Biblio

FastChain is a simulator built in NS-3 which simulates the networked battlefield scenario with military applications, connecting tankers, soldiers and drones to form Internet-of-Battlefield-Things (IoBT). Computing, storage and communication resources in IoBT are limited during certain situations in IoBT. Under these circumstances, these resources should be carefully combined to handle the task to accomplish the mission. FastChain simulator uses Sharding approach to provide an efficient solution to combine resources of IoBT devices by identifying the correct and the best set of IoBT devices for a given scenario. Then, the set of IoBT devices for a given scenario collaborate together for sharding enabled Blockchain technology. Interested researchers, policy makers and developers can download and use the FastChain simulator to design, develop and evaluate blockchain enabled IoBT scenarios that helps make robust and trustworthy informed decisions in mission-critical IoBT environment.

5G has received significant interest from commercial as well as defense industries. However, resiliency in 5G remains a major concern for its use in military and defense applications. In this paper, we explore physical layer resiliency enhancements for 5G and use narrow-band Internet of Things (NB-IoT) as a study case. Two physical layer modifications, frequency hopping, and direct sequence spreading, are analyzed from the standpoint of implementation and performance. Simulation results show that these techniques are effective to harden the resiliency of the physical layer to interference and jamming. A discussion of protocol considerations for 5G and beyond is provided based on the results.

Recently deep learning has demonstrated much success within the fields of image and natural language processing, facial recognition, and computer vision. The success is attributed to large, accessible databases and deep learning's ability to learn highly accurate models. Thus, deep learning is being investigated as a viable end-to-end approach to digital communications design. This work investigates the use of adversarial deep learning to ensure that a radio can communicate covertly, via Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS), with another while a third (the adversary) is actively attempting to detect, intercept and exploit their communications. The adversary's ability to detect and exploit the DSSS signals is hindered by: (i) generating a set of spreading codes that are balanced and result in low side lobes as well as (ii) actively adapting the encoding scheme. Lastly, DSSS communications performance is assessed using energy constrained devices to accurately portray IoT and IoBT device limitations.

This paper proposes a generic SATCOM control loop in a generic multivector structure to facilitate predictive analysis for achieving resiliency under time varying circumstances. The control loop provides strategies and actions in the context of game theory to optimize the resources for SATCOM networks. Details of the theoretic game and resources optimization approaches are discussed in the paper.

In the 21st century, each country must make decisions on how to utilize modern technologies to maximize benefits and minimize repercussions. For example, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) needs to be able to share information efficiently with its allies while simultaneously preventing unwarranted access or attacks. These attacks pose a threat to the national security of the United States, but proper use of the cyberspace provides countless benefits. The aim of this paper is to explore Identity and Access Management (IdAM) technologies that the Department of Defense can use in joint operations with allies that will allow efficient information-sharing and enhance security. To this end, we have created a methodology and a model for evaluating Identity and Access Management technologies that the Department of Defense can use in joint operations with other nations, with a specific focus on Japan and Australia. To evaluate these systems, we employed an approach that incorporates Political, Operational, Economic and Technical (POET) factors. Governance protocols, technological solutions, and political factors were first thoroughly reviewed and then used to construct an evaluation model to formally assess Identity and Access Management alternatives. This model provides systematic guidance on how the Department of Defense can improve their use of Identity and Access Management systems in the future.

Recently, the armed forces want to bring the Internet of Things technology to improve the effectiveness of military operations in battlefield. So the Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) has entered our view. And due to the high processing latency and low reliability of the “combat cloud” network for IoBT in the battlefield environment, in this paper , a novel “combat cloud-fog” network architecture for IoBT is proposed. The novel architecture adds a fog computing layer which consists of edge network equipment close to the users in the “combat-cloud” network to reduce latency and enhance reliability. Meanwhile, since the computing capability of the fog equipment are weak, it is necessary to implement distributed computing in the “combat cloud-fog” architecture. Therefore, the distributed computing load balancing problem of the fog computing layer is researched. Moreover, a distributed generalized diffusion strategy is proposed to decrease latency and enhance the stability and survivability of the “combat cloud-fog” network system. The simulation result indicates that the load balancing strategy based on generalized diffusion algorithm could decrease the task response latency and support the efficient processing of battlefield information effectively, which is suitable for the “combat cloud- fog” network architecture.

