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Life-saving decisions in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) depend on the availability of highly accurate, up-to-date, and reliable data exchanged by neighboring vehicles. However, spreading inaccurate, unreliable, and false data by intruders create traffic illusions that may cause loss of lives and assets. Although several solutions for misbehavior detection have been proposed to address these issues, those solutions lack adequate representation and the adaptability to vehicular context. The use of predefined static thresholds and lack of comprehensive context representation have rendered the existing solutions limited to specific scenarios and attack types, which impedes their generalizability. This paper addresses these limitations by proposing an ensemble-based hybrid context-aware misbehavior detection system (EHCA-MDS) model. EHCA-MDS has been developed in four phases, as follows. The static thresholds have been replaced by dynamic ones created on the fly by analyzing the spatial and temporal properties of the mobility information collected from neighboring vehicles. Kalman filter-based algorithms were used to collect the mobility information of neighboring vehicles. Three sets of features were then derived, each of which has a different perspective, namely data consistency, data plausibility, and vehicle behavior. These features were used to construct a dynamic context reference using the Hampel filter. The Hampel-based z-score was used to evaluate the vehicles based on their behavioral activities, data consistency, and plausibility. For comprehensive features representation, multifaceted, non-parametric-based statistical classifiers were constructed and updated online using a Hampel filter-based algorithm. For accurate representation, the output of the statistical classifiers, vehicles’ scores, context reference parameters, and the derived features were used as input to an ensemble learning-based algorithm. Such representation helps to identify the misbehaving vehicles more effectively. The proposed EHCA-MDS model was evaluated in the presence of different types of misbehaving vehicles under different context scenarios through extensive simulations, utilizing a real-world traffic dataset. The results show that the accuracy and robustness of the proposed EHCA-MDS under different vehicular dynamic context scenarios were higher than existing solutions, which confirms its feasibility and effectiveness to improve the performance of VANET critical applications.

With an increasing number of services connected to the internet, including cloud computing and Internet of Things (IoT) systems, the prevention of cyberattacks has become more challenging due to the high dimensionality of the network traffic data and access points. Recently, researchers have suggested deep learning (DL) algorithms to define intrusion features through training empirical data and learning anomaly patterns of attacks. However, due to the high dynamics and imbalanced nature of the data, the existing DL classifiers are not completely effective at distinguishing between abnormal and normal behavior line connections for modern networks. Therefore, it is important to design a self-adaptive model for an intrusion detection system (IDS) to improve the detection of attacks. Consequently, in this paper, a novel hybrid weighted deep belief network (HW-DBN) algorithm is proposed for building an efficient and reliable IDS (DeepIoT.IDS) model to detect existing and novel cyberattacks. The HW-DBN algorithm integrates an improved Gaussian–Bernoulli restricted Boltzmann machine (Deep GB-RBM) feature learning operator with a weighted deep neural networks (WDNN) classifier. The CICIDS2017 dataset is selected to evaluate the DeepIoT.IDS model as it contains multiple types of attacks, complex data patterns, noise values, and imbalanced classes. We have compared the performance of the DeepIoT.IDS model with three recent models. The results show the DeepIoT.IDS model outperforms the three other models by achieving a higher detection accuracy of 99.38% and 99.99% for web attack and bot attack scenarios, respectively. Furthermore, it can detect the occurrence of low-frequency attacks that are undetectable by other models.

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) play an important role as enabling technology for future cooperative intelligent transportation systems (CITSs). Vehicles in VANETs share real-time information about their movement state, traffic situation, and road conditions. However, VANETs are susceptible to the cyberattacks that create life threatening situations and/or cause road congestion. Intrusion detection systems (IDSs) that rely on the cooperation between vehicles to detect intruders, were the most suggested security solutions for VANET. Unfortunately, existing cooperative IDSs (CIDSs) are vulnerable to the legitimate yet compromised collaborators that share misleading and manipulated information and disrupt the IDSs’ normal operation. As such, this paper proposes a misbehavior-aware on-demand collaborative intrusion detection system (MA-CIDS) based on the concept of distributed ensemble learning. That is, vehicles individually use the random forest algorithm to train local IDS classifiers and share their locally trained classifiers on-demand with the vehicles in their vicinity, which reduces the communication overhead. Once received, the performance of the classifiers is evaluated using the local testing dataset in the receiving vehicle. The evaluation values are used as a trustworthiness factor and used to rank the received classifiers. The classifiers that deviate much from the box-and-whisker plot lower boundary are excluded from the set of the collaborators. Then, each vehicle constructs an ensemble of weighted random forest-based classifiers that encompasses the locally and remotely trained classifiers. The outputs of the classifiers are aggregated using a robust weighted voting scheme. Extensive simulations were conducted utilizing the network security laboratory-knowledge discovery data mining (NSL-KDD) dataset to evaluate the performance of the proposed MA-CIDS model. The obtained results show that MA-CIDS performs better than the other existing models in terms of effectiveness and efficiency for VANET.

