Last updated: 2026-10-21 05:01 UTC
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Number of pages: 176
| Author(s) | Title | Year | Publication | Keywords | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hongyuan Cheng, Lihua Yin, Tianqing Zhu, Hongyu Yang, Dexin Zhu, Weixiang Jiang, Nan Wei | Pattern2Bot: A malicious server IP detection model based on self-trained heterogeneous graph neural network | 2026 | Early Access | Labeling Modeling Signal detection Training Botnet Servers IP networks Sequential analysis Conferences Security Botnet detection Self-supervised Graph neural network Command & Control service | Botnets play a key role in network attacks such as Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, spamming and click fraud. Command & Control server is an important node for botmaster to control bots and distribute attack commands. Bot disguise as normal domain requests through DNS traffic, but leave malicious records in DNS logs containing client IP, query domain, server IP and other complex interactions. This information provides important clues for detecting those botnets. In the current study, researchers detect botnets through multiple perspectives, including abstracting DNS communication records into graphs and using graph neural network models for detection. Conventional approaches often necessitate massive labeled datasets for model training, which substantially incurs training costs. Moreover, despite enriching node embeddings via topological relations, graph models often suffer performance degradation when confronted with structural semantic obfuscation from evasion techniques like double-flux. In order to understand the abstract and complex relationship patterns in DNS records while reducing label usage to lower training costs, we propose a botnet Command & Control server detection model based on DNS traffic. This is a self-training heterogeneous graph neural network model that does not require a large number of labels. By integrating the high-order relational semantics derived from multiple meta-paths with the local topologies of target nodes, the model achieves finer-grained structural awareness and semantic abstraction, thereby enhancing detection performance. We validate the effectiveness of the model in a real dataset, and the results show that the model has a better understanding of the special structure possessed by the IPs of Command & Control servers. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3741111 |
| Shuang Zheng, Xing Zhang, Michael Sheng, Haixu Wang, Wenbo Wang | Beam Hopping Low Earth Orbit Satellite Resource Allocation for Differentiated Services and Robustness Analysis under Model Attacks | 2026 | Early Access | Beams Satellites Resource management Modeling Optimization Schedules Scheduling Low earth orbit satellites Algorithms Bridges LEO satellite communications deep reinforcement learning digital twin resource allocation adversarial attack | Beam hopping (BH)-enabled Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites play a pivotal role in next-generation communication networks, providing global coverage, improving spectrum efficiency, and supporting flexible adaptation to heterogeneous service demands. To fully exploit these capabilities, artificial intelligence (AI) techniques are increasingly employed for dynamic resource allocation and power management. However, limited onboard resources and potential adversarial perturbations pose challenges to both efficiency and robustness. To address these issues, we leverage digital twin technology to accurately capture the spatio-temporal dynamics of user–satellite visibility, providing precise state information for decision-making. Building on this, we formulate a joint optimization framework for BH scheduling and power allocation as a Markov Decision Process and propose the BRIDGE—BH with Reinforcement learning incorporating Integrated Dirichlet and Gumbel-TopK Exploration—which integrates a quality of service (QoS)-driven subchannel scheduling mechanism to ensure efficient and differentiated resource allocation. The model’s robustness is systematically evaluated under three classical adversarial attacks. Simulation results demonstrate that our approach achieves superior energy efficiency, service throughput, and fairness, while the robustness analysis shows stable performance under the considered bounded adversarial perturbations. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3710750 |
