Last updated: 2026-08-11 05:02 UTC
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Number of pages: 170
| Author(s) | Title | Year | Publication | Keywords | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ping He, Yu Yao, Xu Li, Yao Hu, Wei Yang | FIGAN: Diversity-Oriented Traffic Generation for Industrial Protocol Format Inference | 2026 | Early Access | Protocols Modeling Fuzzing Sequences Sequential analysis Industrial control Computers Syntactics Conferences Integrated circuits Communication system traffic Data Augmentation Generative Adversarial Networks Industrial control Inference algorithms | Protocol Format Inference is a pivotal step in the reverse engineering of proprietary protocols, yet its effectiveness is constrained by the scarcity of high-quality training data. In industrial control systems, the rigid and cyclical nature of traffic results in a "long-tail" distribution, where diverse functional scenarios are severely underrepresented. Existing generative approaches, primarily designed for fuzzing or intrusion detection, fail to resolve the intrinsic conflict between syntactic validity and semantic diversity required for protocol format inference. To bridge this gap, we propose FIGAN, a stage-wise decoupled generative framework tailored to synthesize high-fidelity traffic for protocol format inference. By isolating flexible distribution learning from rigid syntax enforcement, FIGAN liberates the generative process to extrapolate novel payload variations from a continuous latent space, effectively surmounting the limitations of sparse seed data. Specifically, the framework integrates three synergistic modules: first, heuristic pre-processing that constructs semantic templates as a prior knowledge base; second, a generative adversarial architecture optimized via discrete relaxation to explore high-dimensional payload patterns independently of syntax rules; and finally, a closed-loop verification mechanism that performs syntactic calibration and functional validation against simulated device responses. Evaluations on four real-world protocols (Modbus TCP, S7Comm, Omron FINS, and DNP3) demonstrate that FIGAN significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines. The source code has been open-sourced https://github.com/MissHP111/FIGAN. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3717268 |
| Alessandro Buratto, Marco Levorato, Leonardo Badia | DCP: a TCP-Inspired Domain Adaptation in Dynamic Data Drift | 2026 | Early Access | Modeling Timing Costing Costs TCP Internet of Things Linear approximation Q-learning Protocols Licenses Online Domain Adaptation Data Drift TCP Edge computing Internet of Things | Mobile devices are affected by computing limitations, battery life, and connectivity issues, making it difficult to execute complex machine learning models or frequently transmit data. These challenges hinder real-time adaptability in dynamic environments. To tackle these issues, we introduce a framework between mobile devices and edge servers, where the edge server assists mobile devices by continuously fine-tuning a lightweight classifier to keep up with changes in data patterns. Our approach, called the Drift Control Protocol (DCP), is inspired by how TCP manages network congestion. Just as TCP interprets packet loss as network congestion and throttles transmission, DCP treats spikes in classification error as congestion and implements an additive increase multiplicative decrease mechanism to dynamically control the frequency of model retraining, optimizing the trade-off between the classifier update rate and the communication overhead with the edge server. It dynamically adjusts the update frequency based on how the data distribution shifts and controls how many samples the mobile device sends to the edge server, while improving overall accuracy. We test different versions of DCP on both synthetic and real-world datasets. Our results show that DCP procedures obtain better tradeoffs in mean error and communication costs when compared with constant interval updates policies.We demonstrate this capability across real-world data and parametrized synthetic datasets explicitly designed to simulate both bursty and gradual drift scenarios. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3719234 |