Physical layer security has a paramount importance in tactical wireless networks. Traditional approaches may not fulfill all requirements, demanding additional sophisticated techniques. Thus, Combined Interference and Communications (CIC) emerges as a strategy against message interception in Cognitive Radio Military Networks (CRMN). Since CIC adopts an interference approach under specific CRMN requirements and characteristics, it saves great energy and reduces the receiver detection factor when compared to previous proposals in the literature. However, previous CIC analyses were conducted under vaguely realistic channel models. Thus, the focus of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, we identify more realistic channel models to achieve tactical network scenario channel parameters. Additionally, we use such parameters to evaluate CIC suitability to increase CRMN physical layer security. Numerical experiments and emulations illustrate potential impairments on previous work due to the adoption of unrealistic channel models, concluding that CIC technique remains as an upper limit to increase physical layer security in CRMN.

Starting from a common fictional scenario, simulated data sources and a set of measurements will feed two different visualization techniques with the aim to make a comparative analysis. Both visualization techniques described in this paper use the operational picture concept, deemed as the most appropriate tool for military commanders and their staff to achieve cyber situational awareness and to understand the cyber defence implications in operations. Cyber Common Operational Picture (CyCOP) is a tool developed by Universitat Politècnica de València in collaboration with the Spanish Ministry of Defence whose objective is to generate the Cyber Hybrid Situational Awareness (CyHSA). Royal Military Academy in Belgium developed a 3D Operational Picture able to display mission critical elements intuitively using a priori defined domain-knowledge. A comparative analysis will assist researchers in their way to progress solutions and implementation aspects.

In many hostile military environments for instance war zone, unfriendly nature, etc., the systems perform on the specially promoted mode and nature which they tolerate the defined system network architecture. Preparation of Disruption-Tolerant systems (DTN) enhances the network between the remote devices which provided to the soldiers in the war zone, this situation conveys the reliable data transmission under scanner. Cipher text approach are based on the attribute based encryption which mainly acts on the attributes or role of the users, which is a successful cryptographic strategy to maintain the control issues and also allow reliable data transfer. Specially, the systems are not centralized and have more data constrained issues in the systems, implementing the Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CP-ABE) was an important issue, where this strategy provides the new security and data protection approach with the help of the Key Revocation, Key Escrows and collaboration of the certain attributes with help of main Key Authorities. This paper mainly concentrates on the reliable data retrieval system with the help of CP-ABE for the Disruption-Tolerant Networks where multiple key authorities deal with respective attributes safely and securely. We performed comparison analysis on existing schemes with the recommended system components which are configured in the respective decentralized tolerant military system for reliable data retrieval.

This document paper presents a critical and condensed analyze on series of devices that are intended for the military field, making an overview analysis of the technical solutions presented and that identifying those aspects that are really important for the military field or that offering a new approach. We currently have a wide range of medical devices that can be adapted for use in the military, but this adaptation must follow some well-defined aspects. A device that does not offer 100% reliability will be difficult to adopt in a military system, where mistakes are not allowed.

Mobile military networks are uniquely challenging to build and maintain, because of their wireless nature and the unfriendliness of the environment, resulting in unreliable and capacity limited performance. Currently, most tactical networks implement TCP/IP, which was designed for fairly stable, infrastructure-based environments, and requires sophisticated and often application-specific extensions to address the challenges of the communication scenario. Information Centric Networking (ICN) is a clean slate networking approach that does not depend on stable connections to retrieve information and naturally provides support for node mobility and delay/disruption tolerant communications - as a result it is particularly interesting for tactical applications. However, despite ICN seems to offer some structural benefits for tactical environments over TCP/IP, a number of challenges including naming, security, performance tuning, etc., still need to be addressed for practical adoption. This document, prepared within NATO IST-161 RTG, evaluates the effectiveness of Named Data Networking (NDN), the de facto standard implementation of ICN, in the context of tactical edge networks and its potential for adoption.

