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With the rapid development of quantum computers, post-quantum cryptography (PQC) has become critical technology in the security field. PQC includes cryptographic techniques that are secure against quantum-computer-based attacks, utilizing methods such as code-based, isogeny-based, and lattice-based approaches. Among these, lattice-based cryptography is the most extensively studied due to its ease of implementation and efficiency. As quantum computing advances, the need for secure communication protocols that can withstand quantum computer-based threats becomes increasingly important. Traditional two-party AKE protocols have a significant limitation: the security of the entire system can be compromised if either of the communicating parties behaves maliciously. To overcome this limitation, researchers have proposed three-party AKE protocols, where a third party acts as an arbiter or verifier. However, we found that a recently proposed three-party AKE protocol is vulnerable to quantum-computer-based attacks. To address this issue, we propose a provably quantum secure three-party AKE protocol based on MLWE. The proposed scheme leverages the user's biometric information and the server's master key to prevent the exposure of critical parameters. We analyzed the security of the protocol using simulation tools such as the Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, Real-or-Random (RoR) model, and Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA). Furthermore, comparative analysis with similar protocols demonstrates that our protocol is efficient and suitable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: In the current landscape, the rapid expansion of the internet has brought about a corresponding surge in the number of data consumers. As user volume and diversity have escalated, the shift from conventional, uniform networks to Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) has emerged. HetNets are designed with a primary objective: enhancing Quality of Service (QoS) standards for users. In the context of HetNets facilitated by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), a substantial influx of users and devices is observed. Within this multifaceted environment, the potential for malicious intruder nodes to efficiently execute and propagate harmful actions across the network is a distinct concern. Consequently, the entirety of network communication becomes susceptible to a multitude of security threats. To address these vulnerabilities and safeguard communication, the Functional Encryption (FE) technique is employed. FE empowers the protection of data against intrusion attacks. This paper presents a comprehensive methodology for implementing FE within UAV‐integrated HetNets, executed in two sequential phases. The initial phase secures communication between User Equipment (UE) and Micro Base Station (MBS), followed by the second phase, which focuses on securing communication among MBS and UAV. The viability of the proposed approach is substantiated through validation using the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool. The validation process involves the development of High‐Level Protocol Specification Language (HLPSL) codes. The successful security validation outcome underscores the capacity of the proposed methodology to provide the intended security measures and robustness to the network environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Privacy must be preserved when working with client data in machine learning. Federated learning (FL) provides a way to preserve user data privacy by aggregating locally trained models without sharing the user data. Still, the privacy of user identity is not preserved. Secure aggregation is a popular technique in FL for aggregating gradients without disclosing individual data. However, it is costly and inaccurate. Therefore, we propose a novel, scalable, cost-effective group signature-based secure aggregation algorithm in FL, called GSFedSec, where secure aggregation helps conceal the user's update while the group signature helps conceal their identity. Our algorithm preserves the data and their source. Our simulation results show that the proposed algorithm does not suffer from a loss of accuracy, handles increases in network size competently, offers computational and communication efficiency, and is secure against various security attacks. We have compared the results of efficiency and security against existing algorithms in FL. Also, the security of the algorithm is verified using Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic and simulated via the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) protocol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the contemporary era, the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) plays a pivotal role in traffic management, especially in the context of highly scalable and dynamic 5 G networks. Safeguarding these networks presents numerous challenges, particularly in controlling access for unauthenticated users and establishing secure key agreements with fine-grained access control. Balancing these security measures is vital to prevent unauthorized information flow while aligning with the promising goals of future generation technologies. Despite numerous related studies being conducted, existing schemes face risks such as privacy breaches, identity tracing, and substantial computation overheads. Consequently, there is an urgent need to introduce a more secure and efficient scheme to counter various attacks. This paper introduces an authenticated key agreement scheme, tailored for fog-based IoV. The scheme's security is established under the Random Oracle Model and verified using the ProVerif tool. Additionally, a performance assessment is conducted, demonstrating that the proposed protocol simultaneously meets both security and efficiency requirements when compared to several related schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents a cost-effective IoT-based Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system for the real-time monitoring and control of photovoltaic systems in a rural Pakistani community. The system utilizes the Blynk platform with Arduino Nano, GSM SIM800L, and ESP-32 microcontrollers. The key components include a ZMPT101B voltage sensor, ACS712 current sensors, and a Maximum Power Point Tracking module for optimizing power output. The system operates over both Global System for Mobile Communications and Wi-Fi networks, employing universal asynchronous receiver–transmitter serial communication and using the transmission control protocol/Internet protocol and hypertext transfer protocol for data exchange. Testing showed that the system consumes only 3.462 W of power, making it highly efficient. With an implementation cost of CAD 35.52, it offers an affordable solution for rural areas. The system achieved an average data transmission latency of less than 2 s over Wi-Fi and less than 5 s over GSM, ensuring timely data updates and control. The Blynk 2.0 app provides data retention capabilities, allowing users to access historical data for performance analysis and optimization. This open-source SCADA system demonstrates significant potential for improving efficiency and user engagement in renewable energy management, offering a scalable solution for global applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Messaging protocols for the Internet of Things (IoT) play a crucial role in facilitating efficient product creation and waste reduction, and in enhancing agricultural process efficiency within the realm of smart greenhouses. Publish–subscribe (pub-sub) systems improve communication between IoT devices and cloud platforms. Nevertheless, IoT technology is required to effectively handle a considerable volume of subscriptions or topic adjustments from several clients concurrently. In addition, subscription throughput is an essential factor of the pub-sub mechanism, as it directly influences the speed at which