| Qing Wu, Xijia Dong, Leyou Zhang, Yue Lei, Zilong Yan | Cloud-Assisted Verifiable and Updatable Private Set Union Protocol for Enhancing Network Intrusion Detection | 2026 | Early Access | Protocols Clouds Security Privacy Cloud computing Timing Receivers Modeling IP networks Servers Network Intrusion Detection IP Blacklist Privacy Preservation Private Set Union Cloud Computing Verifiability Updatability | As network intrusion detection systems (NIDS) play an increasingly critical role in large-scale network environments, multiple organizations, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and security service providers often maintain independent IP blacklists. Due to the dynamic nature of malicious IP addresses and their cross-organizational propagation, inter-organizational blacklist sharing is essential for improving network intrusion detection. However, traditional blacklist exchange mechanisms risk exposing participants’ complete blacklist information, and curious organizations may infer another organization’s detection strategies from the shared IP intersection, leading to privacy breaches.To address this issue, this paper proposes a Cloud-Assisted Verifiable and Updatable Private Set Union (CVU-PSU) protocol, which leverages the multi-query Reverse Private Membership Test (mq-RPMT) protocol and Oblivious Transfer (OT) technology to ensure privacy-preserving inter-organizational blacklist sharing. The protocol utilizes cloud computing to reduce the computational and communication overhead of participants in the mq-RPMT protocol while incorporating a verification mechanism to ensure the correctness of the cloud’s returned results. Furthermore, the protocol supports real-time blacklist updates, enabling adaptation to rapidly changing malicious IP addresses.Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed protocol achieves efficient inter-organizational blacklist sharing with low communication and computational costs while preserving privacy, thereby enhancing the real-time performance and accuracy of network intrusion detection systems. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3716071 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Masoumeh Safkhani, Mohammad Reza Servati, Fatemeh Rezaei | HEIoT: A Novel Three-Factor Authentication Protocol for Enhanced Security in IoT and Next-Generation Networks | 2026 | Early Access | Authentication Internet of Things Protocols Security Smart devices Elliptic curve cryptography Modeling Error correction codes Biometrics Costing of Yuan et al.’s Protocol Authentication Multi-factor authentication Desynchronization attack Insider adversary Traceability attack User impersonation attack Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) | The Internet has a significant impact on contemporary society, enabling a wide range of applications, including advanced cellular networks such as 4G, 5G, and 6G. Since these communications occur over shared or open channels, ensuring secure data exchange is of critical importance, as any weakness in the communication infrastructure may compromise system reliability. Device authentication in the Internet of Things (IoT) and user authentication in smart environments, such as smart homes, remain fundamental security challenges. As the first line of defense, authentication mechanisms must be robust, since vulnerabilities at this stage can expose the entire system to serious threats. To address these challenges, numerous authentication schemes based on cryptographic primitives, including Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), have been proposed. In this paper, we present a comprehensive security analysis of an ECC-based three-factor authentication protocol proposed by Yuan et al. Our analysis shows that the protocol is vulnerable to desynchronization, user impersonation, traceability, and insider attacks, all of which succeed with probability 1 by exploiting at most two protocol phases. To mitigate these weaknesses, we propose an improved authentication scheme, called HEIoT. The proposed scheme is formally analyzed under the Real-or-Random (RoR) model to establish session-key security and is further verified using the Scyther tool. Moreover, a Python-based implementation is provided to demonstrate the practicality of the proposed protocol. Comparative results indicate that HEIoT achieves stronger security while maintaining acceptable communication, computational, and storage overhead. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3702041 |
| S A Harish, S Vignesh, Divya Pathak, Anil Kumar Sharma, Praveen Tammana | Anomaly Detection in In-Network Fast ReRoute Systems | 2026 | Early Access | Fluid flow Planing Delays Windows Signal detection Memory Anomaly detection Conferences Timing Testing In-network processing Anomaly detection Pro-grammable data planes Network security Software-Defined Networks P4 | High-speed programmable data planes provide opportunities to implement data-driven fast reroute systems that quickly adapt to varying network conditions (e.g., congestion, failures) and improve network performance. The core of these systems has packet-processing algorithms running in the data plane that continuously look for traffic patterns (e.g., too many retransmissions) specific to a network condition (e.g., link failure) and take appropriate action (e.g., reroute). Despite their benefits, they also increase the potential attack surface. Adversaries can generate malicious traffic patterns resembling those anticipated by a fast reroute system and trick the system. Doing so would lead to poor network performance due to incorrect reroute decisions. In this paper, we propose a mechanism to detect whether the fast reroute systems are under the influence of malicious traffic patterns. Our key idea is to model the expected behavior using benign traffic features and use the model as a reference to determine whether the system is under the influence of adversaries. Using realistic attack traces, we demonstrate attacks on two fast reroute systems and successfully detect those attacks using the proposed detection mechanism. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3715353 |
