentication while minimizing the queueing delay by jointly optimizing the computation and communication resources by utilizing a multi-agent reinforcement learning optimization approach. Through extensive simulations based on real-world scenarios, the effectiveness of the proposed approach was demonstrated. The results demonstrate that adjusting the complexity and learning rates of the model, coupled with strategic allocation of edge resources, significantly increased authentication success rates. Furthermore, the optimal allocation strategy was found to be crucial in reducing latency and improving authentication success by approximately 9.75%, surpassing other approaches. This study highlights the importance of resource management in optimizing MEC systems, paving the way for advancements in establishing secure, efficient, and dependable systems within the Internet of Things framework.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55224,"journal":{"name":"Computer Communications","volume":"228 ","pages":"Article 107962"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142438243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Design of Provably Secure and Lightweight Authentication Protocol for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle systems","authors":"Mohd Shariq ,&nbsp;Mauro Conti ,&nbsp;Karan Singh ,&nbsp;Sanjeev Kumar Dwivedi ,&nbsp;Mohammad Abdussami ,&nbsp;Ruhul Amin ,&nbsp;Mehedi Masud","doi":"10.1016/j.comcom.2024.107971","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.comcom.2024.107971","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Drones also called Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become more prominent in several applications such as package delivery, real-time object detection, tracking, traffic monitoring, security surveillance systems, and many others. As a key member of IoT, the group of Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) technologies is referred to as Automatic Identification and Data Capturing (AIDC). In particular, RFID technology is becoming a contactless and wireless technique used to automatically identify and track the tagged objects via radio frequency signals. It also has drawn a lot of attention among researchers, scientists, industries, and practitioners due to its broad range of real-world applications in various fields. However, RFID systems face two key concerns related to security and privacy, where an adversary performs eavesdropping, tampering, modification, and even interception of the secret information of the RFID tags, which may cause forgery and privacy problems. In contrast to security and privacy, RFID tags have very limited computational power capability. To deal with these issues, this paper puts forward an RFID-based Lightweight and Provably Secure Authentication Protocol (LPSAP) for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems. The proposed protocol uses secure Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs), Elliptic-Curve Cryptography (ECC), secure one-way hash, bitwise XOR, and concatenation operations. We use Ouafi and Phan’s formal security model for analyzing security and privacy features such as traceability and mutual authentication. The rigorous informal analysis is carried out which ensures that our proposed protocol achieves various security and privacy features as well as resists various known security attacks. The performance analysis demonstrates that our proposed protocol outperforms other existing protocols. In addition, Scyther and Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool simulation results demonstrates that there is no security attack possible within bounds. Therefore, our proposed LPSAP protocol achieves an acceptable high level of security with the least computational, communication, and storage costs on passive RFID tags.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55224,"journal":{"name":"Computer Communications","volume":"228 ","pages":"Article 107971"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142445513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A comprehensive framework for 5G indoor localization","authors":"Antonin Le Floch ,&nbsp;Rahim Kacimi ,&nbsp;Pierre Druart ,&nbsp;Yoann Lefebvre ,&nbsp;André-Luc Beylot","doi":"10.1016/j.comcom.2024.107968","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.comcom.2024.107968","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Localization inside legacy private 5G networks is a daunting task that involves solving the problem of indoor localization using commercial off-the-shelf proprietary hardware. While some previous work has focused on experimental analysis, none has undertaken to develop a realistic solution based on commercial equipment. In this study, we present the first comprehensive and concrete 5G framework that combines fingerprinting with the 3GPP Enhanced Cell ID (E-CID) approach. Our methodology consists of a machine-learning model to deduce the user’s position by comparing the signal strength received from the User Equipment (UE) with a reference radio power map. To achieve this, the 3GPP protocols and functions are improved to provide open, centralized, and universal localization functions. A new reference map paradigm named Optical Radio Power Estimation using Light Analysis (ORPELA) is introduced. Real-world experiments prove that it is reproducible and more accurate than state-of-the-art radio-planning software. Machine-learning models are then designed, trained, and optimized for an ultra-challenging radio context. Finally, a large-scale experimental campaign encompassing a wide range of cases, including line-of-sight or mobility, is being conducted to demonstrate expected location performance within realistic 5G private networks.