messages may be sent to subscribers. The primary focus of this paper pertains to a performance assessment of the proposed message categorization architecture for the Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) broker. This architecture aims to establish a standardized approach to pub-sub topics and generate new topics with various performance characteristics. We also standardize the form of MQTT protocol broker topic categorization and payload based on greenhouse specifications. The establishment of topic classification enhances the operational effectiveness of the broker, reduces data volume, and concurrently augments the number of messages and events transmitted from the greenhouse environment to the central server on a per-second basis. Our proposed architecture is validated across multiple MQTT brokers, including Mosquitto, ActiveMQ, Bevywise, and EMQ X, showing enhanced flexibility, extensibility, and simplicity while maintaining full compatibility with greenhouse environments. Key findings demonstrate significant improvements in performance metrics. The message processing time for the proposed Active MQ broker was increased approximately five-fold across all QoS levels compared to the original. Subscription throughput for the Bevywise MQTT Route 2.0 broker at QoS0 reached 1453.053, compared to 290.610 for the original broker. The number of messages in the Active MQ broker at QoS0 surged from 394.79 to 1973.95. These improvements demonstrate the architecture's potential for broader IoT applications in pub-sub systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ongoing political, environmental, and economic crises require infrastructures that can respond to crises in ways that do not replicate and reinforce inequality. To this end, we use a case study method of analysis that compares the authors' previous work on Internet infrastructure at the levels of development, governance, and use to explore how these imaginaries promote or impede people-centered change in the development and maintenance of Internet infrastructure. This theoretical work puts the three existing cases in conversation to better understand how Internet infrastructure alternatives presented as radical, new, or non-hierarchical present shortcomings and opportunities, so that it might be more possible to imagine better, more truly radical, people-centered alternatives. From this comparison, we close our discussion with three heuristics for radical infrastructure: the need for pushing for alternative ensembles of support, busting the myth of technosolutionism, re-politicizing Internet infrastructure, and encouraging technical communities to build around cooperativity, not connectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present Internet of Things is widely used in various products and parts in our daily life. In the future, its uses and requirements will increase. However, there are several issues with the IoT network, one of which is secure data transmission. Also, malicious nodes in the IoT network are very difficult to identify accurately and quickly, whereas it is very important to do so. In the current context, several solutions are being proposed as there is a need to focus on setting up secure IoT frameworks, and as well as the protocols that runs on them. This research proposes a secure protocol called iterative Convolutional Neural Network based Malicious Node Detection protocol that uses the erroneous assumption learning problematic technique. This protocol will make changes in the application layer, the network layer and the physical layer in order to achieve secure data transmission in IoT. The proposed ICNNMND protocol will be able to detect attacks and eliminate them hence providing maximum data accuracy in IoT. For this, machine learning method will be used and the changes in the characteristics of the malicious nodes will be learned and their boundaries be explored. Then its error variation will be calculated and the malicious nodes be differentiated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Routing protocols for Internet of Things (IoT) play a major role in the performance of the network. The standard Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) suffers from a number of limitations including congestion of higher-level nodes and unbalanced topology. This paper proposes a novel Objective Function called Load Balanced Minimum Rank with Hysteresis Objective Function (LB_MRHOF), which assigns child nodes to the most suitable parent in the topology. The Objective Function utilizes a weight of the Expected Transmission Count (ETX) and number of children to calculate the Composite ETX and Number of Children (CENOC) which estimates the load on each node. The attained CENOC is used to select the optimum parent for each node in the topology, where nodes with high CENOC are avoided in the parent selection process. The proposed Objective Function has been evaluated under random and hierarchical network topologies. In addition, the evaluation has investigated the influence of the number of nodes by testing for small, medium and large-scale networks. Results have shown that the proposed Objective Function outperforms MRHOF, OF_FUZZY and OF-EC in terms of Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) and reduces nodal hop-count under all tested scenarios, with no compromise in energy consumption. They have also revealed that the best performance achieved by LB_MRHOF is attained under large-scale networks. The resulting network topology which is formed by the proposed Objective Function has shown improved balance and more depth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The progression of the Internet of Things (IoT) has brought about a complete transformation in the way we interact with the physical world. However, this transformation has brought with it a slew of challenges. The advent of intelligent machines that can not only gather data for analysis and decision-making, but also learn and make independent decisions has been a breakthrough. However, the low-cost requirement of IoT devices requires the use of limited resources in processing and storage, which typically leads to a lack of security measures. Consequently, most IoT devices are susceptible to security breaches, turning them into "Bots" that are used in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. In this paper, we propose a new strategy labeled "Temporary Dynamic IP" (TDIP), which offers effective protection against DDoS attacks. The TDIP solution rotates Internet Protocol (IP) addresses frequently, creating a significant deterrent to potential attackers. By maintaining an "IP lease-time" that is short enough to prevent unauthorized access, TDIP enhances overall system security. Our testing, conducted via OMNET++, demonstrated that TDIP was highly effective in preventing DDoS attacks and, at the same time, improving network efficiency and IoT network protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) in agriculture has significantly transformed rural farming. However, the adoption of these technologies has also introduced privacy and security concerns, particularly unauthorized breaches and cyber-attacks on data collected from IoT devices and sensitive information. The present study addresses these concerns by developing a comprehensive framework that provides practical, privacy-centric AI and IoT solutions for monitoring smart rural farms. This is performed by designing a framework that includes a three-phase protocol that secures data exchange between the User, the IoT Sensor Layer, and the Central Server. In the proposed protocol, the Central Server is responsible for establishing a secure communication channel by verifying the legitimacy of the IoT Sensor devices and the User and securing the data using rigorous cryptographic techniques. The proposed protocol is also validated using the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool. The formal security analysis confirms the robustness of the protocol and its suitability for real-time