The swift advancement of the Internet of Things (IoT), coupled with the growing application of healthcare software in this area, has given rise to significant worries about the protection and confidentiality of critical health data. To address these challenges, blockchain technology has emerged as a promising solution, providing decentralized and immutable data storage and transparent transaction records. However, traditional blockchain systems still face limitations in terms of preserving data privacy. This paper proposes a novel approach to enhancing privacy preservation in IoT-based healthcare applications using homomorphic encryption techniques combined with blockchain technology. Homomorphic encryption facilitates the performance of calculations on encrypted data without requiring decryption, thus safeguarding the data’s privacy throughout the computational process. The encrypted data can be processed and analyzed by authorized parties without revealing the actual contents, thereby protecting patient privacy. Furthermore, our approach incorporates smart contracts within the blockchain network to enforce access control and to define data-sharing policies. These smart contracts provide fine-grained permission settings, which ensure that only authorized entities can access and utilize the encrypted data. These settings protect the data from being viewed by unauthorized parties. In addition, our system generates an audit record of all data transactions, which improves both accountability and transparency. We have provided a comparative evaluation with the standard models, taking into account factors such as communication expense, transaction volume, and security. The findings of our experiments suggest that our strategy protects the confidentiality of the data while at the same time enabling effective data processing and analysis. In conclusion, the combination of homomorphic encryption and blockchain technology presents a solution that is both resilient and protective of users’ privacy for healthcare applications integrated with IoT. This strategy offers a safe and open setting for the management and exchange of sensitive patient medical data, while simultaneously preserving the confidentiality of the patients involved.

Eating an appropriate food volume, maintaining the required calorie count, and making good nutritional choices are key factors for reducing the risk of obesity, which has many consequences such as Osteoarthritis (OA) that affects the patient’s knee. In this paper, we present a wearable sensor in the form of a necklace embedded with a piezoelectric sensor, that detects skin movement from the lower trachea while eating. In contrast to the previous state-of-the-art piezoelectric sensor-based system that used spectral features, our system fully exploits temporal amplitude-varying signals for optimal features, and thus classifies foods more accurately. Through evaluation of the frame length and the position of swallowing in the frame, we found the best performance was with a frame length of 30 samples (1.5 s), with swallowing located towards the end of the frame. This demonstrates that the chewing sequence carries important information for classification. Additionally, we present a new approach in which the weight of solid food can be estimated from the swallow count, and the calorie count of food can be calculated from their estimated weight. Our system based on a smartphone app helps users live healthily by providing them with real-time feedback about their ingested food types, volume, and calorie count.

Air pollution risk assessment is complex due to dynamic data change and pollution source distribution. Air quality index concentration level prediction is an effective method of protecting public health by providing the means for an early warning against harmful air pollution. However, air quality index-based prediction is challenging as it depends on several complicated factors resulting from dynamic nonlinear air quality time-series data, such as dynamic weather patterns and the verity and distribution of air pollution sources. Subsequently, some minimal models have incorporated a time series-based predicting air quality index at a global level (for a particular city or various cities). These models require interaction between the multiple air pollution sensing sources and additional parameters like wind direction and wind speed. The existing methods in predicting air quality index cannot handle short-term dependencies. These methods also mostly neglect the spatial correlations between the different parameters. Moreover, the assumption of selecting the most recent part of the air quality time series is not valid considering that pollution is cyclic behavior according to various events and conditions due to the high possibility of falling into the trap of local minimum and poor generalization. Therefore, this paper proposes a new air pollution global risk assessment (APGRA) prediction model for an air quality index of spatial correlations to address these issues. The APGRA model incorporates an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA), a Monte Carlo simulation, a collaborative multi-agent system, and a prediction algorithm for reducing air quality index prediction error and processing time. The proposed APGRA model is evaluated based on Malaysia and China real-world air quality datasets. The proposed APGRA model improves the average root mean squared error by 41%, mean and absolute error by 47.10% compared with the conventional ARIMA and ANFIS models.

Precision medicine has emerged as a transformative approach to healthcare, aiming to deliver personalized treatments and therapies tailored to individual patients. However, the realization of precision medicine relies heavily on the availability of comprehensive and diverse medical data. In this context, blockchain-enabled federated learning, coupled with electronic medical records (EMRs), presents a groundbreaking solution to unlock revolutionary insights in precision medicine. This abstract explores the potential of blockchain technology to empower precision medicine by enabling secure and decentralized data sharing and analysis. By leveraging blockchain’s immutability, transparency, and cryptographic protocols, federated learning can be conducted on distributed EMR datasets without compromising patient privacy. The integration of blockchain technology ensures data integrity, traceability, and consent management, thereby addressing critical concerns associated with data privacy and security. Through the federated learning paradigm, healthcare institutions and research organizations can collaboratively train machine learning models on locally stored EMR data, without the need for data centralization. The blockchain acts as a decentralized ledger, securely recording the training process and aggregating model updates while preserving data privacy at its source. This approach allows the discovery of patterns, correlations, and novel insights across a wide range of medical conditions and patient populations. By unlocking revolutionary insights through blockchain-enabled federated learning and EMRs, precision medicine can revolutionize healthcare delivery. This paradigm shift has the potential to improve diagnosis accuracy, optimize treatment plans, identify subpopulations for clinical trials, and expedite the development of novel therapies. Furthermore, the transparent and auditable nature of blockchain technology enhances trust among stakeholders, enabling greater collaboration, data sharing, and collective intelligence in the pursuit of advancing precision medicine. In conclusion, this abstract highlights the transformative potential of blockchain-enabled federated learning in empowering precision medicine. By unlocking revolutionary insights from diverse and distributed EMR datasets, this approach paves the way for a future where healthcare is personalized, efficient, and tailored to the unique needs of each patient.