| Mohammad A. Massad, Abdallah Y. Alma’aitah, Hossam S. Hassanein | A Lightweight Elevation-Angle Prediction for LEO NTNs: Analytical Guarantees and Empirical Validation | 2026 | Early Access | Modeling Satellites Low earth orbit satellites Joining processes Windows Handover Timing Trajectory Estimation Accuracy LEO NTNs elevation angle prediction autoregressive harmonic forecasting urban canyons | In Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs), rapid satellite motion creates short visibility windows and fast link transitions; in dense urban canyons, these challenges become more critical, especially when many users may require tightly timed and coordinated handover decisions. This paper presents a lightweight real-time predictor based on a Nonlinear Harmonic Autoregressive (NHAR) model that combines autoregressive memory, nonlinear curvature correction, and harmonic terms to capture orbital and diurnal patterns. All parameters are estimated in closed form, enabling fast and interpretable deployment at the network edge. A variability-aware analysis further identifies when NHAR can outperform simpler lightweight baselines and provides practical guidance for estimation-window selection. Evaluated on a year-long STK-generated dataset for dense urban canyon scenarios, NHAR achieves a mean absolute error below 3°, maintains accuracy above 90% over the full 24-hour cycle and under varying orbital conditions, and requires sub-millisecond inference time on standard CPU hardware. These results demonstrate that NHAR is a practical lightweight predictor for proactive mobility support in future LEO NTN systems. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3744447 |
| Ashesh Gaur, Sridhar Radhakrishnan, Mohammed Atiquzzaman | Inverse Packet Classification: Reconstructing Behaviorally Equivalent Rule Sets from Observed Traffic | 2026 | Early Access | Merging Labeling Modeling Accuracy Trees (botanical) Vegetation Entropy Algorithms Conferences Filtering Packet classification rule inference network policy reconstruction network and service management network telemetry k-d tree first-match semantics firewall auditing traffic analysis | Network devices classify packets with ordered rule tables, but those tables are often inaccessible. Passive reconstruction can support behavior audits, misconfiguration analysis, and policy compliance without privileged device access. We define inverse packet classification as inferring a compact rule set from observed packet headers and device actions. The goal is observational equivalence on observed traffic, not recovery of the original configuration or priority order. The problem is difficult because traffic covers only part of the header space. Packet classifiers also use first-match semantics and structured prefix or interval predicates. We propose InversePC, which combines entropy-guided k-d-tree partitioning with greedy region merging. For a dominant default action, InversePC-HiB uses a hybrid split loss, exception-only merging, and a wildcard default rule. On synthetic classifiers, accuracy reaches 100% once coverage is sufficient. On native-resolution ClassBench filters, InversePC reaches 94.1% action agreement versus 88.3% for cross-validated CART on 1,000-rule sets. At 8-bit quantization, the two methods are statistically tied (98.1% versus 98.0%). In a well-covered 250-rule setting, InversePC uses 1.20× the original rule count versus 1.32× for CART. HiB is most useful for sparse, irregular default-permit ACLs, where it uses up to 2.5× fewer rules than InversePC at 99.8% accuracy. Optimized implementation makes native-resolution reconstruction practical in seconds. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3744323 |
| Ahlem Menaceur, Hamza Drid, Mohamed Rahouti, Yasmine Medjadba, Abdellah Chehri | Priority-Aware Dual-Queue Buffering for Reactive SDN Fault Management with Reduced Loss | 2026 | Early Access | Software defined networking Joining processes Loading Fluid flow Switches Modeling Fault tolerance Management Topology Timing Software-Defined Network Fault tolerance Reactive approach Dual queue | Software-Defined Networking (SDN) provides controller-driven flexibility for network and service management, yet reactive failure recovery often suffers from a recovery gap between fault detection and the installation of updated forwarding rules. Packets arriving during this interval are vulnerable to loss, while rerouted flows may overload specific links, undermining service continuity. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a dual-priority, queue-assisted reactive recovery mechanism that integrates traffic classification and buffering at the data plane. The design assigns flows to a high-priority queue (HPQ) or a low-priority queue (LPQ), ensuring that critical traffic is preserved while the controller completes rerouting. Evaluation on a 9-switch custom topology and the 16-node NSFNET backbone demonstrates that the proposed approach reduces packet loss (from 10.3% to 5.4% in the 9-switch topology and to below 1.9% in NSFNET) and improves post-failure load distribution, decreasing congested and surcharged links by 37.6% and 20.6%, respectively, compared to conventional reactive recovery. These results highlight that priority-aware buffering during the recovery gap enhances resilience, scalability, and operational efficiency for SDN fault and service management. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3744288 |