applications in AI and IoT-enabled smart rural farms, demonstrating resistance against various attacks and enhanced performance metrics, including a computation time of 0.04 s for 11 messages and a detailed search where 119 nodes were visited at a depth of 12 plies in a mere search time of 0.28 s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared to traditional platform environments in the online realm, the metaverse, as a three-dimensional (3D) virtual world, exposes more identity data to the network. Once these data are compromised, it leads to privacy breaches. Therefore, how to ensure identity security in the metaverse environment has become an urgent problem to be solved. Although research on identity authentication schemes can help improve identity security, traditional identity authentication schemes in network environments are studied based on their own environmental characteristics, which makes it difficult to meet the security needs in the metaverse environment. As a result, in this paper we propose an elliptic curve cryptography (ECC)-based identity authentication scheme to address identity authentication issues in the metaverse environment. This scheme ensures secure communication among users, avatars, and platform servers. The security of this scheme was demonstrated through informal security analysis and the automated validation of internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) formal security analysis tools, and the results showed that it can resist various known attacks. Compared with existing identity authentication schemes, this scheme has lower computational and communication costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) used multipath for achievement of data instantaneously to improve its performance. Anyhow, the preceding TCP protocol in the Internet of Things (IoT) network experienced a struggle to transmit a superior number of subflows. The Bottleneck Bandwidth and Round-trip propagation time (BBR) generate a network path model by assessing the available bottleneck bandwidth and the minimal Round-Trip Time (RTT) to achieve the desired delivery rate, consequently reducing the latency. However, some research studies have indicated the presence of significant fairness issues related to RTT in the BBR algorithm. To overcome this issue, we proposed a New Enhanced Congestion Control (CC) mechanism referred to as Bottleneck Bandwidth and Round-trip propagation time (BBR-NEnh) which is cross-layer-based efficient congestion control in a 5G IoT heterogeneous network. The proposed work encloses three sequential processes including grid-based network construction, improved two-factor clustering, and Hybrid TCP congestion control. Initially, we perform network construction by grid-based to improve the information transfer rate and increase connectivity among devices. After that, IoT devices are clustered based on two factors congestion and buffer space using the Improved K-Medoids algorithm (IK-Med) by the edge server. Further, to enhance the efficiency of TCP, the proposed research adopts a BBR-NEnh by optimizing the congestion control parameters using the Adaptive Tunicate Swarm Optimization (ATSO) algorithm. Finally, the dynamic handover and adjustment of windows are performed based on the Fast Adaptation Technique (FAdT) which can send the data quickly without congestion. The implementation of the proposed research is carried out using NS- 3.26 and the performance of the proposed BBR-NEnh model is evaluated using a variety of performance metrics, including goodput, delay, packet loss, queue length, transmission rate, and throughput. The performance of the proposed work is compared with IMPRTT (Improved RTT) and CW-IoT (Congestion Window Algorithm for the Internet of Things). The average throughput, goodput, and packet loss of the proposed work for 1500 packets size are 4, 0.9, and 10.3, and the average delay, transmission rate, and queue length over 150 seconds are 0.004, 2500, and 36.1, demonstrating that the proposed work outperforms earlier work like IMPRTT and CW-IoT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine to Machine (M2M) frameworks needs a straightforward admittance to data through a consistent incorporation into the Future Internet. The mentioned integration leads to improper foundation and administrations by IoT. The Web of Things (WoT) on other hand aims at connectivity of web thereby pushing the technology down to the devices and smart things that leads to pushing its innovation down to gadgets and shrewd things. The rapid development in communication network in the modern era has made people's life more convenience and easier. Internet Protocol (IP) addresses need to be sufficient to handle demands of numerous entities that communicates with each other having an infrastructure or without having an infrastructure. The manuscript presents Routing Virtualization (RV), where all three transition techniques work in one common Cisco core router. It is known that, the global addressing in computers are provided by IP version 4 (IPv4). The address pool of IPv4 is almost depleted as there is an increase in the user's day by day. As its design has outlived, IP version 6 (IPv6) which is an advanced version was permitted for use. IPv6 is therefore called as the next generation IP (IPng) is chosen from many projected options as an appropriate standby for IPv4. In spite of the fact that IPv4 and IPv6 work on same protocol, there are differences in them such as routing, administrative workload, addressing, network address translation (NAT) and security. For having a smooth transition to IPv6, all the transition mechanisms are considered as a set of methods for the same; unfortunately, not all of them are amenable to the users' option. Routing Virtualization, where all three transition techniques work in one common Cisco core router, has been proposed and implemented. The present and future Internet offer adaptable, broad, steady furthermore, tried conventions for hub and administration revelation, versatility, auto-arrangement and security that are likewise required for the IoT. The IoT is integrated to the Internet by this way by adapting, expanding, and connecting IPv6 the current IoT giving IoT6. This maintains the keeping up of the reverse similarity with heritage that are arranged and are inserted in to the frameworks from building and mechanical robotization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of Internet usage has grown day by day. Many people use the internet for their commercial, education, and personal needs. Misuse of the internet has also increased exponentially. As with the rapid growth of Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), a high alarm still prevails. Much fake news and information are propagated through social media, which misguides many people. Hence tracing back of IP address is needed for appropriate monitoring. The log history stored in the service provider does not enrich the parents to monitor the same. Cache memory involved in the service provider is shared with needy people at their request. Retaining information in service providers depends upon the local norms of any region. A large amount of data handling in the service provider increases the challenges. This paper aims to save the on-view channel IP address in the local Set-Top Box (STB), where STB acts as the front device for IPTV applications. The IP address, including the monitoring frequencies and time observed, is stored in the local STB. This facilitates the parents to monitor their wards, and misuse of the internet is also minimized. The logic block added to the onboard increases the chip area by 3.97m3, and the delay is 847 ps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The exponential increase in Internet-facing devices in the last decade has resulted in IP address exhaustion due to the limitations of the existing IPv4 address space. Therefore, the Internet Engineering Task Force engineered a new version of the Internet protocol known as Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) to