Search

Software quality is critical, as low quality, or 'Code smell,' increases technical debt and maintenance costs. There is a timely need for a collaborative model that detects and manages code smells by learning from diverse and distributed data sources while respecting privacy and providing a scalable solution for continuously integrating new patterns and practices in code quality management. However, the current literature is still missing such capabilities. This paper addresses the previous challenges by proposing a Federated Learning Code Smell Detection (FedCSD) approach, specifically targeting 'God Class,' to enable organizations to train distributed ML models while safeguarding data privacy collaboratively. We conduct experiments using manually validated datasets to detect and analyze code smell scenarios to validate our approach. Experiment 1, a centralized training experiment, revealed varying accuracies across datasets, with dataset two achieving the lowest accuracy (92.30%) and datasets one and three achieving the highest (98.90% and 99.5%, respectively). Experiment 2, focusing on cross-evaluation, showed a significant drop in accuracy (lowest: 63.80%) when fewer smells were present in the training dataset, reflecting technical debt. Experiment 3 involved splitting the dataset across 10 companies, resulting in a global model accuracy of 98.34%, comparable to the centralized model's highest accuracy. The application of federated ML techniques demonstrates promising performance improvements in code-smell detection, benefiting both software developers and researchers. © 2013 IEEE.

Fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks have already marked their presence globally, revolutionizing entertainment, business, healthcare, and other domains. While this leap forward brings numerous advantages in speed and connectivity, it also poses new challenges for security protocols. Machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) have been employed to augment traditional security measures, promising to mitigate risks and vulnerabilities. This paper conducts an exhaustive study to assess ML and DL algorithms’ role and effectiveness within the 5G security landscape. Also, it offers a profound dissection of the 5G network’s security paradigm, particularly emphasizing the transformative role of ML and DL as enabling security tools. This study starts by examining the unique architecture of 5G and its inherent vulnerabilities, contrasting them with emerging threat vectors. Next, we conduct a detailed analysis of the network’s underlying segments, such as network slicing, Massive Machine-Type Communications (mMTC), and edge computing, revealing their associated security challenges. By scrutinizing current security protocols and international regulatory impositions, this paper delineates the existing 5G security landscape. Finally, we outline the capabilities of ML and DL in redefining 5G security. We detail their application in enhancing anomaly detection, fortifying predictive security measures, and strengthening intrusion prevention strategies. This research sheds light on the present-day 5G security challenges and offers a visionary perspective, highlighting the intersection of advanced computational methods and future 5G security. © 2023 by the authors.

Mobile Social Networks (MSNs) have emerged as pivotal platforms for communication, information dissemination, and social connection in contemporary society. As their prevalence escalates, so too do concerns regarding security and privacy. This paper presents a furnishes a detailed analysis of these pressing issues and elucidates how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be instrumental in addressing them. The study thoroughly explores a spectrum of security and privacy challenges endemic to MSNs, such as data leakage, unauthorized access, cyberstalking, location privacy, and more. Additionally, the investigation expands to encompass problems like impersonation, phishing attacks, malware threats, information overload, user profiling, inadequate privacy policies, third-party application vulnerabilities, and privacy issues related to photos, videos, end-to-end encryption, Wi-Fi connections, and data retention. Each of these issues is dissected in depth, highlighting the potential risks and implications for users. Furthermore, the paper underlines how AI can provide in mitigating these problems, establishing its fundamental role in fortifying the security and privacy of MSNs. This thorough analysis offers valuable insights and feasible solutions using AI to bolster security and privacy in the ever-evolving landscape of Mobile Social Networks. © 2023 IEEE.

