Search Results (9)

The Military Internet of Things (MIoT) has emerged as a new research area in military intelligence. The MIoT frequently has to constitute a federation-capable IoT environment when the military needs to interact with other institutions and organizations or carry out joint missions as part of a coalition such as in NATO. One of the main challenges of deploying the MIoT in such an environment is to acquire, analyze, and merge vast amounts of data from many different IoT devices and disseminate them in a secure, reliable, and context-dependent manner. This challenge is one of the main challenges in a federated environment and forms the basis for establishing trusting relationships and secure communication between IoT devices belonging to different partners. In this work, we focus on the problem of fulfillment of the data-centric security paradigm, i.e., ensuring the secure management of data along the path from its origin to the recipients and implementing fine-grained access control mechanisms. This problem can be solved using innovative solutions such as applying attribute-based encryption (ABE). In this work, we present a comprehensive solution for secure data dissemination in a federated MIoT environment, enabling the use of distributed registry technology (Hyperledger Fabric), a message broker (Apache Kafka), and data processing microservices implemented using the Kafka Streams API library. We designed and implemented ABE cryptography data access control methods using a combination of pairings-based elliptic curve cryptography and lightweight cryptography and confirmed their suitability for the federations of military networks. Experimental studies indicate that the proposed cryptographic scheme is viable for the number of attributes typically assumed to be used in battlefield networks, offering a good trade-off between security and performance for modern cryptographic applications. Full article

The Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) refers to interconnected battlefield equipment/sources for synchronized automated decision making. Due to difficulties unique to the battlefield, such as a lack of infrastructure, the heterogeneity of equipment, and attacks, IoBT networks differ significantly from regular IoT networks. In war scenarios, real-time location information gathering is critical for combat effectiveness and is dependent on network connectivity and information sharing in the presence of an enemy. To maintain connectivity and guarantee the safety of soldiers/equipment, location information must be exchanged. The location, identification, and trajectory of soldiers/devices are all contained in these messages. A malicious attacker may utilize this information to build a complete trajectory of a target node and track it. This paper proposes a location privacy-preserving scheme in IoBT networks using deception-based techniques. Dummy identifier (DID), sensitive areas location privacy enhancement, and silence period concepts are used to minimize the attacker’s ability to track a target node. In addition, to consider the security of the location information, another security layer is proposed, which generates a pseudonym location for the source node to use instead of its real location when sending messages in the network. We develop a Matlab simulation to evaluate our scheme in terms of average anonymity and probability of linkability of the source node. The results show that the proposed method improves the anonymity of the source node. It reduces the attacker’s ability to link the old DID of the source node with its new DID. Finally, the results show further privacy enhancement by applying the sensitive area concept, which is important for IoBT networks. Full article

A tactical sensor network is a representative safety-critical environment that should satisfy strict guarantee of the requirements of tactical traffic. However, because of the lack of infrastructure in a military network environment, resource constraints on wireless channel and nodes can cause problems such as network congestion and packet collision. If critical tactical data is lost or does not arrive on time, it can degrade the efficiency of military operations and even threaten the survival of soldiers. To resolve this critical issue, we propose a situational backoff reset algorithm that utilizes a quality of service (QoS) field information to determine the priority of received tactical packets and control the deferral time of low-priority traffic. From a packet routing path connectivity perspective, we propose a branch node-based routing algorithm in order to provide a resilient path by excluding the isolated single path. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed solution can prioritize tactical traffic from the channel preemption perspective and construct a robust end-to-end path avoiding an isolated single path. Full article

The Internet of Battlefield Things is a newly born cyberphysical system and, even though it shares a lot with the Internet of Things and with ad hoc networking, substantial research is required to cope with its scale and peculiarities. This article examines a fundamental problem pertaining to the routing of information, i.e., the calculation of a backbone network. We model an IoBT network as a network with multiple layers and employ the concept of domination for multilayer networks. This is a significant departure from earlier works, and in spite of the huge literature on the topic during the past twenty years, the problem in IoBT networks is different since these networks are multilayer networks, thus making inappropriate all the past, related literature because it deals with single layer (flat) networks. We establish the computational complexity of our problem, and design a distributed algorithm for computing connected dominating sets with small cardinality. We analyze the performance of the proposed algorithm on generated topologies, and compare it against two—the only existing—competitors. The proposed algorithm establishes itself as the clear winner in all experiments concerning the dominating set from a size-wise and an energy-wise perspective achieving a performance gain of about 15%. Full article

Although the defense field is also one of the key areas that use big data for security reasons, there is a lack of study that designs system frameworks and presents security requirements to implement big data in defense. However, we overcome the security matters by examining the battlefield environment and the system through the flow of data in the battlefield. As such, this research was conducted to apply big data in the defense domain, which is a unique field. In particular, a three-layered system framework was designed to apply big data in the C4I system, which collects, manages, and analyzes data generated from the battlefield, and the security measures required for each layer were developed. First, to enhance the general understanding of big data and the military environment, an overview of the C4I system, the characteristics of the 6V’s, and the five-phase big data lifecycle were described. While presenting a framework that divides the C4I system into three layers, the roles and components of each layer are described in detail, considering the big data lifecycle and system framework. A security architecture is finally proposed by specifying security requirements for each field in the three-layered C4I system. The proposed system framework and security architecture more accurately explain the unique nature of the military domain than those studied in healthcare, smart grids, and smart cities; development directions requiring further research are described. Full article