Machine learning (ML) models are increasingly being used in the development of Malware Detection Systems. Existing research in this area primarily focuses on developing new architectures and feature representation techniques to improve the accuracy of the model. However, recent studies have shown that existing state-of-the art techniques are vulnerable to adversarial machine learning (AML) attacks. Among those, data poisoning attacks have been identified as a top concern for ML practitioners. A recent study on clean-label poisoning attacks in which an adversary intentionally crafts training samples in order for the model to learn a backdoor watermark was shown to degrade the performance of state-of-the-art classifiers. Defenses against such poisoning attacks have been largely under-explored. We investigate a recently proposed clean-label poisoning attack and leverage an ensemble-based Nested Training technique to remove most of the poisoned samples from a poisoned training dataset. Our technique leverages the relatively large sensitivity of poisoned samples to feature noise that disproportionately affects the accuracy of a backdoored model. In particular, we show that for two state-of-the art architectures trained on the EMBER dataset affected by the clean-label attack, the Nested Training approach improves the accuracy of backdoor malware samples from 3.42% to 93.2%. We also show that samples produced by the clean-label attack often successfully evade malware classification even when the classifier is not poisoned during training. However, even in such scenarios, our Nested Training technique can mitigate the effect of such clean-label-based evasion attacks by recovering the model's accuracy of malware detection from 3.57% to 93.2%.

Wireless communications networks are an integral part of intelligent systems that enhance the automation of various activities and operations embarked by humans. For example, the development of intelligent devices imbued with sensors leverages emerging technologies such as machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), which have proven to enhance military operations through communication, control, intelligence gathering, and situational awareness. However, growing concerns in cybersecurity imply that attackers are always seeking to take advantage of the widened attack surface to launch adversarial attacks which compromise the activities of legitimate users. To address this challenge, we leverage on deep learning (DL) and the principle of cyber-deception to propose a method for defending wireless networks from the activities of jammers. Specifically, we use DL to regulate the power allocated to users and the channel they use to communicate, thereby luring jammers into attacking designated channels that are considered to guarantee maximum damage when attacked. Furthermore, by directing its energy towards the attack on a specific channel, other channels are freed up for actual transmission, ensuring secure communication. Through simulations and experiments carried out, we conclude that this approach enhances security in wireless communication systems.

The next generation military environment requires a delay-tolerant network for sharing data and resources using an interoperable computerized, Command, Control, Communications, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) infrastructure. In this paper, we propose a new distributed SDN (Software-Defined Networks) architecture for tactical environments based on distributed cloudlets. The objective is to reduce the end-to-end delay of tactical traffic flow, and improve management capabilities, allowing flexible control and network resource allocation. The proposed SDN architecture is implemented over three layers: decentralized cloudlets layer where each cloudlet has its SDRN (Software-Defined Radio Networking) controller, decentralized MEC (Mobile Edge Computing) layer with an SDN controller for each MEC, and a centralized private cloud as a trusted third-part authority controlled by a centralized SDN controller. The experimental validations are done via relevant and realistic tactical scenarios based on strategic traffics loads, i.e., Tactical SMS (Short Message Service), UVs (Unmanned Vehicle) patrol deployment and high bite rate ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) video.

In military operation or emergency response situations, very frequently a commander will need to assemble and dynamically manage Community of Interest (COI) mobile groups to achieve a critical mission assigned despite failure, disconnection or compromise of COI members. We combine the designs of COI hierarchical management for scalability and reconfigurability with COI dynamic trust management for survivability and intrusion tolerance to compose a scalable, reconfigurable, and survivable COI management protocol for managing COI mission-oriented mobile groups in heterogeneous mobile environments. A COI mobile group in this environment would consist of heterogeneous mobile entities such as communication-device-carried personnel/robots and aerial or ground vehicles operated by humans exhibiting not only quality of service (QoS) characters, e.g., competence and cooperativeness, but also social behaviors, e.g., connectivity, intimacy and honesty. A COI commander or a subtask leader must measure trust with both social and QoS cognition depending on mission task characteristics and/or trustee properties to ensure successful mission execution. In this paper, we present a dynamic hierarchical trust management protocol that can learn from past experiences and adapt to changing environment conditions, e.g., increasing misbehaving node population, evolving hostility and node density, etc. to enhance agility and maximize application performance. With trust-based misbehaving node detection as an application, we demonstrate how our proposed COI trust management protocol is resilient to node failure, disconnection and capture events, and can help maximize application performance in terms of minimizing false negatives and positives in the presence of mobile nodes exhibiting vastly distinct QoS and social behaviors.

