Outputs (57)

Post-Quantum Migration of the Tor Application (2025)
Journal Article
Berger, D., Lemoudden, M., & Buchanan, W. J. (2025). Post-Quantum Migration of the Tor Application. Journal of Cybersecurity and Privacy, 5(2), Article 13. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcp5020013

The efficiency of Shor's and Grover's algorithms and the advancement of quantum computers implies that the cryptography used until now to protect one's privacy is potentially vulnerable to retrospective decryption, also known as the harvest now, decr... Read More about Post-Quantum Migration of the Tor Application.

Leveraging LLMs for Non-Security Experts in Threat Hunting: Detecting Living off the Land Techniques (2025)
Journal Article
Konstantinou, A., Kasimatis, D., Buchanan, W. J., Ullah Jan, S., Ahmad, J., Politis, I., & Pitropakis, N. (2025). Leveraging LLMs for Non-Security Experts in Threat Hunting: Detecting Living off the Land Techniques. Machine Learning and Knowledge Extraction, 7(2), Article 31. https://doi.org/10.3390/make7020031

This paper explores the potential use of Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot, in threat hunting, specifically focusing on Living off the Land (LotL) techniques. LotL methods allow threat actors to blend... Read More about Leveraging LLMs for Non-Security Experts in Threat Hunting: Detecting Living off the Land Techniques.

Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks: Energy Provisioning Technologies, Charging Scheduling Schemes, and Challenges (2025)
Journal Article
Abdel Aziz, S., Wang, X., Hawbani, A., Qureshi, . B., Alsamhi, S. H., Alabsi, A., Zhao, L., Al-Dubai, A., & Ismail, . A. (online). Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks: Energy Provisioning Technologies, Charging Scheduling Schemes, and Challenges. IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing, https://doi.org/10.1109/TSUSC.2025.3549414

Recently, a plethora of promising green energy provisioning technologies has been discussed in the orientation of prolonging the lifetime of energy-limited devices (e.g., sensor nodes). Wireless rechargeable sensor networks (WRSNs) have emerged among... Read More about Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks: Energy Provisioning Technologies, Charging Scheduling Schemes, and Challenges.

Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Cooperative Perception and Computation in VEC (2025)
Journal Article
Zhao, L., Li, L., Tan, Z., Hawbani, A., He, Q., & Liu, Z. (online). Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Cooperative Perception and Computation in VEC. IEEE Internet of Things, https://doi.org/10.1109/jiot.2025.3546915

Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) are an important paradigm of intelligent transportation systems. Cooperative perception (CP) and vehicular edge computing (VEC) enhance CAVs’ perception capacity of the region of interest (RoI) while alleviati... Read More about Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Cooperative Perception and Computation in VEC.

Dynamic Caching Dependency-Aware Task Offloading in Mobile Edge Computing (2025)
Journal Article
Zhao, L., Zhao, Z., Hawbani, A., Liu, Z., Tan, Z., & Yu, K. (online). Dynamic Caching Dependency-Aware Task Offloading in Mobile Edge Computing. IEEE Transactions on Computers, https://doi.org/10.1109/TC.2025.3533091

Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is a distributed computing paradigm that provides computing capabilities at the periphery of mobile cellular networks. This architecture empowers Mobile Users (MUs) to offload computation-intensive applications to large-sc... Read More about Dynamic Caching Dependency-Aware Task Offloading in Mobile Edge Computing.

IoT Authentication Protocols: Challenges, and Comparative Analysis (2025)
Journal Article
Alsheavi, A., Hawbani, A., Othman, W., Wang, X., Qaid, G. R. S., Zhao, L., Al-Dubai, A., Liu, Z., Ismail, A., Haveri, R. H., Alsamhi, S. H., & Al-Qaness, M. A. A. (2025). IoT Authentication Protocols: Challenges, and Comparative Analysis. ACM computing surveys, 57(5), Article 116. https://doi.org/10.1145/3703444

In the ever-evolving information technology landscape, the Internet of Things (IoT) is a groundbreaking concept that bridges the physical and digital worlds. It is the backbone of an increasingly sophisticated interactive environment, yet it is a sub... Read More about IoT Authentication Protocols: Challenges, and Comparative Analysis.

How Much do Robots Understand Rudeness? Challenges in Human-Robot Interaction (2024)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
Orme, M., Yu, Y., & Tan, Z. (2024, May). How Much do Robots Understand Rudeness? Challenges in Human-Robot Interaction. Presented at The 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024), Torino, Italy

This paper concerns the pressing need to understand and manage inappropriate language within the evolving human-robot interaction (HRI) landscape. As intelligent systems and robots transition from controlled laboratory settings to everyday households... Read More about How Much do Robots Understand Rudeness? Challenges in Human-Robot Interaction.