The rise of “cloud-computing, mobile-Internet, Internet of things, big-data, and smart-data” digital technology has brought a subversive revolution to enterprises and consumers’ traditional patterns. Product research and development has become the main battlefield of enterprise competition, facing an environment where challenges and opportunities coexist. Regarding the concepts and methods of product R&D projects, the domestic start was later than the international ones, and many domestic companies have also used successful foreign cases as benchmarks to innovate their management methods in practice. “Workers must first sharpen their tools if they want to do their jobs well”. This article will start from the relevant concepts of product R&D projects and summarize current R&D management ideas and methods. We combined the bibliometric analysis software Histcite and Citespace to sort out the content of domestic and foreign literature and explore the changing trends of research hotspots. Finally, combined with the analysis of confirmed cases in domestic masters and doctoral dissertations to test the theory, the literature review of the product R&D project management theme was carried out from the dual perspectives of comprehensive theory and practice. This study uses the core collection library of Web of Science as the object of document extraction. Based on the search conditions of “Product development” or “Intergrat* product development”, 8998 sample documents were initially retrieved. The search deadline was June 2019, with a time range from 2000 to June 2019. Then, using the record number of 50 as the critical condition, 5007 analysis samples were deleted, refined, and cleaned. Through the review and measurement of 5007 papers, the analysis showed that: (1) in the last ten years, sustainability, consumer focus, new approaches to product development management, and organizational design have become critical considerations in the product development process stage; (2) at this stage, researchers are paying more attention to the innovation, design, product development, identification, simultaneous engineering, consequence, and stage/gate model aspects of product development; and (3) factors such as long development cycles, high costs, and poor organizational design are now common problems in the product development process. Full article

Through the combination of various intelligent devices and the Internet to form a large-scale network, the Internet of Things (IoT) realizes real-time information exchange and communication between devices. IoT technology is expected to play an essential role in improving the combat effectiveness and situation awareness ability of armies. The interconnection between combat equipment and other battlefield resources is referred to as the Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT). Battlefield real-time data sharing and the cooperative decision-making among commanders are highly dependent on the connectivity between different combat units in the network. However, due to the wireless characteristics of communication, a large number of communication links are directly exposed in the complex battlefield environment, and various cyber or physical attacks threaten network connectivity. Therefore, the ability to maintain network connectivity under adversary attacks is a critical property for the IoBT. In this work, we propose a directed network model and connectivity measurement of the IoBT network. Then, we develop an optimal attack strategy optimization model to simulate the optimal attack behavior of the enemy. By comparing with the disintegration effect of some benchmark strategies, we verify the optimality of the model solution and find that the robustness of the IoBT network decreases rapidly with an increase of the unidirectional communication links in the network. The results show that the adversary will change the attack mode according to the parameter settings of attack resources and network communication link density. In order to enhance the network robustness, we need to adjust the defense strategy in time to deal with this change. Finally, we validated the model and theoretical analysis proposed in this paper through experiments on a real military network. Full article

Nowadays, data security is becoming an emerging and challenging issue due to the growth in web-connected devices and significant data generation from information and communication technology (ICT) platforms. Many existing types of research from industries and academic fields have presented their methodologies for supporting defense against security threats. However, these existing approaches have failed to deal with security challenges in next-generation ICT systems due to the changing behaviors of security threats and zero-day attacks, including advanced persistent threat (APT), ransomware, and supply chain attacks. The symmetry-adapted machine-learning approach can support an effective way to deal with the dynamic nature of security attacks by the extraction and analysis of data to identify hidden patterns of data. It offers the identification of unknown and new attack patterns by extracting hidden data patterns in next-generation ICT systems. Therefore, we accepted twelve articles for this Special Issue that explore the deployment of symmetry-adapted machine learning for information security in various application areas. These areas include malware classification, intrusion detection systems, image watermarking, color image watermarking, battlefield target aggregation behavior recognition models, Internet Protocol (IP) cameras, Internet of Things (IoT) security, service function chains, indoor positioning systems, and cryptoanalysis. Full article

With the development of the Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT), soldiers have become key nodes of information collection and resource control on the battlefield. It has become a trend to develop wearable devices with diverse functions for the military. However, although densely deployed wearable sensors provide a platform for comprehensively monitoring the status of soldiers, wearable technology based on multi-source fusion lacks a generalized research system to highlight the advantages of heterogeneous sensor networks and information fusion. Therefore, this paper proposes a multi-level fusion framework (MLFF) based on Body Sensor Networks (BSNs) of soldiers, and describes a model of the deployment of heterogeneous sensor networks. The proposed framework covers multiple types of information at a single node, including behaviors, physiology, emotions, fatigue, environments, and locations, so as to enable Soldier-BSNs to obtain sufficient evidence, decision-making ability, and information resilience under resource constraints. In addition, we systematically discuss the problems and solutions of each unit according to the frame structure to identify research directions for the development of wearable devices for the military. Full article