In military operation or emergency response situations, very frequently a commander will need to assemble and dynamically manage Community of Interest (COI) mobile groups to achieve a critical mission assigned despite failure, disconnection or compromise of COI members. We combine the designs of COI hierarchical management for scalability and reconfigurability with COI dynamic trust management for survivability and intrusion tolerance to compose a scalable, reconfigurable, and survivable COI management protocol for managing COI mission-oriented mobile groups in heterogeneous mobile environments. A COI mobile group in this environment would consist of heterogeneous mobile entities such as communication-device-carried personnel/robots and aerial or ground vehicles operated by humans exhibiting not only quality of service (QoS) characters, e.g., competence and cooperativeness, but also social behaviors, e.g., connectivity, intimacy and honesty. A COI commander or a subtask leader must measure trust with both social and QoS cognition depending on mission task characteristics and/or trustee properties to ensure successful mission execution. In this paper, we present a dynamic hierarchical trust management protocol that can learn from past experiences and adapt to changing environment conditions, e.g., increasing misbehaving node population, evolving hostility and node density, etc. to enhance agility and maximize application performance. With trust-based misbehaving node detection as an application, we demonstrate how our proposed COI trust management protocol is resilient to node failure, disconnection and capture events, and can help maximize application performance in terms of minimizing false negatives and positives in the presence of mobile nodes exhibiting vastly distinct QoS and social behaviors.

In this paper, a novel game-theoretic framework is introduced to analyze and enhance the security of adversarial Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) systems. In particular, a dynamic, psychological network interdiction game is formulated between a soldier and an attacker. In this game, the soldier seeks to find the optimal path to minimize the time needed to reach a destination, while maintaining a desired bit error rate (BER) performance by selectively communicating with certain IoBT devices. The attacker, on the other hand, seeks to find the optimal IoBT devices to attack, so as to maximize the BER of the soldier and hinder the soldier's progress. In this game, the soldier and attacker's first- order and second-order beliefs on each others' behavior are formulated to capture their psychological behavior. Using tools from psychological game theory, the soldier and attacker's intention to harm one another is captured in their utilities, based on their beliefs. A psychological forward induction-based solution is proposed to solve the dynamic game. This approach can find a psychological sequential equilibrium of the game, upon convergence. Simulation results show that, whenever the soldier explicitly intends to frustrate the attacker, the soldier's material payoff is increased by up to 15.6% compared to a traditional dynamic Bayesian game.

Tactical wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are deployed over a region of interest for mission centric operations. The sink node in a tactical WSN is the aggregation point of data processing. Due to its essential role in the network, the sink node is a high priority target for an attacker who wishes to disable a tactical WSN. This paper focuses on the mitigation of sink-node vulnerability in a tactical WSN. Specifically, we study the issue of protecting the sink node through a technique known as k-anonymity. To achieve k-anonymity, we use a specific routing protocol designed to work within the constraints of WSN communication protocols, specifically IEEE 802.15.4. We use and modify the Lightweight Ad hoc On-Demand Next Generation (LOADng) reactive-routing protocol to achieve anonymity. This modified LOADng protocol prevents an attacker from identifying the sink node without adding significant complexity to the regular sensor nodes. We simulate the modified LOADng protocol using a custom-designed simulator in MATLAB. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our protocol and also show some of the performance tradeoffs that come with this method.

Experimentation focused on assessing the value of complex visualisation approaches when compared with alternative methods for data analysis is challenging. The interaction between participant prior knowledge and experience, a diverse range of experimental or real-world data sets and a dynamic interaction with the display system presents challenges when seeking timely, affordable and statistically relevant experimentation results. This paper outlines a hybrid approach proposed for experimentation with complex interactive data analysis tools, specifically for computer network traffic analysis. The approach involves a structured survey completed after free engagement with the software platform by expert participants. The survey captures objective and subjective data points relating to the experience with the goal of making an assessment of software performance which is supported by statistically significant experimental results. This work is particularly applicable to field of network analysis for cyber security and also military cyber operations and intelligence data analysis.

Tactical edge networks represent a uniquely challenging environment from the communications perspective, due to their limited bandwidth and high node mobility. Several middleware communication solutions have been proposed to address those issues, adopting an evolutionary design approach that requires facing quite a few complications to provide applications with a suited network programming model while building on top of the TCP/IP stack. Information Centric Networking (ICN), instead, represents a revolutionary, clean slate approach that aims at replacing the entire TCP/IP stack with a new communication paradigm, better suited to cope with fluctuating channel conditions and network disruptions. This paper, stemmed from research conducted within NATO IST-161 RTG, investigates the effectiveness of Named Data Networking (NDN), the de facto standard implementation of ICN, in the context of tactical edge networks and its potential for adoption. We evaluated an NDN-based Blue Force Tracking (BFT) dissemination application within the Anglova scenario emulation environment, and found that NDN obtained better-than-expected results in terms of delivery ratio and latency, at the expense of a relatively high bandwidth consumption.