resolve the issue. However, IPv6 is highly dependent on the neighbor discovery protocol (NDP), which, unfortunately, has well-known vulnerabilities in its underlying messaging protocol, the Internet Control Message Protocol version 6. So, the NDP flaws leave the IPv6 network open to many security threats and attacks, including man-in-the-middle, spoofing, and denial-of-service attacks, which are the most annoying attack at the network layer. Unfortunately, one of the critical issues plaguing the existing anomaly-based detection system is the effectiveness of detecting NDP-based DDoS attacks, which requires urgent attention. This paper suggests a system to find network traffic patterns that are not normal that are caused by NDP-based attacks. It does this by teaching neural networks how to recognize network attack patterns using the backpropagation algorithm. The proposed system is a big step forward from where the field is now because it uses a complex neural network algorithm to create an NDP anomaly-based detection system. Using a real dataset to test the proposed system's performance shows that it can find NDP anomalies with a 99.95% success rate, a 99.92% precision rate, a 99.98% recall rate, an F1-Score of 99.98%, and a 0.040% false positive rate. Also, the proposed approach shows better results compared to other existing approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet of Vehicles (IoV) aka V2X is a growing area of research that aims at information exchange between vehicles and all other related objects to develop intelligent transportation systems. IoVs are characterized by high mobility, high-speed internet, varying node density, and dynamic topology and aim to minimize and communicate situations like traffic congestion, accidents, etc. Discovering a routing path in a highly unstable network environment to ensure the successful delivery of packets with minimal overheads. Finding reliable routing links as against shortest path routing is a necessity in IoV networks. In this paper, a routing protocol coined as the dynamic opportunistic routing protocol for IoV (DORP-IoV) is presented. DORP-IoV is an on-demand position-based protocol that seeks the advantage of wireless broadcast advantage to select a hop close to the virtual line of sight between source and destination for communicating the information to the destination. Vehicle movement direction and vehicle density around the ideal hop location are also considered while selecting the next hop for information forwarding. Communicating the information through an optimal number of intermediate nodes is the novelty of the work which ensures better packet delivery with minimized delay and routing overheads. The performance of DORP-IoV is evaluated and results are compared with the performance of Weighted- Greedy Perimeter Coordinator Routing (W-GPCR), Greedy Perimeter Coordinator Routing, and Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing for varying node density and network connections for various metrics. DORP-IoV shows an improved performance in the range of 8–12% for packet delivery with similar performance for average end-to-end delay compared to W-GPCR. The optimal hop selection mechanism in DORP-IoV reduces the number of hops by 10–30% compared to W-GPCR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monolithic software architectures are no longer sufficient for the highly complex software-intensive systems, which modern society depends on. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) surpassed monolithic architecture due to its reusability, platform independency, ease of maintenance, and scalability. Recent SOA implementations made use of cloud-native architectural approaches such as microservice architecture, which has resulted in a new challenge: the discovery difficulties of services. One way to dynamically discover and route traffic to service instances is to use a service discovery tool to locate the Internet Protocol (IP) address and port number of a microservice. In the event that replicated microservice instances are found to provide the same function, it is crucial to select the right microservice that provides the best overall experience for the end-user. Parameters including success rate, efficiency, delay time, and response time play a vital role in establishing a microservice's Quality of Service (QoS). These assessments can be performed by means of a live health-check service, or, alternatively, by making a prediction of the current state of affairs with the application of machine learning-based approaches. In this research, we evaluate the performance of several classification algorithms for estimating the quality of microservices using the QWS dataset containing traffic data of 2505 microservices. Our research also analyzed the boosting algorithms, namely Gradient Boost, XGBoost, LightGBM, and CatBoost to improve the overall performance. We utilized parameter optimization techniques, namely Grid Search, Random Search, Bayes Search, Halvin Grid Search, and Halvin Random Search to fine-tune the hyperparameters of our classifier models. Experimental results demonstrated that the CatBoost algorithm achieved the highest level of accuracy (90.42%) in predicting microservice quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, a far-field wireless power transfer (WPT) system aims to deliver wireless power over a distance of a few meters. Communication among devices for the purpose of WPT in the far-field WPT system is unique as its purpose is to establish, maintain and monitor a WPT session among devices in the system. For proper functionality of a WPT system, a number of communication-, control- and management-related challenges need to be addressed. Hence, here an application layer protocol specifically designed for a WPT system is presented. The protocol provides essential control, management and communication functionalities to establish, maintain and monitor a WPT session. Some features of a WPT system require low-latency communication, hence enhancements for a networking protocol stack are also proposed. To validate the effectiveness of the presented application layer protocol along with the enhancements proposed for the networking protocol stack, a set of experiments was carried out over a real WPT system. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed protocol possesses the features essential for a WPT system, and the proposed enhancements for the networking protocol stack provide low-latency communication along with lower control overhead compared with an existing state-of-the-art network protocol stack. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This study aimed to understand treatment patterns, acute healthcare use, and cost patterns among adults with treatment-resistant depression (TRD) who completed induction treatment with esketamine nasal spray in the United States (US). Per label, induction is defined as administration twice a week for 4 weeks, after which maintenance is started on a weekly basis for 4 weeks, and thereafter, patients are treated weekly or bimonthly. Methods: Adults with one or more esketamine claim (index date) on or after March 5, 2019 were selected from Optum's de-identified Clinformatics® Data Mart Database (January 2016–June 2022). Before the index date, patients had evidence of TRD and ≥ 12 months of continuous insurance eligibility (baseline period). Patients with eight or more esketamine treatment sessions were included in the main cohort. A subgroup included patients with one or more baseline mental health (MH)-related inpatient (IP) admission or emergency department (ED) visit (i.e., prior acute healthcare users). Treatment patterns were described during the follow-up period (index date until earliest of end of insurance eligibility or data); acute healthcare (i.e., IP and ED) resource use and costs (2021 US dollars) were reported during the baseline and follow-up periods. Results: Of the 322 patients in the main cohort, 111 comprised the subgroup of prior acute healthcare