Recently, fake news has been widely spread through the Internet due to the increased use of social media for communication. Fake news has become a significant concern due to its harmful impact on individual attitudes and the community’s behavior. Researchers and social media service providers have commonly utilized artificial intelligence techniques in the recent few years to rein in fake news propagation. However, fake news detection is challenging due to the use of political language and the high linguistic similarities between real and fake news. In addition, most news sentences are short, therefore finding valuable representative features that machine learning classifiers can use to distinguish between fake and authentic news is difficult because both false and legitimate news have comparable language traits. Existing fake news solutions suffer from low detection performance due to improper representation and model design. This study aims at improving the detection accuracy by proposing a deep ensemble fake news detection model using the sequential deep learning technique. The proposed model was constructed in three phases. In the first phase, features were extracted from news contents, preprocessed using natural language processing techniques, enriched using n-gram, and represented using the term frequency–inverse term frequency technique. In the second phase, an ensemble model based on deep learning was constructed as follows. Multiple binary classifiers were trained using sequential deep learning networks to extract the representative hidden features that could accurately classify news types. In the third phase, a multi-class classifier was constructed based on multilayer perceptron (MLP) and trained using the features extracted from the aggregated outputs of the deep learning-based binary classifiers for final classification. The two popular and well-known datasets (LIAR and ISOT) were used with different classifiers to benchmark the proposed model. Compared with the state-of-the-art models, which use deep contextualized representation with convolutional neural network (CNN), the proposed model shows significant improvements (2.41%) in the overall performance in terms of the F1score for the LIAR dataset, which is more challenging than other datasets. Meanwhile, the proposed model achieves 100% accuracy with ISOT. The study demonstrates that traditional features extracted from news content with proper model design outperform the existing models that were constructed based on text embedding techniques.

Ransomware is an ill-famed malware that has received recognition because of its lethal and irrevocable effects on its victims. The irreparable loss caused due to ransomware requires the timely detection of these attacks. Several studies including surveys and reviews are conducted on the evolution, taxonomy, trends, threats, and countermeasures of ransomware. Some of these studies were specifically dedicated to IoT and android platforms. However, there is not a single study in the available literature that addresses the significance of dynamic analysis for the ransomware detection studies for all the targeted platforms. This study also provides the information about the datasets collection from its sources, which were utilized in the ransomware detection studies of the diverse platforms. This study is also distinct in terms of providing a survey about the ransomware detection studies utilizing machine learning, deep learning, and blend of both techniques while capitalizing on the advantages of dynamic analysis for the ransomware detection. The presented work considers the ransomware detection studies conducted from 2019 to 2021. This study provides an ample list of future directions which will pave the way for future research.

In the era of interconnected and intelligent cyber-physical systems, preserving privacy has become a paramount concern. This paper aims a groundbreaking proof-of-concept (PoC) design that leverages consortium blockchain technology to address privacy challenges in cyber-physical systems (CPSs). The proposed design introduces a novel approach to safeguarding sensitive information and ensuring data integrity while maintaining a high level of trust among stakeholders. By harnessing the power of consortium blockchain, the design establishes a decentralized and tamper-resistant framework for privacy preservation. However, ensuring the security and privacy of sensitive information within CPSs poses significant challenges. This paper proposes a cutting-edge privacy approach that leverages consortium blockchain technology to secure secrets in CPSs. Consortium blockchain, with its permissioned nature, provides a trusted framework for governing the network and validating transactions. By employing consortium blockchain, secrets in CPSs can be securely stored, shared, and accessed by authorized entities only, mitigating the risks of unauthorized access and data breaches. The proposed approach offers enhanced security, privacy preservation, increased trust and accountability, as well as interoperability and scalability. This paper aims to address the limitations of traditional security mechanisms in CPSs and harness the potential of consortium blockchain to revolutionize the management of secrets, contributing to the advancement of CPS security and privacy. The effectiveness of the design is demonstrated through extensive simulations and performance evaluations. The results indicate that the proposed approach offers significant advancements in privacy protection, paving the way for secure and trustworthy cyber-physical systems in various domains.