Nowadays, 5G has been widely used in various fields. People are starting to turn their attention to 6G. Therefore, at the beginning, this paper describes in detail the principle and performance of 6G, and introduces the key technologies of 6G, Cavity technology and THz technology. Based on the high-performance indicators of 6G, we then study the possible application changes brought by 6G, for example, 6G technology will make remote surgery and remote control possible. 6G technology will make remote surgery and remote control possible. 6G will speed up the interconnection of everything, allowing closer and faster connection between cars. Next, virtual reality is discussed. 6G technology will enable better development of virtual reality technology and enhance people's immersive experience. Finally, we present the issues that need to be addressed with 6G technology, such as cybersecurity issues and energy requirements. As well as the higher challenges facing 6G technology, such as connectivity and communication on a larger social plane.

The recent trend of military is to combined Internet of Things (IoT) knowledge to their field for enhancing the impact in battlefield. That's why Internet of battlefield (IoBT) is our concern. This paper discusses how Fog Radio Access Network(F-RAN) can provide support for local computing in Industrial IoT and IoBT. F-RAN can play a vital role because of IoT devices are becoming popular and the fifth generation (5G) communication is also an emerging issue with ultra-low latency, energy consumption, bandwidth efficiency and wide range of coverage area. To overcome the disadvantages of cloud radio access networks (C-RAN) F-RAN can be introduced where a large number of F-RAN nodes can take part in joint distributed computing and content sharing scheme. The F-RAN in IoBT is effective for enhancing the computing ability with fog computing and edge computing at the network edge. Since the computing capability of the fog equipment are weak, to overcome the difficulties of fog computing in IoBT this paper illustrates some challenging issues and solutions to improve battlefield efficiency. Therefore, the distributed computing load balancing problem of the F-RAN is researched. The simulation result indicates that the load balancing strategy has better performance for F-RAN architecture in the battlefield.

Tactical networks are generally simple ad-hoc networks in design, however, this simple design often gets complicated, when heterogeneous wireless technologies have to work together to enable seamless multi-hop communications across multiple sessions. In recent years, there has been some significant advances in computational, radio, localization, and networking te, and session's rate i.e., aggregate capacity averaged over a 4-time-slot frame)chnologies, which motivate a clean slate design of the control plane for multi-hop tactical wireless networks. In this paper, we develop a global network optimization framework, which characterizes the control plane for multi-hop wireless tactical networks. This framework abstracts the underlying complexity of tactical wireless networks and orchestrates the the control plane functions. Specifically, we develop a cross-layer optimization framework, which characterizes the interaction between the physical, link, and network layers. By applying the framework to a throughput maximization problem, we show how the proposed framework can be utilized to solve a broad range of wireless multi-hop tactical networking problems.

Existing solutions for scheduling arbitrarily complex distributed applications on networks of computational nodes are insufficient for scenarios where the network topology is changing rapidly. New Internet of Things (IoT) domains like the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) and the Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) demand solutions that are robust and efficient in environments that experience constant and/or rapid change. In this paper, we demonstrate how recent advancements in machine learning (in particular, in graph convolutional neural networks) can be leveraged to solve the task scheduling problem with decent performance and in much less time than traditional algorithms.

Cyber deception plays an important role in both proactive and reactive defense systems. Internet of Battlefield things connecting smart devices of any military tactical network is of great importance. The goal of cyber deception is to provide false information regarding the network state, and topology to protect the IoBT's network devices. In this paper, we propose a novel deceptive approach based on game theory that takes into account the topological aspects of the network and the criticality of each device. To find the optimal deceptive strategy, we formulate a two-player game to study the interactions between the network defender and the adversary. The Nash equilibrium of the game model is characterized. Moreover, we propose a scalable game-solving algorithm to overcome the curse of dimensionality. This approach is based on solving a smaller in-size subgame per node. Our numerical results show that the proposed deception approach effectively reduced the impact and the reward of the attacker