In the rapidly evolving machine learning (ML) and distributed systems realm, the escalating concern for data privacy naturally comes to the forefront of discussions. Federated learning (FL) emerges as a pivotal technology capable of addressing the inherent issues of centralized data privacy. However, FL architectures with centralized orchestration are still vulnerable, especially in the aggregation phase. A malicious server can exploit the aggregation process to learn about participants' data. This study proposes MPCFL, a secure FL algorithm based on secure multi-party computation (MPC) and secret sharing. The proposed algorithm leverages the Sharemind MPC framework to aggregate local model updates for securely formulating a global model. MPCFL provides practical mitigation of trending FL concerns, e.g., inference attack, gradient leakage attack, model poisoning, and model inversion. The algorithm is evaluated on several benchmark datasets and shows promising results. Our results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is viable for developing secure and privacy-preserving FL applications, significantly improving all performance metrics while maintaining security and reliability. This investigation is a precursor to deeper explorations to craft robust FL aggregation algorithms. © 2023 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM., TEADAL

Internet of Things (IoT) systems are complex systems that can manage mission-critical, costly operations or the collection, storage, and processing of sensitive data. Therefore, security represents a primary concern that should be considered when engineering IoT systems. Additionally, several challenges need to be addressed, including the following ones. IoT systems' environments are dynamic and uncertain. For instance, IoT devices can be mobile or might run out of batteries, so they can become suddenly unavailable. To cope with such environments, IoT systems can be engineered as goal-driven and self-adaptive systems. A goal-driven IoT system is composed of a dynamic set of IoT devices and services that temporarily connect and cooperate to achieve a specific goal. Several approaches have been proposed to engineer goal-driven and self-adaptive IoT systems. However, none of the existing approaches enable goal-driven IoT systems to automatically detect security threats and autonomously adapt to mitigate them. Toward bridging these gaps, this paper proposes a distributed architectural Approach for engineering goal-driven IoT Systems that can autonomously SElf-adapt to secuRity Threats in their environments (ASSERT). ASSERT exploits techniques and adopts notions, such as agents, federated learning, feedback loops, and blockchain, for maintaining the systems' security and enhancing the trustworthiness of the adaptations they perform. The results of the experiments that we conducted to validate the approach's feasibility show that it performs and scales well when detecting security threats, performing autonomous security adaptations to mitigate the threats and enabling systems' constituents to learn about security threats in their environments collaboratively.

The Internet of Things (IoT) realized exponential growth of smart devices with decent capabilities, promising an era of Edge Intelligence. This paradigm creates a timely need to shift many computations closer to the data source at the network's edge. Data privacy is paramount, as security breaches can severely impact such an environment with its vast attack surface. The advent of Federated learning (FL), a privacy-by-design with decentralized machine learning (ML), enables participants to collaboratively train a model without sharing their sensitive data. Nevertheless, privacy implications are a glaring concern and perrier for widening the utilization of FL approaches and their mass adoption over IoT applications. This paper introduces the notion of FL over the Internet of Disconnected Things (FLIoDT), a functionality separation of concerns following the air-gapped networks. FLIoDT provides a practical methodology to mitigate Data threats/attacks in the FL domain. FLIoDT proves a practical architectural approach to mitigate several attacks in an Edge environment. Data dredging and adversarial attacks, like data poisoning, to name some. This study investigates human activity recognition of health monitoring patient data over edge computing to validate FLIoDT. © 2022 IEEE.

While the Internet of Things (IoT), Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), and the techniques for extracting digital data have seen continuous advancements, so does the cyber-threat landscape. Virtual sensors which normally use abstraction layers that operate over a physical infrastructure to achieve their objectives, have seen rapid adoption, for example, it has aided in achieving manufacturing 4.0. This abstract layer has in the recent past seen tremendous proliferation within the sensor-based platform. Coupled with data pre-processing and key compliance with the guidelines for information security, incident investigation principles, and processes. This paper discusses a step towards a Learning-enabled (LE) Virtual Sensor Forensic (VSF) architecture that is compliant with edge intelligence technology, which is based on an initially proposed generic VSF architecture. Furthermore, apart from the learning capabilities, the LE-VSF architecture considers proactive and reactive investigation techniques by assuming an Internet of Vehicle (IoV) attack scenario, enhancing the reliability of a forensically sound data source. This proposition is essential in any sensor-based abstraction where the forensic analysis would otherwise be cumbersome and susceptible to noise.