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55224,"journal":{"name":"Computer Communications","volume":"228 ","pages":"Article 107968"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142446522","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Smart Blockchain Networks: Revolutionizing Donation Tracking in the Web 3.0","authors":"Chaimaa Nairi ,&nbsp;Murtaza Cicioğlu ,&nbsp;Ali Çalhan","doi":"10.1016/j.comcom.2024.107972","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.comcom.2024.107972","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A donation-tracking system leveraging smart contracts and blockchain technology holds transformative potential for reshaping the landscape of charitable giving, especially within the context of Web 3.0. This paper explores how smart contracts and blockchain can be used to create a transparent and secure ledger for tracking charitable donations. We highlight the limitations of traditional donation systems and how a blockchain-based system can help overcome these challenges. The functionality of smart contracts in donation tracking, offering advantages such as automation, reduced transaction fees, and enhanced accountability, is elucidated. The decentralized and tamper-proof nature of blockchain technology is emphasized for increased transparency and fraud prevention. While elucidating the benefits, we also address challenges in implementing such a system, including the need for technical expertise and security considerations. By fostering trust and accountability, a donation-tracking system in Web 3.0, empowered by smart blockchain networks, aims to catalyze a profound positive impact in the realm of philanthropy.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55224,"journal":{"name":"Computer Communications","volume":"228 ","pages":"Article 107972"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142423339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"NFTs for accessing, monetizing, and teleporting digital twins and digital artifacts in the metaverse","authors":"Senay A. Gebreab ,&nbsp;Ahmad Musamih ,&nbsp;Haya R. Hasan ,&nbsp;Khaled Salah ,&nbsp;Raja Jayaraman ,&nbsp;Yousof Al Hammadi ,&nbsp;Mohammed Omar","doi":"10.1016/j.comcom.2024.107965","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.comcom.2024.107965","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Digital twins and digital artifacts have become integral components of metaverse platforms, providing users with a rich, immersive, and interactive digital experience through the deployment of diverse digital twins and digital artifacts such as 3D avatars, images, and objects. To date, a significant challenge persists in the lack of practical mechanisms to enable seamless teleportation and cross-metaverse interoperability for these digital twins and digital artifacts. There is also a lack of trusted monetization methods that facilitate trading and leasing of digital twins and digital artifacts. To address these important challenges, this paper proposes a blockchain and Non-Fungible Token (NFT)-based solution that facilitates the integration and teleportation of these digital twins and digital artifacts by providing trusted metadata, verifying ownership, and ensuring the authenticity of digital creations in the virtual world. Key to our solution is the introduction of a bridging mechanism that enables cross-metaverse interoperability, allowing for the portable transfer of NFTs across decentralized metaverse platforms. In addition, our solution focuses on empowering original digital creators by enabling the monetization of their creations through the ownership management capabilities offered by NFTs. To reliably and securely store the metadata and content of tokenized digital twins and digital artifacts, we integrate into our solution the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), a decentralized storage system. To demonstrate the feasibility of our solution, we have developed and deployed all necessary smart contracts that govern the main functionalities and interactions of the proposed system on the Ethereum Goerli Testnet. We present our proposed system architecture, accompanied by informative sequence diagrams, algorithms, and testing details. We discuss how our proposed solution attains the main objectives outlined in the paper. We evaluate our proposed solution in terms of cost and security. We have made the complete source code of our smart contracts publicly available on GitHub.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55224,"journal":{"name":"Computer Communications","volume":"228 ","pages":"Article 107965"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142423341","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Optimization of the age of correlated information in V2X networks with edge computing","authors":"Jian Wang ,&nbsp;Tengfei Cao ,&nbsp;Xingyan Chen ,&nbsp;Xiaoying Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.comcom.2024.107970","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.comcom.2024.107970","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication has the potential to revolutionize the travel experience in intelligent transportation, which has received the great attention recently. However, ensuring the freshness of information from multiple sources is critical for the real-time and reliable communication in vehicular networks, especially for timely updates of service centers. To address this issue, we use a promising metric called Age of Correlated Information (AoCI), which can characterize the freshness of multi-source information. Therefore, we propose a novel model that can dynamically regulate the channel activation matching and edge computing collaboration strategy to minimize AoCI in V2X vehicular networks. Firstly, we describe the system model of a V2X network with edge computing, including definitions and assumptions for freshness of information, edge co-computing, etc. Secondly, we formulate the joint optimization problem as a source-related age minimization (SRAM) problem, which is NP-complete. A heuristic algorithm is proposed to solve it under fast-fading channel. Finally, since traditional graph models cannot capture the changing correlation between nodes in dynamic networks, we use graph convolutional networks(GCN) to extract the features of multi-source correlation. The features extracted by GCN include relevant attributes of the sources and its communication links. The features are provided as input to a double deep Q network (DDQN) for training the model that can adapt to a dynamic network environment. Extensive simulation experiments in different network scenarios validate that our proposed method can effectively and efficiently reduce the average AoCI and the computational resources.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55224,"journal":{"name":"Computer Communications","volume":"228 ","pages":"Article 107970"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142442243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}