| Ara Cho, Yeram Kang, Hyesook Lim | A New Flow Table Update Method Using Invertible Bloom Filters in SDN-IoT and SDN-IoV Environments | 2026 | Early Access | Software defined networking Fluid flow Switches Internet of Things Decoding Internet of Vehicles Costing Costs Timing Cells (biology) SDN-IoT SDN-IoV invertible Bloom filter d-IBF decoding communication overhead hardware accelerator | Reducing the communication overhead associated with flow table updates is important for software-defined networking (SDN) in dynamic Internet of Things (IoT) and Internet of Vehicles (IoV) environments, where a large number of flow entries must be installed to accommodate diverse devices and traffic flows. However, the OpenFlow protocol updates resulting in considerable communication overhead between the controller and the switches when a large number of flow entries are added or modified. To address this limitation, we propose an invertible Bloom filter (IBF)-based differential flow table synchronization method that represents the updated flow table as a compact IBF and transmits it to the switch only once. The switch reconstructs the updated flow table by decoding a difference-IBF (d-IBF), which is generated from the received IBF and the IBF constructed from its own local flow table. This differential synchronization mechanism reduces both communication overhead and update latency while preserving correct flow table reconstruction. The comparative analysis shows that the proposed method successfully reconstructs updated flow tables and reduces the communication cost by up to 49.35% compared with the conventional OpenFlow update method when installing 50 flow entries. Decoding experiments show that the proposed method sustains a decoding success rate above 99.9% for flow tables ranging from 1,000 to 1,000,000 entries. Mininet-based evaluations using OpenFlow confirm that the proposed method reduces actual control-channel communication cost in both single-switch and multi-switch environments, achieving reductions of up to 36.1% and 33.3%, respectively. Furthermore, to demonstrate the hardware implementation feasibility of the proposed method, we implement a d-IBF decoding hardware accelerator on an FPGA-based switch platform. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3743515 |
| Ke He, Muhammad Rizwan Asghar, Jeong Do Yoo, Young Hun Lee, Hyunjae Kang, Huy Kang Kim, Dan Dongseong Kim | Liuer Mihou: A Practical Grey-box Adversarial Attack against Anomaly-based Network Intrusion Detection Systems | 2026 | Early Access | Modeling Signal detection Timing Internet of Things Delays Educational institutions Detectors Optimization Labeling Self-organizing feature maps NIDS Adversarial Attacks Deep Learning | Deep learning has gained popularity as a detection algorithm for Network-based Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS) due to its expressiveness and speed. However, Deep learning algorithms are susceptible to adversarial attacks that introduce imperceptible changes to deceive the Deep learning algorithm into misclassifying the input. Existing adversarial attacks often overlook the practicality and replayability of the attack. In this paper, we present Liuer Mihou (LM), an adversarial attack designed to generate practical and replayable adversarial network packets, specifically targeting unsupervised anomaly-based NIDS deployed in Internet of Things (IoT) networks. The core concept behind LM is to leverage adversarial transferability and generate adversarial packets on a surrogate NIDS while considering predefined, semantic-preserving mutation operations to ensure practicality. To assess the effectiveness of LM, we objectively analyze its evasiveness against five general-purpose machine learning-based outlier detection algorithms (SOM, RRCF, LOF, OCSVM, and FROCC), as well as the state-of-the-art NIDS, Kitsune. Rather than claiming broad practicality, we characterize when and how packet-space attacks remain feasible: we quantify the trade-off between evasion and attack effectiveness, the distortion introduced by physical replay, and the conditions under which the attack transfers across detector families. We further show that LM’s mutation set is extensible beyond timing and size, adding TCP-window and payload-byte operators to evade a header-field-aware detector. Furthermore, we demonstrate that adversarial detectors such as Feature Squeezing and MagNet, as well as defenses designed for unsupervised anomaly detection, are largely ineffective in defending against LM. Moving beyond a theoretical setting, we conduct a replay of LM in two real IoT testbeds to analyze its practicality. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3742885 |