Privacy-Aware Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) Using Bilinear Group Accumulators in Batch Mode (2024)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
Buchanan, W., Grierson, S., & Uribe, D. (2024, February). Privacy-Aware Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) Using Bilinear Group Accumulators in Batch Mode. Presented at 10th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy, Rome, Italy

Biometric data is often highly sensitive, and a leak of this data can lead to serious privacy breaches. Some of the most sensitive of this type of data relates to the usage of DNA data on individuals. A leak of this type of data without consent could... Read More about Privacy-Aware Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) Using Bilinear Group Accumulators in Batch Mode.

Integrating Reality: A Hybrid SDN Testbed for Enhanced Realism in Edge Computing Simulations (2024)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
Almaini, A., Koßmann, T., Folz, J., Schramm, M., Heigl, M., & Al-Dubai, A. (2024, June). Integrating Reality: A Hybrid SDN Testbed for Enhanced Realism in Edge Computing Simulations. Presented at UNet24: The International Conference on Ubiquitous Networking, Marrakesh, Morocco

Recent advancements in Software-Defined Networking (SDN) have facilitated its deployment across diverse network types, including edge networks. Given the broad applicability of SDN and the complexity of large-scale environments, establishing a compre... Read More about Integrating Reality: A Hybrid SDN Testbed for Enhanced Realism in Edge Computing Simulations.

Beyond Hamming Distance: Exploring Spatial Encoding in Perceptual Hashes (2024)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
McKeown, S. (2025, April). Beyond Hamming Distance: Exploring Spatial Encoding in Perceptual Hashes. Presented at DFRWS EU 2025, Brno, Czech Republic

Forensic analysts are often tasked with analysing large volumes of data in modern investigations, and frequently make use of hashing technologies to identify previously encountered images. Perceptual hashes, which seek to model the semantic (visual)... Read More about Beyond Hamming Distance: Exploring Spatial Encoding in Perceptual Hashes.

An Enhanced and Robust Data Publishing Scheme for Private and Useful 1:M Microdata (2024)
Journal Article
Rizwan, M., Hawbani, A., Xingfu, W., Anjum, A., Angin, P., Sever, Y., Chen, S., Zhao, L., & Al-Dubai, A. (online). An Enhanced and Robust Data Publishing Scheme for Private and Useful 1:M Microdata. IEEE Transactions on Big Data, https://doi.org/10.1109/TBDATA.2024.3495497

A data publishing deal conducted with anonymous microdata can preserve the privacy of people. However, anonymizing data with multiple records of an individual (1:M dataset) is still a challenging problem. After anonymizing the 1:M microdata, the vert... Read More about An Enhanced and Robust Data Publishing Scheme for Private and Useful 1:M Microdata.

CAST: Efficient Traffic Scenario Inpainting in Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything Systems (2024)
Journal Article
Zhao, L., Mao, C., Wan, S., Hawbani, A., Al-Dubai, A. Y., Min, G., & Zomaya, A. Y. (2025). CAST: Efficient Traffic Scenario Inpainting in Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything Systems. IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, 24(3), 2331-2345. https://doi.org/10.1109/tmc.2024.3492148

As a promising vehicular communication technology, Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) is expected to ensure the safety and convenience of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) by providing global road information. However, it is difficult to o... Read More about CAST: Efficient Traffic Scenario Inpainting in Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything Systems.

Contributions to Crypto-Ransomware Analysis and Detection (2024)
Thesis
Davies, S. Contributions to Crypto-Ransomware Analysis and Detection. (Thesis). Edinburgh Napier University. http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/3790160

Ransomware poses a severe and evolving threat to cyber security, demanding continuous advancements in analysis and detection techniques. This thesis successfully tackles several critical research gaps in this domain, offering essential resources and... Read More about Contributions to Crypto-Ransomware Analysis and Detection.

A Multi-UAV Cooperative Task Scheduling in Dynamic Environments: Throughput Maximization (2024)
Journal Article
Zhao, L., Li, S., Tan, Z., Hawbani, A., Timotheou, S., & Yu, K. (2025). A Multi-UAV Cooperative Task Scheduling in Dynamic Environments: Throughput Maximization. IEEE Transactions on Computers, 74(2), 442 - 454. https://doi.org/10.1109/tc.2024.3483636

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has been considered a promising technology for advancing terrestrial mobile computing in the dynamic environment. In this research field, throughput, the number of completed tasks and latency are critical evaluation indi... Read More about A Multi-UAV Cooperative Task Scheduling in Dynamic Environments: Throughput Maximization.