| Wei Sai, Yihui Lu, Xin Guo | A Privacy-Preserving Security Framework for Multi-Party Data Fusion Computing Based on Homomorphic Encryption | 2026 | Early Access | Security Protocols Information rates Modeling Throughput Noise Multi-party computation Polynomials Federated learning Homomorphic encryption Homomorphic Encryption Secure Multi-Party Computation Threshold Decryption Privacy-Preserving Data Fusion Decentralized Computing Framework | To prevent plaintext exposure in multi-party collaborative computing, this paper proposes a distributed secure multi-party computation protocol based on the Cheon-Kim-Kim-Song (CKKS) homomorphic encryption scheme. Data is encoded and encrypted at the source into CKKS complex polynomial ciphertext, enabling vectorized fusion under shared evaluation keys and threshold decryption in a decentralized architecture without a trusted central authority. Experiments on heterogeneous multi-institution datasets demonstrate low numerical error (9.0×10⁻⁷ at polynomial order 2¹⁶ and depth 12), effective scalability (throughput increasing from 1.12×10⁵ to 1.32×10⁵ ops/s and latency decreasing from 56 ms to 38 ms as nodes scale from 4 to 16), and strong robustness (70% decryption success at a 60% threshold and 95% recovery under malicious interference), showing that the framework achieves efficient computation with strict privacy protection for cross-party data fusion. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3717343 |
| Soonbeom Kwon, Yusu Noh, Youngwoo Jang, Illyoung Choi, Byungchul Tak, In-geol Chun, Young-Kyoon Suh | Scalable and Robust Resource Provisioning via Adaptive Task Scheduling for Edge Devices | 2026 | Early Access | Schedules Scheduling Cloning Timing Educational institutions Computers Transcoding Videos Tail Edge computing Edge devices Edge server Resource augmentation Task distribution Kubernetes | Edge devices, such as wearables, drones, and CCTV systems, are vital for real-time data collection in urban intelligence. However, their limited computational and storage capacities pose significant challenges. While offloading to public clouds offers scalability, it often incurs high latency and operational costs. Conversely, centralizing workloads on edge servers may result in the underutilization of high-performance edge devices. To address these limitations, we introduce ERPF, a Kubernetes-based Edge Resource Provisioning Framework that augments the capabilities of heterogeneous edge environments. ERPF orchestrates dynamic volume provisioning, GPU-aware resource allocation, execution context migration, and adaptive task distribution to improve system flexibility and efficiency. Building on this, we propose a novel adaptive task scheduling technique, termed eATS, composed of three key mechanisms: (i) Partition Smoothing Scheme for stable task granularity control, (ii) Resilient Edge Reintegration for failure detection and task reassignment, and (iii) Competitive Task Cloning for speculative execution with fastest-result commitment. The proposed eATS scheme reduces task execution time by up to 27.6%, lowers partition size variability by 8.7×, and improves scheduling robustness across heterogeneous edge devices over the baseline. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3694238 |
| 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 |
| Jing Mei, Jinglei Xu, Zhao Tong, Keqin Li | Energy-Aware Multi-UAV Collaboration for Data Collection and Trajectory Planning with MADDPG | 2026 | Early Access | Autonomous aerial vehicles Energy Timing Data collection Optimization Modeling Algorithms Internet of Things Convergence Educational institutions Data Collection Trajectory planning Multi-Agent Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (MADDPG) | Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are pivotal for facilitating data collection in emergency scenarios. Despite the potential of Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning (MADRL) in coordinating such systems, existing researches struggle to resolve the high-dimensional coupling of data collection, trajectory planning, and energy scheduling under strict collision avoidance and Return-To-Base (RTB) constraints. This paper proposes a energy-aware cooperative MADRL framework designed to maximize data collection utility under energy constraints. Specifically, we employ a Multi-Agent Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (MADDPG) approach featuring a Centralized Training with Decentralized Execution (CTDE) design and a multi-objective reward mechanism to balance conflicting optimization goals. Extensive simulations validate the advantages of the proposed framework over leading baselines. Notably, the algorithm exhibits significant quantitative advantages in complex high-load scenarios. These outcomes prove that our method achieves higher task completion rates while strictly adhering to RTB and safety protocols. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3721502 |