Continuous and emerging advances in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) have enabled Internet-of-Things (IoT)-to-Cloud applications to be induced by data pipelines and Edge Intelligence-based architectures. Advanced vehicular networks greatly benefit from these architectures due to the implicit functionalities that are focused on realizing the Internet of Vehicle (IoV) vision. However, IoV is susceptible to attacks, where adversaries can easily exploit existing vulnerabilities. Several attacks may succeed due to inadequate or ineffective authentication techniques. Hence, there is a timely need for hardening the authentication process through cutting-edge access control mechanisms. This paper proposes a Blockchain-based Multi-Factor authentication model that uses an embedded Digital Signature (MFBC_eDS) for vehicular clouds and Cloud-enabled IoV. Our proposed MFBC_eDS model consists of a scheme that integrates the Security Assertion Mark-up Language (SAML) to the Single Sign-On (SSO) capabilities for a connected edge to cloud ecosystem. MFBC_eDS draws an essential comparison with the baseline authentication scheme suggested by Karla and Sood. Based on the foundations of Karla and Sood's scheme, an embedded Probabilistic Polynomial-Time Algorithm (ePPTA) and an additional Hash function for the P-i generated during Karla and Sood's authentication were proposed and discussed. The preliminary analysis of the proposition shows that the approach is more suitable to counter major adversarial attacks in an IoV-centered environment based on the Dolev-Yao adversarial model while satisfying aspects of the Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA) triad.

Modern Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-based applications utilize current technological advancements for purposes of streaming data, as a way of adapting to the ever-changing technological landscape. Such efforts require providing accurate, meaningful, and trustworthy output from the streaming sensors particularly during dynamic virtual sensing. However, to ensure that the sensing ecosystem is devoid of any sensor threats or active attacks, it is paramount to implement secure real-time strategies. Fundamentally, real-time detection of adversarial attacks/instances during the User Feedback Process (UFP) is the key to forecasting potential attacks in active learning. Also, according to existing literature, there lacks a comprehensive study that has a focus on adversarial detection from an active machine learning perspective at the time of writing this paper. Therefore, the authors posit the importance of detecting adversarial attacks in active learning strategy. Attack in the context of this paper through a UFP-Threat driven model has been presented as any action that exerts an alteration to the learning system or data. To achieve this, the study employed ambient data collected from a smart environment human activity recognition from (Continuous Ambient Sensors Dataset, CASA) with fully labeled connections, where we intentionally subject the Dataset to wrong labels as a targeted/manipulative attack (by a malevolent labeler) in the UFP, with an assumption that the user-labels were connected to unique identities. While the dataset's focus is to classify tasks and predict activities, our study gives a focus on active adversarial strategies from an information security point of view. Furthermore, the strategies for modeling threats have been presented using the Meta Attack Language (MAL) compiler for purposes adversarial detection. The findings from the experiments conducted have shown that real-time adversarial identification and profiling during the UFP c

The recent advances in DNA sequencing technology triggered next-generation sequencing (NGS) research in full scale. Big Data (BD) is becoming the main driver in analyzing these large-scale bioinformatics data. However, this complicated process has become the system bottleneck, requiring an amal-gamation of scalable approaches to deliver the needed performance and hide the deployment complexity. Utilizing cutting-edge scientific workflows can robustly address these challenges. This paper presents a Spark-based alignment workflow called SparkFlow for massive NGS analysis over singularity containers. SparkFlow is highly scalable, reproducible, and capable of parallelizing computation by utilizing data-level parallelism and load balancing techniques in HPC and Cloud environments. The proposed workflow capitalizes on benchmarking two state-of-art NGS workflows, i.e., Base Recalibrator and ApplyBQSR. SparkFlow realizes the ability to accelerate large-scale cancer genomic analysis by scaling vertically (HyperThreading) and horizontally (provisions on-demand). Our result demonstrates a trade-off inevitably between the targeted applications and proces-sor architecture. SparkFlow achieves a decisive improvement in NGS computation performance, throughput, and scalability while maintaining deployment complexity. The paper's findings aim to pave the way for a wide range of revolutionary enhancements and future trends within the High-performance Data Analytics (HPDA) genome analysis realm.