DID:RING: Ring Signatures Using Decentralised Identifiers For Privacy-Aware Identity Proof (2024)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
Kasimatis, D., Grierson, S., Buchanan, W. J., Eckl, C., Papadopoulos, P., Pitropakis, N., Chrysoulas, C., Thomson, C., & Ghaleb, B. (2024, September). DID:RING: Ring Signatures Using Decentralised Identifiers For Privacy-Aware Identity Proof. Presented at 2024 IEEE International Conference on Cyber Security and Resilience (CSR), London, UK

Decentralised identifiers have become a standardised element of digital identity architecture, with supra-national organisations such as the European Union adopting them as a key component for a unified European digital identity ledger. This paper de... Read More about DID:RING: Ring Signatures Using Decentralised Identifiers For Privacy-Aware Identity Proof.

Novel Lagrange Multipliers-Driven Adaptive Offloading for Vehicular Edge Computing (2024)
Journal Article
Zhao, L., Li, T., Meng, G., Hawbani, A., Min, G., Al-Dubai, A., & Zomaya, A. (2024). Novel Lagrange Multipliers-Driven Adaptive Offloading for Vehicular Edge Computing. IEEE Transactions on Computers, 73(12), 2868-2881. https://doi.org/10.1109/TC.2024.3457729

Vehicular Edge Computing (VEC) is a transportation-specific version of Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) designed for vehicular scenarios. Task offloading allows vehicles to send computational tasks to nearby Roadside Units (RSUs) in order to reduce the co... Read More about Novel Lagrange Multipliers-Driven Adaptive Offloading for Vehicular Edge Computing.

Graph Injection Attack based on Node Similarity and Non-linear Feature Injection Strategy (2024)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
Li, Q., Gao, Y., Wang, F., Wang, C., Babaagba, K. O., & Tan, Z. (2024, October). Graph Injection Attack based on Node Similarity and Non-linear Feature Injection Strategy. Presented at 20th EAI International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) exhibit promise in the domains of network analysis and recommendation systems. Notwithstanding , these networks are susceptible to node injection attacks. To mitigate this vulnerability, the academic community has put for... Read More about Graph Injection Attack based on Node Similarity and Non-linear Feature Injection Strategy.

VisCrypt: Image Encryption Featuring Novel Chaotic Key Generation and Block Permutation Techniques with Visual Cryptography (2024)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
Khan, M. S., Ahmad, J., Ali, M., Al Dubai, A., Pitropakis, N., & Buchanan, W. J. (2024, July). VisCrypt: Image Encryption Featuring Novel Chaotic Key Generation and Block Permutation Techniques with Visual Cryptography. Presented at 2024 IEEE 7th International Conference on Advanced Technologies, Signal and Image Processing (ATSIP), Sousse, Tunisia

In this digital era, ensuring the security of data transmission is critically important. Digital data, especially image data, needs to be secured against unauthorized access. In this regards, this paper presents a robust image encryption scheme named... Read More about VisCrypt: Image Encryption Featuring Novel Chaotic Key Generation and Block Permutation Techniques with Visual Cryptography.

User Preferences-Based Proactive Content Caching with Characteristics Differentiation in HetNets (2024)
Journal Article
Lin, N., Wang, Y., Zhang, E., Wan, S., Al-Dubai, A., & Zhao, L. (online). User Preferences-Based Proactive Content Caching with Characteristics Differentiation in HetNets. IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing, https://doi.org/10.1109/TSUSC.2024.3441606

With the proliferation of mobile applications, the explosion of mobile data traffic imposes a significant burden on backhaul links with limited capacity in heterogeneous cellular networks (HetNets). To alleviate this challenge, content caching based... Read More about User Preferences-Based Proactive Content Caching with Characteristics Differentiation in HetNets.

BOAZ, Yet Another Layered Evasion Tool: Evasion Tool Evaluations and AV Testing (2024)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
Macfarlane, R., & Xuan Meng, T. (2024, August). BOAZ, Yet Another Layered Evasion Tool: Evasion Tool Evaluations and AV Testing. Presented at blackhat USA 2024, Las Vegas, US

In the rapidly evolving landscape of cybersecurity, there has been an increasing deployment of evasion techniques in organizational vulnerability assessments and found post-discovery of security incidents, owing to the more sophisticated defense mech... Read More about BOAZ, Yet Another Layered Evasion Tool: Evasion Tool Evaluations and AV Testing.