| Martine S. Lenders, Carsten Bormann, Thomas C. Schmidt, Matthias Wählisch | A Leaner and Faster Web: How CBOR Can Improve Dynamic Content Encoding in JSON and DNS over HTTPS | 2026 | Early Access | Internet of Things Encoding Internet Arrays Gain Recording Tagging Timing HTTP Decoding CBOR World Wide Web JSON DNS application/dns+cbor Internet measurements | The Internet community has taken major efforts to decrease latency on the World Wide Web with significant improvements in accelerating content transport and in compressing static content. Less attention, however, has been dedicated to compression of dynamic content. Such content is commonly provided by JSON and DNS over HTTPS. Dynamic content objects continue to grow in size, which increases latency and fosters the digital inequality. In this paper, we propose to mitigate this increase by utilizing Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR), a standard originally designed for the constrained Internet of Things (IoT) to restrict packet sizes and enable efficient encoding of data objects. We provide protocol design and three new data sets for the evaluation of dynamic content, DNS, and the loading of websites. Our key findings are the following: (i) Switching the data representation from JSON to CBOR reduces data by up to 80%. This size reduction can decrease loading times by up to 13.8% when downloading large objects—even in local setups. (ii) Enabling CBOR for DNS over HTTPS (DoH) and DNS over CoAP (DoC) reduces packet sizes significantly. Compressing only names combined with unpacked CBOR achieves maximum gain of 52.2%, using more complex but still lightweight Packed CBOR allows minimizing packets by up to 95.5%. Our lean decoder for name compression can fit into as little as 314 bytes of build size. Our results clearly show the potential of CBOR outside of IoT scenarios. Parts of this research have already influenced work within the IETF. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3722114 |
| 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 |
| Ebrima Jaw, Moritz Müller, Cristian Hesselman, Lambert J. M. Nieuwenhuis | Reproducibility Study and Assessment of the Evolution of Serial BGP Hijacking Events | 2026 | Vol. 23, Issue | Internet Routing Border Gateway Protocol Routing protocols Security IP networks Cloud computing Autonomous systems Authorization Scalability Border gateway protocol (BGP) prefix hijacks RPKI regional internet registries (RIR) serial hijackers | The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the Internet’s most crucial protocol for efficient global connectivity and traffic routing. However, BGP is well known to be susceptible to route hijacks and leaks. Route hijacks are the intentional or unintentional illegitimate announcements of network resources that can compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of communication systems. In the past, the so-called “serial hijackers” have hijacked Internet resources multiple times, some lasting for several months or years. So far, only the paper “Profiling BGP Serial Hijackers” has explicitly focused on these repeat offenders, and it dates back to 2019. Back then, they had to process large amounts of BGP announcements to find a few potential serial hijackers. In this paper, we revisit the profiling of serial hijackers. We reproduced the 2019 study and showed that we can identify potential offenders with less data while achieving similar accuracy. Our study confirms that there has been no significant increase in the evolution of serial hijacking activities in the last five years. We then extend their research, further analyze the characteristics of the serial hijackers, and show that most of the alleged serial hijackers are still active on the Internet. We also find that 22.9% of the hijacks violated RPKI objects but were still widely propagated, and that even MANRS participants were among the propagating networks. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3671613 |