users. During the follow-up period, mean time from index date to eighth esketamine session was 73.2 days in the main cohort and 78.8 days in the subgroup (per label, 28 days). Further, 75.2% of the main cohort and 73.9% of the subgroup completed four or more esketamine maintenance sessions following induction. In the main cohort, mean all-cause acute healthcare costs per patient per month (PPPM) decreased from baseline ($837) to follow-up ($770). Similar reductions were observed for mean MH-related acute healthcare costs PPPM (baseline $648, follow-up $577). In the subgroup, mean all-cause acute healthcare costs PPPM also decreased (baseline $2323, follow-up $1423), driven by mean MH-related acute healthcare costs PPPM (baseline $1880, follow-up $1139). Mean all-cause acute healthcare use per ten patients per month remained largely stable from baseline to follow-up in the main cohort (IP days: baseline 2.24, follow-up 2.13; ED visits: baseline 1.33, follow-up 1.45) and decreased in the subgroup (IP days: baseline 6.38, follow-up 4.56; ED visits: baseline 2.58, follow-up 2.41). Trends in mean MH-related acute healthcare use were similar. Conclusion: Patients generally required more time than label recommendation to complete esketamine induction treatment, and most went on to have 12 or more esketamine sessions. Completion of induction treatment correlated with reductions in mean all-cause and MH-related acute healthcare costs. Larger reductions were seen in the subgroup of prior acute healthcare users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The push towards research commercialisation at universities has highlighted the importance of intellectual property (IP) policies in fostering innovation and guiding and managing research commercialisation activities. This paper undertakes a content analysis of intellectual property policies of all (37) Australian public universities, focusing on policy objectives, definition of IP, ownership of IP created by different creators, and distribution of net commercialisation revenues. It is found that all universities assert ownership over staff-created IP, particularly when related to employment or utilisation of university resources. For students, policies tend to balance their rights with university interests, with nuanced approaches for different types of student participation, but the focus of most policies was on postgraduate students engaging in research activities. While some policies had clear arrangements for IP created by visitors and affiliates and Indigenous cultural and intellectual property (ICIP), about a quarter of policies did not specify arrangements for these groups. Revenue sharing arrangements vary but generally award something between a third to a half of net revenue to creators, to both acknowledge their contribution and incentivise further innovation. Policies included a broad spectrum of objectives, from protecting and commercialising IP to fostering innovation and societal benefit, reflecting varying strategies across the higher education sector. Policies could benefit from further clarity in certain areas such as the rights of students or other creator groups. Research is needed to assess the effectiveness of these policies and their influence on innovation and commercialisation activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: As opposed to cloud servers, fog servers, and fog users may be malicious, so developing a mutual identity‐preserving authentication mechanism between them is a crucial and difficult problem in fog computing. Such a technique must conceal the user's true identity from the adversary; otherwise, the adversary will be able to determine which fog user and fog server are in communication. This article suggests a secure and reliable anonymous mutual authentication system for use at the network's edge between fog users and fog servers. With the aid of the registration authority (RA) in our system, they can verify one another and decide on a new session key that will be used to encrypt messages throughout the session. Fog users don't need to re‐register with RA to wander freely over the network and authenticate to any fog server that is within their range. The proposed technique only needs a small number of symmetric encryption/decryption and one‐way hash functions, making it easy to implement for fog‐user devices with limited resources. The new scheme's performance is evaluated in comparison to the existing one, showing that it is more resilient to various types of assaults (such as known plaintext attacks, man‐in‐the‐middle attacks, session hijacking, etc.). The widely used Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications tool is used to verify the proposed system. The outcomes demonstrate that our approach can safely withstand different attacks and accomplish the desired outcomes. Additionally, the proposed method is tested in real‐world scenarios with the NS3 simulator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fire is a dangerous and unwanted calamity that can destroy properties and lives in forest and urban areas within a few minutes. The effects of which may not be reversible. Therefore, computer vision-based methods can be essential in early fire detection tasks. But existing approaches combining computer vision and deep learning based methods are unsuitable for memory-constrained surveillance devices(CCTV and IP Sensors) with low computational power. This necessitates generating an automated system that can detect and localize this anomaly suitable for such small devices. Hence, this article proposes a custom framework of novel FireDL for fire detection and localization. The proposed FireDL is a lightweight model with 2.2 million parameters only. When trained on the same datasets, FireDL is eight times lighter than VGG16 and six times lighter than the Densenet121. The FireDL model comprises two modules: one for feature extraction containing four blocks of convolutions and the second for classification containing one block of fully connected layers. The experiments were conducted on two named Set 1(DeepFire) and Set 2(self-created using Foggia, Ko et al., etc.). It attained an accuracy of 97.63% on Set 1 and 99.82% on Set 2. Extensive experiments performed on Set 1 and Set 2 confirm its reliability for a real-world scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of the internet of things (IoT) in the global communication network has made everything interconnected and accessible. Therefore, the fields of medicine and diagnosis have emerging trend of using heterogeneous Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). The IoMT makes use of wearable health devices to transfer a huge amount of sensitive medical data to primary servers for diagnosis via a Wireless Medical Sensor Network (WMSN). Although it brings much convenience to patients as well as medical professionals, there are risks of security and privacy breaches. Recently, Wang et al. proposed "Blockchain and PUF-based Authentication Protocol for Wireless Medical Sensor Networks" (DOI 10.1109/JIOT.2021.3117762) for WMSN. Although their protocol deploys security benefits of both the blockchain and PUF technology but cryptanalysis of this protocol shows that the impersonation of the entities involved in the protocol makes it highly vulnerable to eavesdropping, incorrect notion of user anonymity and masquerading attacks. This study pinpoints several security breaches of the said protocol and proposes an enhanced protocol to resolve these security flaws in an invulnerable way. We show that the proposed protocol is safe against various attacks like impersonation, man-in-the-middle, user anonymity and system key leakage using Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications tools and Random Oracle Model. We offer pragmatic security analysis and proofs to show that the suggested protocol meets the intended security objectives. Our protocol surpasses four other competitive protocols in terms of computing, communication, and storage costs, according to a thorough performance