| Lei Liu, Yong Wang, Qian He, Junqi Chen, Yuming Liu, Baokang Zhao | Accelerating Full-Node Repair in Erasure-Coded Storage via Adaptive In-Network Aggregation | 2026 | Early Access | Maintenance engineering Bandwidth Codes Information rates Throughput Resource management Algorithms Switches Fluid flow Encoding Erasure coding fine-grained allocation innetwork aggregation distributed storage heterogeneous network | The erasure-coded data redundancy mechanism is extensively adopted in distributed storage systems to guarantee data reliability with low storage redundancy. However, recovering a failed node (full-node repair) inherently incurs high network overhead and latency. Existing full-node repair methods typically allocate tasks at block granularity, making it difficult to align each helper’s transmitted data volume with its available upload bandwidth. In addition, receiver-side download bottlenecks further limit repair throughput. To address these challenges, we propose FinRepair, a full-node repair framework that couples fine-grained task allocation with adaptive in-network aggregation (INA). FinRepair first formulates upload task allocation as a constrained max-min problem, and solves it with an iterative maximum flow-based algorithm, which determines the sub-block sizes and helper assignments. It then employs a bipartite graph-based placement strategy to scatter reconstructed blocks across storage nodes, and performs in-network aggregation for selected sub-blocks to satisfy each receiver’s download constraint. We establish a necessary and sufficient condition for upload allocations and prove the optimality of the selective in-network aggregation rule. We implement FinRepair with a Tofino programmable switch and 16 storage nodes. Experimental results show that FinRepair improves repair throughput by 16.85%–46.20% compared with state-of-the-art methods, while applying in-network aggregation to only 22.86%–32.43% of sub-blocks. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3743621 |
| Mohammad Saberi, Ali Ahmadi Esfidi, Mahdi Dolati, Naeimeh Omidvar | FlexINA: In-Network Aggregation for Accelerating Distributed Machine Learning with Flexible Routing | 2026 | Early Access | Modeling Switches Timing Routing Machine learning Training Runtime Memory Loading Topology Distributed Machine Learning Programmable Networks In-Network Computing | The growing scale and complexity of modern machine learning (ML) models have rendered distributed training indispensable. However, as model dimensions expand, communication overhead increasingly dominates the overall training time, creating a critical performance bottleneck. While techniques such as gradient compression offer partial relief, they often incur substantial computational overhead or require specialized hardware. In-network aggregation (INA) has emerged as a compelling alternative, offloading partial computations—such as gradient reduction—directly onto programmable network switches. Yet, current INA frameworks predominantly rely on rigid, static routing schemes or uncoordinated, opportunistic aggregation, fundamentally limiting their capacity to exploit the full potential of programmable data planes. To address this limitation, we formulate the Joint Scheduling-Routing for In-Network Aggregation (JINA) problem. JINA introduces a time-slotted execution model to enable fine-grained temporal scheduling synchronously with spatial routing. By leveraging source routing, it dictates perpacket forwarding paths while explicitly coordinating multi-hop partial aggregation across the network. Furthermore, we propose FlexINA, a scalable optimization framework that solves the JINA problem through a three-phase dimensionality reduction strategy: host-level pre-aggregation, topological switch filtration, and temporal window partitioning. Extensive evaluations across fifteen diverse network topologies demonstrate that FlexINA reduces the total network load by up to 8.3% compared to INA baselines, while maintaining high computational efficiency. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3740503 |
| Mohammad Khosravi, Setareh Maghsudi | A Robust Optimization Approach for Regenerator Placement in Fault-Tolerant Networks Under Discrete Cost Uncertainty | 2026 | Early Access | IP networks Costing Costs Timing Modeling Optimization Uncertainty Joining processes Fluid flow Distance measurement Survivable networks robust optimization regenerator placement integer programming | We focus on robust, survivable communication networks, where network links and nodes are affected by an uncertainty set. In this sense, any network links might fail. Besides, a signal can only travel a maximum distance before its quality falls below a certain threshold, necessitating its regeneration by regenerators installed at network nodes. In addition, the price of installing and maintaining regenerators belongs to a discrete uncertainty set. Robust optimization seeks a solution with guaranteed performance against all scenarios modeled in an uncertainty set. Thus, the problem is to find a subset of nodes with minimum cost for the placement of the regenerator, ensuring that all nodes can communicate even if a subset of network links fails. To solve the problem optimally, we propose two solution approaches, including one flow-based and one cut-based integer programming formulation, as well as their iterative exact method. Our theoretical and experimental results show the effectiveness of our methods. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3740028 |