| Shankar K. Ghosh, Souvik Deb, Rishi Balamurugan, A. B. Santhosh | Exploring the Conditional Effect of RLF on Handover Failure Based on ns-3 Under Stochastic Channel Condition | 2026 | Vol. 23, Issue | Handover Correlation Long Term Evolution Macrocell networks Rayleigh channels Analytical models Topology Signal to noise ratio Stochastic processes Network topology Radio link failure handover failure non-standalone deployment 5G optimal parameter exploration ns-3 simulation | A Key component of Handover failure (HOF) in Fifth generation (5G) cellular network is the underlying radio link failure (RLF) event; existing model based analyses of HOF have not adequately explored this dependency. Moreover, HOF as a function of user mobility necessitates models that incorporate spatio-temporal correlation that has been largely ignored. In this work, based on ns-3 simulation, we characterize the relationship between RLF and HOF considering the effects of handover parameters (i.e., hysteresis (Hys), time-to-trigger (TTT), A2 threshold, A4 threshold) and RLF parameters (i.e., out-of-synch threshold ( $Q_{out}$ ), out-of-synch indication (N310), in-synch indication (N311) and RLF timer (T310)) for correlated RSRP samples. The study has been carried out for different kinds of handovers in Non-Standalone (NSA) deployment of 5G. Our study reveals that optimal settings of handover parameters and RLF parameters to optimize HOF are actually constrained by the correlation characteristics of the prevailing channels. Comparison of simulation results with an existing semi-analytic model based analysis shows the novelty of the proposed ns-3 simulation methodology in capturing the cumulative impact of all the aforementioned factors in causing HOF. This study will help the mobile operators in choosing optimal RLF and handover parameters to minimize HOF under different UE velocities and fading scenarios. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3672646 |
| Shaohui Gong, Luohao Tang, Jianjiang Wang, Quan Chen, Cheng Zhu | A Key Node Set Analysis Method for Regional Service Denial in Mega-Constellation Networks | 2026 | Vol. 23, Issue | Satellites Measurement Analytical models Robustness Collaboration Satellite constellations Protection Degradation Correlation Spatiotemporal phenomena Mega-constellation networks regional service service denial key node set temporal networks mixed-integer programming | Mega-constellation networks (MCNs) face the significant threats of regional service denial attacks. To improve the robustness of regional services in MCNs against such attacks, a cost-effective approach is to identify key node sets for targeted protection efforts. This paper formally defines the key node set analysis problem for regional service denial in MCNs and develops a comprehensive solution framework. First, we develop a regional service capability analysis model that considers the dynamic collaboration of multiple satellites within regional communication service scenarios in MCNs, alongside a temporal network model for their collaborative relationships. Next, we design a multi-satellite criticality metric that quantifies the multi-dimensional impacts of satellite node set failures on regional service capabilities. Building on these, we construct a mixed-integer programming-based key node set analysis model to achieve precise identification of key node sets. Finally, simulation experiments are conducted to verify and analyze the proposed methods, providing insights to enhance the robustness of regional services in MCNs. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3672157 |
| Rong Jiang, Yulin Li, Xuetao Pu, Xueke Wang, Yukun Xue | A Contract Data Sharing Model Based on Consortium Blockchain and Local Differential Privacy | 2026 | Vol. 23, Issue | Differential privacy Blockchains Computational modeling Data models Computational efficiency Smart contracts Servers Protection Data aggregation Collaboration Blockchain local differential privacy node trust privacy protection data sharing | Privacy-preserving and sharing for contract data are crucial for enterprise collaboration. However, current approaches combining blockchain and differential privacy face challenges including high computational costs, low data processing efficiency, and trust issues in decentralized privacy mechanisms. To address this, we propose a federated blockchain model based on multi-dimensional local differential privacy. A Multi-Dimensional Randomized Response (MDRR) mechanism is designed to protect privacy while retaining internal attribute correlations. Secondly, we construct a hybrid computation mechanism that integrates consortium blockchain and differential privacy, enabling on-chain scheduling with off-chain efficient computation, thereby significantly reducing computational overhead. Furthermore, we introduce a Trust-Utility Synergistic Optimization (TUSO) mechanism to enhance reliability by combining trust scores and utility. Experiments show superior accuracy, reduced error, and improved efficiency. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3672462 |