comparison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet of Things (IoT) has witnessed remarkable growth, leading to the emergence of numerous applications and services. However, energy efficiency remains a critical concern in IoT networks due to the resource-constrained nature of many IoT devices. Energy-efficient routing protocols play a pivotal role in mitigating this challenge, optimizing energy consumption, and extending the operational lifetime of IoT deployments. This survey paper aims to provide a holistic understanding of the state-of-the-art approaches, their characteristics, strengths, limitations, and performance metrics. The survey encompasses a wide range of energy-efficient routing protocols proposed in the literature, including traditional routing protocols adapted for IoT scenarios and protocols specifically tailored for energy optimization. We discuss the impact of different network characteristics on the performance of energy-efficient routing protocols, such as network size, node density, mobility, and heterogeneity. Through this systematic survey, we aim to provide researchers, engineers, and practitioners with a comprehensive overview of energy-efficient routing protocols for IoT networks. The survey findings can serve as a valuable reference for protocol selection, performance evaluation, and the development of novel energy-efficient routing strategies in future IoT deployments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Smart Grid (SG) is an emerging technology to maintain an actual balance between energy production and usage by offering quite well tracking and regulation over the SG communication technology. However, SG technology becomes more vulnerable to network attacks since its monitoring and controlling are carried out over standard internet-based protocols or on public communication networks. Thus, without the involvement of an authentication mechanism and lack of privacy preservation attackers easily succeed to tamper with the communication channel and send fabricated messages. Hence, authentication has now become a critical security aspect in smart grid technology. There are some authentication mechanisms implemented in the literature to offer a set of security services, namely confidentiality of the credentials, the secrecy of shared session key, and secure mutual authentication. Most of the existing schemes are inefficient and generate high overhead in the networks. Hence, there is a requirement to implement an efficient and secure session key management scheme. The proposed Multi-factor Authentication and Key Agreement (MAKA) scheme for LoRa-based SG communication services provides anonymity and maintains secrecy of the session keys by introducing multi-factor authentication of the end devices. The proposed scheme uses unique device features and generates a fingerprint of the device that will help to maintain user anonymity. The formal security analysis of the proposed MAKA scheme is carried out by Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Application (AVISPA) and ProVerif tools. The results of both show that the proposed MAKA scheme is safe enough to overcome various security attacks. Moreover, the performance is evaluated concerning the existing scheme in the literature and it is recognized that the proposed MAKA scheme generates competitive communication, computation, and storage overheads. In addition, it maintains the device anonymity and meets the security aspect of the SG communication services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The medical cyber-physical system utilizes various Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices that are connected to the network for real-time management and medication of patient. The resource constraint IoMT devices require energy-efficient lightweight security schemes to protect medical data. To the best of our knowledge, majority of the existing studies concentrate either on security or on energy efficiency issues. The main contribution of this research is to develop an energy-efficient lightweight authentication method without sacrificing the security level. The authentication is done using multiple factors, namely password, physical unclonable function (PUF), Chebyshev polynomial, smartcard and fuzzy extractor. Chebyshev polynomial is used for non-identification of the private key by any attacker, whereas PUF protects the smart card from cloning by generating unique challenge–response pairs. Apart from authentication, the proposed scheme includes Blockchain-enabled distributed trustable ecosystem among independent participants where miner is selected using lightweight fuzzy system. The proposed scheme carries out the formal security analysis using real or random model which is perseverance against different external attacks and the security verification has been done using AVISPA (Automate Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications) tool. As a major finding, the simulation result using NS-3 simulator confirms that the proposed study outperforms the existing studies in terms of packet loss rate, throughput, end-to-end delay, computational cost and communication cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study outlines a method for using surveillance cameras and an algorithm that calls a deep learning model to generate video segments featuring salmon and trout in small streams. This automated process greatly reduces the need for human intervention in video surveillance. Furthermore, a comprehensive guide is provided on setting up and configuring surveillance equipment, along with instructions on training a deep learning model tailored to specific requirements. Access to video data and knowledge about deep learning models makes monitoring of trout and salmon dynamic and hands‐on, as the collected data can be used to train and further improve deep learning models. Hopefully, this setup will encourage fisheries managers to conduct more monitoring as the equipment is relatively cheap compared with customized solutions for fish monitoring. To make effective use of the data, natural markings of the camera‐captured fish can be used for individual identification. While the automated process greatly reduces the need for human intervention in video surveillance and speeds up the initial sorting and detection of fish, the manual identification of individual fish based on natural markings still requires human effort and involvement. Individual encounter data hold many potential applications, such as capture–recapture and relative abundance models, and for evaluating fish passages in streams with hydropower by spatial recaptures, that is, the same individual identified at different locations. There is much to gain by using this technique as camera captures are the better option for the fish's welfare and are less time‐consuming compared with physical captures and tagging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wireless medical sensor network (WMSN) is an application of the Internet of Things (IoT) that plays a very important role in today's era for the healthcare industry, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. To maintain the security and privacy of the real-time health information of the users or patients, the proper mutual authentication and key agreement (AKA) is the foremost necessity. In this context, Shadi Nashwan proposed an end-to-end authentication scheme for a healthcare IoT system i.e. WMSN, and claimed that their scheme could resist so many existing possible threats and could maintain a low computational cost too. Unfortunately, during this research, it is found that their scheme can be threatened by eavesdropping and jamming/desynchronization attacks and have many computational flaws, as well. Moreover, they also assumed that the gateway node (GWN) is always trustworthy, but in reality, it is not always feasible, as the GWN may act as a local server. Hence, in this article, a new AKA scheme has been proposed using the user's physiological information like ECG data in order