| Tao Zhang | How to select blockchain applications for covert communication | 2026 | Early Access | Bitcoin Privacy Receivers Costing Costs Measurement Blockchains Timing Protection Security Blockchain selection Covert communication Information hiding Measurement | With characteristics like decentralization, transparency, anonymity and security, blockchain is an ideal platform for covert communication. How to select suitable blockchain platform is important to achieve secure and efficient covert communication with blockchain in practical scenarios. However, there is no systematical evaluation metrics currently. In the paper, we propose the first evaluation system with 10 key evaluation metrics from identity privacy, information stealthiness, robustness, performance and cost to systematically evaluate blockchain based covert communication schemes. Then different blockchain applications are compared with these metrics, comparative analysis shows that these blockchain applications have both advantages and disadvantages for covert communication. In the future, blockchain applications with improved privacy protection, lower latency and transaction fee can be explored in covert communication scenarios. Our work can lay the foundation and provide guidelines to assess blockchain based covert communication schemes and select blockchain applications suitable for covert communication. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3742609 |
| Messaoud Ait-Yahia, Wael Jaafar, Rami Langar | Joint Design of Blockchain-Enabled Service Placement and Task Assignment in Vehicular Fog Computing Networks | 2026 | Early Access | Delays Timing Optimization Autonomous aerial vehicles Modeling Gallium Central Processing Unit Joints Bandwidth Elementary particles Resource allocation Blockchain VNF placement task assignment vehicular fog computing PSO GA IoV | Driven by the evolution of blockchain and fog computing, vehicular networks are increasingly capable of supporting latency-sensitive applications with enhanced security and trust guarantees. However, the joint resource allocation for task offloading and blockchain services has been insufficiently investigated in existing works. To address this gap, this paper proposes a framework for jointly allocating resources of blockchain, users’ virtualized services, and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) task assignment in Vehicular Fog Computing (VFC) networks. Specifically, we formulate the optimization problem as an integer nonlinear programming model aiming to maximize the satisfaction rate of users’ service requests while minimizing the corresponding blockchain operation time under mobility, queuing, instantiation, and resource constraints. To solve it in a timely manner, we design two-stage hierarchical low-complexity solutions, namely a Particle Swarm Optimization-based Joint Blockchain-enabled Service placement and Task Assignment algorithm (PSO-JBSTA), and a Genetic Algorithm-based approach (GA-JBSTA). Through extensive simulations, we demonstrate the effectiveness of PSO-JBSTA (resp. GA-JBSTA) and their adaptability to network conditions, achieving an average 35% (resp. 24%) improvement in users’ service satisfaction rate and 9.5% (resp. 10.2%) reduction in average blockchain validation delay compared with the baselines. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3737068 |
| Taylor Henderson, Eric Osterweil, Pavan Dinesh, Robert Simon | Scalable and Robust User Deobfuscation using Pattern of Life | 2026 | Early Access | Online message boards have become increasing popular with cyber criminals and those wishing to conduct illegal acts. They are used in coordinating drug/human trafficking, terrorist activity, and distributing information from data breaches to name a few. We provide a novel method for deobfuscating message board users: Deobfuscating Using Patterns of Life (DUPOL). DUPOL uses a novel technique to take advantage of system artifacts arising from the proliferation of Public DNS. DUPOL is validated on a test bed which accurately maps the Internet to different information scopes. This provides an understanding of how DUPOL would perform if it was performed by different entities on the Internet. DUPOL is shown to be able to correctly identify message board users even when users employ privacy preserving technologies using only observable network traffic and without the need to decrypt any information. Additionally, DUPOL is shown to be robust to missing data and scalable using a novel decomposition of the NCC which removes the need for pairwise comparison. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3744089 | |