| Amin Mohajer, Abbas Mirzaei, Mostafa Darabi, Xavier Fernando | Joint SLA-Aware Task Offloading and Adaptive Service Orchestration With Graph-Attentive Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning | 2026 | Vol. 23, Issue | Quality of service Resource management Observability Training Delays Job shop scheduling Dynamic scheduling Bandwidth Vehicle dynamics Thermal stability Edge intelligence network slicing QoS-aware scheduling graph attention networks adaptive resource allocation | Coordinated service offloading is essential to meet Quality-of-Service (QoS) targets under non-stationary edge traffic. Yet conventional schedulers lack dynamic prioritization, causing deadline violations for delay-sensitive, lower-priority flows. We present PRONTO, a multi-agent framework with centralized training and decentralized execution (CTDE) that jointly optimizes SLA-aware offloading and adaptive service orchestration. PRONTO builds on Twin Delayed Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (TD3) and incorporates spatiotemporal, topology-aware graph attention with top-K masking and temperature scaling to encode neighborhood influence at linear coordination cost. Gated Recurrent Units (GRUs) filter temporal features, while a hybrid reward couples task urgency, SLA satisfaction, and utilization costs. A priority-aware slicing policy divides bandwidth and compute between latency-critical and throughput-oriented flows. To improve robustness, we employ stability regularizers (temporal smoothing and confidence-weighted neighbor alignment), mitigating action jitter under bursts. Extensive evaluations show superior QoS and channel utilization, with up to 27.4% lower service delay and over 18% higher SLA Satisfaction Rate (SSR) compared with strong baselines. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3673188 |
| Shi Dong, Fuxiang Zhao, Longhui Shu, Junjie Huang | Android Zero-Day Guard: Zero-Shot Malware Detection Using Deep Learning and Generative Models | 2026 | Vol. 23, Issue | Malware Feature extraction Accuracy Zero shot learning Smart phones Generative adversarial networks Computational modeling Data models Convolutional neural networks Application programming interfaces Android zero-day malware zero-shot learning Wasserstein generative adversarial network malware detection | This paper proposes an Android-oriented zero-day malware detection method named “Android Zero-Day Guard.” By integrating deep neural networks with zero-shot learning, this approach is capable of identifying emerging threats without prior exposure to malicious samples. The method converts APK files into images and extracts deep features, enabling effective capture of behavioral malware patterns. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves a precision of 94.93%, a recall of 93.75%, and an F1-score of 94.28% across multiple malware families. Without relying on dynamic analysis, it exhibits strong detection capability and generalization performance, making it well-suited for the early identification of emerging threats. While the model performs strongly on benchmark datasets, continuous validation on the latest families is essential for deployment in a rapidly evolving threat landscape. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3671305 |
| Yuanzhen Jiang, Yaqiong Liu, Xidian Wang, Nan Cheng, Zihan Jia, Duo Shi, Zhe Lv, Zhouyuan Li, Yan Zhang | Entity-Level Autoregressive Relational Triple Extraction Toward Knowledge Graph Construction for Network Operation and Maintenance | 2026 | Vol. 23, Issue | Knowledge graphs Tagging Maintenance Electronic mail Video sequences Vectors Telecommunications Soft sensors Semantics Matrix converters Network operation and maintenance knowledge graph relational triple extraction segmented entity autoregressive sequence tagging task BERT segmented-BIO | With the significant increase of communication network scales, intelligent Network Operation and Maintenance (NOM) becomes essential. Knowledge Graphs (KGs) are a key enabler for intelligent NOM, and Relational Triple Extraction (RTE) plays a critical role in KG construction. However, most existing RTE researches rely on general-domain corpora, with limited exploration into the specialized domain. In this paper, we identify a novel challenge in Chinese NOM corpus — Segmented Entity, which has garnered little attention in prior works. To address it, this paper proposes an Entity-level Autoregressive RTE (EARTE) method, which incorporates an innovative Segmented-BIO (Begin, Inside, Outside) tagging scheme. Furthermore, we construct the CMIM23-NOM1-RA, the first high-quality restricted domain RTE dataset for NOM. Throughout the experimentation, we meticulously reproduce all baselines and provide a comprehensive analysis. The results show that EARTE achieves the best performance on CMIM23-NOM1-RA. EARTE’s F1 scores surpass those of the best-performing baselines by 0.4%, 2.7%, and 0.8% under the strict criterion, the lenient criterion, and the setting focusing only on segmented entities, respectively. Finally, our codes, dataset, and reproduction guidelines are publicly available at: https://github.com/JYzzzzzz/PEAR-RTE | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3671463 |