to make the WMSN more secure and reliable. In addition, the proposed scheme can resist many well-known threats like GWN spoofing attack, key escrow problem and can guard against GWN stolen database problem, also. To proof the superiority of the proposed scheme, the informal and formal security analysis have been performed using automated validation of internet security protocols and applications (i.e. AVISPA) and Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, respectively. Based on the comparative study with existing schemes concerning security features, computational and communicational cost, and storage requirement; the proposed scheme can perform better than the existing schemes and well suitable for practical implementations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IP geolocation technology based on network measurement can provide IP geographic location capability without user assistance. In the case that the IP target device or intermediate route device does not respond to the detection message, the existing geolocation methods have reduced the accuracy of city-level geolocation, not to mention that the target cannot be located within the city. To solve this problem, a geolocation method for unreachable IP (called GUI) is proposed. GUI first extracts the target city metropolitan area network (MAN) topology, obtains the path to the IP target and compares it with the MAN topology to achieve the city-level geolocation of the target, and then looks for landmarks in the database that belong to the same /24 subnet and the same city-level location with the target. If the above landmarks exist, GUI uses the coordinate set corresponding to the landmarks to solve the minimum covering circle, so as to judge the location of the target. If the above landmarks do not exist, GUI searches for the intersection nodes from the target detection path and MAN topology, enumerates the connected landmarks, calculates the minimum covering circle according to the coordinates and uses it for the target's urban internal geolocation. The experimental results of 15 cities in China and the USA show that GUI can effectively geolocate IP targets. The city-level geolocation success rate of reachable IP can reach 99.41%, that of unreachable IP can reach 89.37% and the minimum median error of urban internal unreachable IP geolocation can reach 4.99km. All indicators are significantly better than the existing typical geolocation methods, such as PoP-Based Geolocation, Street-Level Geolocation, Ranking Nodes Based Geolocation, and the existing typical IP geographic location databases such as IPIP and MaxMind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an important application of intelligent transportation system, Internet of Vehicles (IoV) provides great convenience for users. Users can obtain real-time traffic conditions through the IoV's services, plan users' travel routes, and improve travel efficiency. However, in the IoV system, there are always malicious vehicle nodes publishing false information. Therefore, it is essential to ensure the legitimacy of the source. In addition, during the peak period of vehicle travel, the vehicle releases a large number of messages, and IoV authentication efficiency is prone to performance bottlenecks. Most existing authentication schemes have the problem of low authentication efficiency in the scenario. To address the above problems, this paper designs a novel reliable anonymous authentication scheme in IoV for Rush-hour Traffic. Here, our scheme uses blockchain and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) to design authentication algorithms for message authentication between vehicles and roadside units (RSU). Additionally, we introduce the idea of edge computing into the scheme, RSU will select the most suitable vehicle as the edge computing node for message authentication. In addition, we used the ProVerif tool for Internet security protocols and applications to test its security, ensuring that it is secure under different network attacks. In the simulation experiment, we compare our scheme with other existing works. Our scheme has a significant improvement in computational overhead, authentication efficiency and packet loss rate, and is suitable for traffic scenarios with large message volume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, nuclear power plants in the U.S. provide baseload power to the power grid because they have less flexibility for ramping their output power than natural gas peaking plants. However, achieving climate goals to reduce the consumption of fossil‐based natural gas places pressure on nuclear power plants and other power generators to ramp up their power output to balance grid generation with demand. This paper presents the modelling and performance analysis of a nuclear reactor system (NRS) coupled to a liquid‐metal battery (LMB) to improve its dynamic response and enable its black start capability. The NRS and LMB thermal behaviour are modelled in Dymola, while the electrical dynamics of the LMB and power grid are modelled in RTDS‐RSCAD. Both simulation platforms are coupled and share their thermal and electrical data using a Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) communication protocol. The dynamic performance of the NRS‐LMB integration is tested on the IEEE 9 bus, which demonstrates its ability to respond and provide frequency and voltage regulation. The black start capability of the NRS‐LMB is also evaluated by simulating a grid outage and using the LMB to supply the auxiliary loads required to bring the NRS back online as soon as possible. The results show that coupling an NRS to an LMB improves the system dynamic performance and enables it to black start after being disconnected from the grid for several days. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of the use of software-defined networking (SDN) to improve routing in Named Data Networking (NDN). NDN is a content-centric internet design that focuses on content rather than hosts. The separation of the control and data planes in SDN offers opportunities to address routing challenges in NDN. The article discusses various SDN-based NDN routing frameworks and their benefits, such as support for new routing strategies, cache optimization, and reduced overhead. However, there are also challenges to overcome, including scalability, controller placement, and consistency across controllers. The article suggests further research in areas such as distributed controller architectures, hierarchical control, and machine learning techniques to scale SDN-NDN networks and maintain cache consistency. The integration of SDN with NDN has the potential to create more efficient, flexible, and scalable content-centric networks. [Extracted from the article]

The metaverse, which amalgamates physical and virtual realms for diverse social activities, has been the focus of extensive application development by organizations, research institutes, and companies. However, these applications are often isolated, employing distinct authentication methods across platforms. Achieving interoperable authentication is crucial for when avatars traverse different metaverses to mitigate security concerns like impersonation, mutual authentication, replay, and server spoofing. To address these issues, we propose a blockchain-enabled secure and interoperable authentication scheme. This mechanism uniquely identifies users in the physical world as well as avatars, facilitating seamless navigation across verses. Our proposal is substantiated through informal security analyses, employing automated verification of internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA), the real-or-random (ROR) model, and Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic and showcasing effectiveness against a broad spectrum of security threats. Comparative assessments against similar schemes demonstrate our solution's superiority in terms of communication costs, computation costs, and security features. Consequently, our blockchain-enabled, interoperable, and