| Shyam Kumar Shrestha, Shiva Raj Pokhrel, Jonathan Kua | Adapting Large Language Models for TCP Fairness over Wi-Fi | 2026 | Early Access | Designing Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Congestion Control Algorithms (CCAs) for heterogeneous Wi-Fi networks remains a challenge due to rapidly varying delay, loss, and contention dynamics. These effects often lead to CCA incompatibility, flow unfairness, and starvation among competing TCP flows. Although Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has shown promise in mitigating these challenges, its slow convergence, high training costs, and limited generalization hinder practical deployments. In this paper, we propose TCP-LLM, a learning-augmented transport framework that leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) for compatibility-aware CCA selection. TCP-LLM encodes multivariate TCP time-series into token embeddings and performs single-step discrete CCA decisions through a lightweight LLM decision head. Parameter-efficient low-rank adaptation (LoRA) reduces the number of trainable parameters by approximately two orders of magnitude. Evaluation using traces collected from a physicalWi-Fi testbed with competing TCP Cubic, Bottleneck Bandwidth and Round-trip propagation time (BBR), and Performance-oriented Congestion Control (PCC) flows shows that TCP-LLM achieves the highest mean, geometric-mean, and minimum per-flow throughput among the evaluated schemes. TCP-LLM also exhibits faster and more stable training convergence and supports low-latency bounded inference. These results demonstrate the feasibility of LLM-based sequence adaptation for compatibility-aware transport-layer supervision under heterogeneous wireless conditions. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3739364 | |
| Yifan Zeng, Zihui Gu, Peijia Zheng, Huiyu Zhou | A Federated Semi-Supervised Framework for Data Efficiency and Privacy-Preserving Intrusion Detection in Internet of Things | 2026 | Early Access | Internet of Things Modeling Labeling Federated learning Training Servers Convolutional neural networks Intrusion detection Learning (artificial intelligence) NSL-KDD Internet of Things Edge Computing Intrusion Detection Federated Semi-Supervised Learning | The Internet of Things (IoT) forms the foundation of modern smart environments, enabling intelligent industries, homes, cities, healthcare, and autonomous systems. However, as IoT devices increasingly connect to cloud platforms and the Internet, they become highly vulnerable to network intrusions that can lead to critical data breaches and service disruptions. This paper proposes a Contrastive Federated Semi-Supervised Learning Network Intrusion Detection framework (CFedSSL-NID), specifically tailored to enhance the security of IoT communications. It addresses practical scenarios where clients lack labeled data and computational resources, and where data privacy is paramount. The CFedSSL-NID framework enhances detection performance and robustness. It uniquely achieves this by synergistically leveraging abundant, unlabeled data from distributed IoT gateways through self-supervised contrastive learning, while optimally integrating supervised signals from a central server. This dual approach enables highly accurate intrusion detection while substantially mitigating the reliance on scarce and costly labeled data. Experiments on the TON-IoT, UNSW-NB15, and NSL-KDD datasets show that CFedSSL-NID outperforms federated and centralized baselines; additional evaluations under Non-IID data, asynchronous participation, and malicious-client updates confirm robustness, while communication and edge-inference analyses indicate its deployment feasibility. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3742261 |
| Deemah H. Tashman, Soumaya Cherkaoui | Trustworthy AI-Driven Dynamic Hybrid RIS: Joint Optimization and Reward Poisoning-Resilient Control in Cognitive MISO Networks | 2026 | Early Access | Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces Reliability Optimization Security MISO Array signal processing Vectors Satellites Reflection Interference Beamforming cascaded channels cognitive radio networks deep reinforcement learning dynamic hybrid reconfigurable intelligent surfaces energy harvesting poisoning attacks | Cognitive radio networks (CRNs) are a key mechanism for alleviating spectrum scarcity by enabling secondary users (SUs) to opportunistically access licensed frequency bands without harmful interference to primary users (PUs). To address unreliable direct SU links and energy constraints common in