secure authentication scheme stands as a robust solution for ensuring security in metaverse environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Real-time electrical impedance tomography (EIT) data sharing is becoming increasingly necessary, due to the extensive use of EIT technology in various sectors, including material analysis, biomedicine, and industrial process monitoring. The prevalence of portable EIT equipment and remote imaging technology has led to a predominance of centralized storage, Internet protocol transmission, and certificates from certificate authorities (CA) in telemedicine data. This has resulted in compromised data security, network communication delays, high CA maintenance costs, increased risks of medical data privacy breaches, and low security. Therefore, this paper offers a consortia blockchain-based method for exchanging EIT data that addresses security and integrity concerns during data storage and exchange, while maintaining transparency and traceability. Proprietary re-encryption techniques are employed to guarantee traceability when exchanging anonymous data, enabling precise control over data access. This scheme serves to protect both data and identity privacy, as well as to trace the actual identity of potential malicious users, while also thwarting any coordinated efforts between partially trusted parties and data requesters seeking unauthorized access to confidential information. Additionally, a combination of blockchain and InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) distributed storage technology is utilized to ease the burden of EIT data storage. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed solution were validated through a series of experiments, demonstrating its ability to effectively prevent data tampering and misuse, reduce data management costs, and enhance the efficiency and quality of data sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Smart transportation may come from 5G-enabled cars. Traffic reports include congestion, roads, and driving. Urbanisation and population growth increase traffic accidents and travel time. Traffic accidents kill and injure most people worldwide. Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) improves driver and pedestrian safety. This study connects the VANET to 5G to create a 5Genabled vehicle network because the road-side unit (RSU) is expensive and unsecure. This study connects numerous automobiles to TA for 5G-BS D2D communication. Data transmissions between autos are risky. Several scholars suggest authentication techniques for safe vehicle-to-vehicle communications. Overhead may enable side-channel attacks with these tactics. A secure and effective efficient and secure authentication-privacy-preserving (ES-APP) system connected TA, 5G-BS, and on-border unit (OBU) was presented. Initialization, vehicle registration, parameter renewal, message signing, single and batch verification are ES-APP steps. The formal evaluation automated verification of internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) tool with on-the-fly model-checker (OFMC) and attack searcher (ATSE) back-ends secures the suggested ES-APP technique. ES-APP appears impervious to active and passive AVISPA assaults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet of Things (IoT) connect and link objects and people for creating, processing and sharing countless information. The use of IoT is widely spread in important life fields like smart farming, by collecting and transferring data from agricultural environment to cloud servers and farming experts. Ensure the security of the data transferred is always an important issue. Hence, many researchers have proposed secure schemes in IoT systems. However, these schemes still present some flaws and they are vulnerable against some known attacks as impersonation, man in the middle, session key disclosure, password guessing and stolen smart card. Besides, they are not all adaptable to lightweight devices. Therefore, the purpose of this present work is to ensure user's privacy and data confidentiality by authenticating all legitimate network members and securing their communications. Accordingly, we propose three schemes of authentication and key management taking into consideration not only the security requirements but also the resource limit of network devices. A formal security verification of the three schemes is performed using Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic, Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) and Scyther verification tool. The results show that each scheme ensures mutual authentication and session key secrecy. They are secure against some known attacks as man in the middle, replay and impersonation. Besides, the performance analysis comparison show the lightness of the proposed schemes regarding recent related schemes and hence they are adaptable to different IoT devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crowdsourcing Internet of Things (IoT) applications have resulted in the widespread use of smart mobile devices, such as wearable devices and smartphones. E-healthcare is a significant application of crowdsourcing IoT that enables authorized users (for instance, patients, doctors, and nurses) to access and store medical server data via the public Internet or openly available wireless channels. The public Internet and wireless channel are exposed to eclectic hazards and attacks. Thus, user authentication is paramount for the streamlined usage of these services. The article proposes a new authentication protocol called CMAP-IoT for crowdsourcing IoT, which utilizes chaotic maps and authenticated encryption. This protocol allows for mutual authentication between the user and server and establishes a session key for encrypted transmission. Unlike other protocols, CMAP-IoT effectively prevents attacks that compromise user authentication. The security of CMAP-IoT was validated through ROM-based validation and informal security analysis, which demonstrated its resilience against various malicious security vulnerabilities. Additionally, Scyther-tool-based validation confirmed that CMAP-IoT is secure. Lastly, performance evaluation showed that CMAP-IoT requires [2.63–32.73%] and [66.92–94.85%] lower communication and computational costs compared to other authentication protocols making it suitable for e-healthcare applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The dew computing is currently considered as one of the promising technology, due to its ability to give data access in the absence of internet. However, dew computing also brings new challenges, particularly security and privacy issues. In dew computing paradigm, authentication and key agreement pose substantial challenges that must be taken into account. In this context, the present work is to provide a secure authentication scheme for Internet of Things and dew server based on elliptic curve cryptography. Moreover, the performance evaluation of proposed scheme has been assessed in terms of communication and computation cost, which shows the proposed scheme outperforms than existing related schemes. The proposed scheme has also been compared with the related schemes in terms of various security features such as location privacy, anonymity, forward secrecy, mutual authentication, key agreement, forgery attack, replay attack, denial of service attack and replay attack. Furthermore, the formal security evaluation has been verified by automated validation internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) under on‐the‐fly model‐checker (OFMC) and constraint logic based attack searcher (CL‐AtSE) backends. The OFMC backend analyzed 228 visited nodes with four plies using search time of 0.24 s. The CL‐AtSE analyzed three states with translation time of 0.12 s. The OFMC and CL‐AtSE backends have not identified any attack trace. Therefore, the simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme is safe against the security threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]