next-generation wireless networks, this work introduces an adaptive, energy-aware hybrid reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) for underlay multiple-input single-output (MISO) CRNs. Distinct from prior approaches relying on static RIS architectures, our proposed RIS dynamically alternates between passive and active operation modes in real time according to harvested energy availability. We also model our scenario under practical hardware impairments and cascaded fading channels. We formulate and solve a joint transmit beamforming and RIS phase optimization problem via the soft actor-critic (SAC) deep reinforcement learning (DRL) method, leveraging its robustness in continuous and highly dynamic environments. Notably, we conduct the first systematic study of reward poisoning attacks on DRL agents in RIS-enhanced CRNs, and propose a lightweight, real-time defense based on reward clipping and statistical anomaly filtering. Numerical results demonstrate that the SAC-based approach consistently outperforms established DRL base-lines, and that the dynamic hybrid RIS strikes a superior trade-off between throughput and energy consumption compared to fully passive and fully active alternatives. We further show the effectiveness of our defense in maintaining SU performance even under adversarial conditions. Our results advance the practical and secure deployment of RIS-assisted CRNs, and highlight crucial design insights for energy-constrained wireless systems. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3660728 |
| Franck Messaoudi, Luhan Wang, Abdelkader Mekrache, Adlen Ksentini, Bingxuan Li, Jialei Su, Sofiane Messaoudi, Salim El Ghalbzouri | The Brewing Storm in 5G’s Data Plane: Design and Evaluation of a High-Performance eBPF/XDP-Based User Plane Function | 2026 | Early Access | Quality of service Fluid flow Kernel Information rates Throughput Planing 5G mobile communication Linux Filtering Filters 5 th Generation Mobile Networks (5G) User Plane Function (UPF) QoS Enforcement Rule (QER) Quality of Service (QoS) extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) eXpress Data Path (XDP) Traffic Control (tc) Queuing Discipline (qdisc) | This paper presents the design and implementation of a novel 5G UPF leveraging eBPF technology to meet the stringent performance and programmability requirements of emerging 6G systems. Traditional UPF implementations often struggle to balance performance, flexibility, and resource efficiency-challenges particularly critical in CPU- and I/O-constrained edge environments. The proposed eBPF-based UPF architecture mitigates these limitations by embedding core functionalities, such as packet classification, forwarding, and QoS enforcement, directly within the Linux kernel via eBPF programs attached through XDP and tc hook points. Performance evaluation using TRex demonstrates that the proposed solution achieves competitive throughput, low packet loss, and efficient CPU utilization across traffic profiles. Moreover, it maintains full compliance with 5G Core Network standards. Comparative analysis with well-established open-source UPF implementations further underscores its advantages. This work highlights the potential of eBPF as a foundational technology for building next-generation, programmable UPFs optimized for edge cloud deployments in the 6G era. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3720812 |
| Huiqi Zhao, Zhiying Sun, Gang Liu, Fang Fan | PMDC: A Prior Knowledge Constrained Multimodal Method for Encrypted Malicious Traffic Detection Integrating Difficulty Awareness and Confusion Rectification | 2026 | Early Access | Modeling Payloads Fluid flow Signal detection Training Labeling Protocols Malware Sequences Sequential analysis Encrypted malicious traffic Prior knowledge Feature fusion Difficulty-Aware Fusion Confusion Rectification | Encrypted network traffic is increasingly exploited for covert malicious activities, complicating detection. Current approaches often rely on black-box models that make limited use of domain knowledge and struggle to distinguish similar malware families, leading to performance degradation under evolving traffic distributions. We propose PMDC, a dual-branch multimodal model for encrypted malicious traffic detection at the bidirectional-flow level. PMDC uses an improved MobileViT branch to capture spatial patterns from the spatialized payload representation with header-derived priors and flow-level statistical knowledge, while a Temporal Convolutional Network (TCN) branch captures fine-grained packet-level temporal patterns and long-range behavioral dependencies. A difficulty-aware global fusion mechanism selects a single pair of branch weights on the validation set by considering classification confidence, uncertainty, and historical stability, and applies the selected weights to all test samples. Additionally, a directed low-rank residual rectification module (CARM) helps separate easily confused malware families while largely preserving the decisions for other classes. Experiments on four benchmark datasets show that PMDC achieves consistently strong accuracy, F1-score, TPR, and FPR compared with representative baselines, and shows non-catastrophic degradation under packet-loss perturbations. On a small self-built power-grid dataset collected from a single attack incident, PMDC correctly identifies all 64 malicious flows with a false positive rate of 0.73%, providing preliminary evidence of binary cross-scenario detection capability under this limited setting. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3742766 |
| Jing Zhang, Chao Luo, Rui Shao | MTG-GAN: A Masked Temporal Graph Generative Adversarial Network for Cross-Domain System Log Anomaly Detection | 2026 | Early Access | Anomaly detection Adaptation models Generative adversarial networks Feature extraction Data models Load modeling Accuracy Robustness Contrastive learning Chaos Log Anomaly Detection Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) Temporal Data Analysis | Anomaly detection of system logs is crucial for the service management of large-scale information systems. Nowadays, log anomaly detection faces two main challenges: 1) capturing evolving temporal dependencies between log events to adaptively tackle with emerging anomaly patterns, 2) and maintaining high detection capabilities across varies data distributions. Existing methods rely heavily on domain-specific data features, making it challenging to handle the heterogeneity and temporal dynamics of log data. This limitation restricts the deployment of anomaly detection systems in practical environments. In this article, a novel framework, Masked Temporal Graph Generative Adversarial Network (MTG-GAN), is proposed for both conventional and cross-domain log anomaly detection. The model enhances the detection capability for emerging abnormal patterns in system log data by introducing an adaptive masking mechanism that combines generative adversarial networks with graph contrastive learning. Additionally, MTG-GAN reduces dependency on specific data distribution and improves model generalization by using diffused graph adjacency information deriving from temporal relevance of event sequence, which can be conducive to improve cross-domain detection performance. Experimental results demonstrate that MTG-GAN outperforms existing methods on multiple real-world datasets in both conventional and cross-domain log anomaly detection. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3654642 |
| Chengsheng Pan, Yingzhi Wang, Huaifeng Shi, Lishang Qin, Xiaosong Cui | DBSDD-AQM: Dynamic Buffer Sizing-Based Deep Deterministic Active Queue Management for Edge IoT Networks | 2026 | Early Access | Delays Satellite broadcasting Internet of Things Modeling Management Learning (artificial intelligence) Information rates Throughput TCP Jitter Edge IoT networks network congestion active queue management dynamic buffer sizing deep deterministic policy gradient | Bursty heterogeneous traffic can build persistent queues at edge IoT gateways when the offered load converges on a lower-rate bottleneck. Conventional active queue management (AQM) regulates packet dropping under a fixed buffer capacity, whereas adaptive buffer sizing alone does not coordinate capacity adjustment with queue-removal control. We propose Dynamic Buffer Sizing-Based Deep Deterministic Active Queue Management (DBSDD-AQM), which combines a bounded buffersizing loop with a faster continuous queue-removal controller. DBS adjusts the admissible capacity according to sustained queue evolution, while the DDPG Actor selects packet-granular removal actions for the resident backlog. A class-aware extension maps three concurrent service classes to logical FIFO queues sharing the same dynamic physical buffer. DBSDD-AQM is implemented using an NS3-PyTorch framework. Aggregate experiments compare it with RED, ARED, PIE, CoDel, and DQN-AQM, while the class-aware evaluation additionally includes FQ-CoDel and FQ-PIE. Matched-DBS comparisons show similar throughput but different delay–loss operating points among the aggregate controllers, and component ablation distinguishes the effects of capacity adaptation and learned queue removal. Relative to a fixed 50 KB buffer, DBS reduces average queueing delay by 16.23% for UDP and 17.70% for TCP Westwood in controlled transport experiments. In the evaluated three-class overload scenarios, all classes retain nonzero throughput. Class-aware DBSDD-AQM provides stronger D- and T-class differentiation, whereas FQ-CoDel and FQ-PIE produce more uniform class-level outcomes and stronger R-class performance. The measured 95th-percentile batch-one Actor inference latency is 0.109 ms on the reported x86-64 platform. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3741334 |