Nelli Yaswanth Kumar, Dr. Singothu Jhansi Rani, Setti Sarika
The rapid proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices under sixth-generation (6G) networks introduces a highly dynamic, decentralized environment in which static, perimeter-based security models are no longer adequate. This paper proposes AZTM-v3 an adaptive Zero Trust framework that couples behavior-driven trust management with a Random Forest classifier to identify and isolate malicious nodes in real time. The framework is evaluated on an NS-3 simulation of a 150-node 6G IoT network subjected to Sybil, Denial-of-Service (DoS), spoofing, replay and ON-OFF attacks. Unlike prior trust-management proposals that report only qualitative or partial outcomes this work quantifies performance across five dimensions i.e detection accuracy, F1-score, false-positive rate, end-to-end latency and consensus-convergence time and benchmarks AZTM-v3 against PKI-based, centralized-trust and static-blockchain baselines. AZTM-v3 attains a 98.1% overall detection accuracy with a 1.6% false-positive rate at 150 nodes and sustains 95.4% accuracy at 200 nodes outperforming the PKI baseline by 12–18 percentage points across all tested loads. These results indicate that combining tiered trust evaluation with machine learning based classification yields a measurably more scalable and resilient security layer for 6G-enabled IoT deployments than existing static or purely cryptographic approaches.
Internet of Vehicles (IoV) security mechanisms often classify isolated messages or assign node-level trust scores, yet these decisions do not explain whether a malicious but authenticated event has distorted the intended evolution of traffic. This paper proposes IntentProv-IoV, a causally grounded provenance framework for traffic-intent preservation in V2X environments. Traffic intent is modeled as the short-horizon collective state expected under non-adversarial conditions, and deviation is measured between predicted and observed traffic states. The framework constructs temporal provenance graphs linking vehicles, roadside units (RSUs), cooperative perception outputs, prediction nodes, and traffic-control decisions. To remove the ambiguity of marginal contribution, node contribution is formalized as an interventional effect in a structural causal model and estimated through Monte Carlo counterfactual edge-weight attenuation, with a linear sensitivity fallback for real-time edge deployment. A calibrated composite score integrates anomaly evidence, traffic-intent deviation, trust risk, and provenance contribution. The evaluation design compares IntentProv-IoV with detection, trust, blockchain trust, graph anomaly, Granger causal, structural causal, and counterfactual GNN baselines and includes predictor sensitivity, adaptive adversaries, prediction noise, packet loss, trajectory-only real-data validation, and edge overhead. Simulation-scale results indicate improved attribution precision, stronger traffic-intent deviation reduction, and edge-suitable latency. By shifting V2X security from message-level detection to causally explainable traffic-intent assurance, IntentProv-IoV provides a more accountable security objective for cooperative vehicular systems.
Smart contract deployment costs constitute an economic consideration in blockchain ecosystems, yet existing gas optimization approaches primarily focus on execution efficiency while neglecting deployment gas reduction. We analyze Solidity storage internals and identify that conventional variable packing–despite reducing storage slots–often increases deployment costs due to compiler-generated masking and shifting operations. This finding motivates State Variable Mutation , the first systematic approach designed to reduce smart contract deployment costs through guided reordering of state variable declarations. Our approach explores variable orderings to identify layouts that minimize gas-expensive storage operations while preserving semantic equivalence and storage efficiency. We implement our approach in DGRed , an open-source tool, and evaluate it on 300 real-world smart contracts. Results demonstrate deployment gas reductions of up to 32.72%, with an average reduction of 15.65% (52,850 gas units per contract), translating to total savings of 15,854,883 gas units across all contracts. Under high network congestion (200 gwei), these savings correspond to $12,381.4. Compared with state-of-the-art gas optimization tools, DGRed achieves superior deployment gas reductions (15.65% average vs. 4.91% for GasSaver and 2.83% for GASOL) while maintaining 100% semantic preservation and producing valid bytecode for all 300 contracts. In contrast, GasSaver introduces compilation errors in 148 contracts, while GASOL generates invalid bytecode in 234. DGRed 's state variable mutation produces identical execution gas to the original contract in all 100 contracts evaluated for execution gas impact, confirming that deployment optimization does not affect runtime efficiency. Additionally, DGRed 's 15.65% reduction is over 8 \(\times\) larger than the best achievable through Solidity compiler flag tuning alone, demonstrating that the two approaches are complementary. DGRed provides developers with a practical, semantic-preserving solution for deployment cost optimization without modifying contract logic or functionality. Because DGRed only reorders state variable declarations, it introduces no runtime trade-off, and entails no risk of behavioral regression.
Roadside edge infrastructure is becoming an active execution layer in connected transportation. Roadside units, edge servers, and vehicular gateways not only relay safety messages, but also run local services and support traffic-control decisions. Once these nodes are compromised, data authentication, blockchain logging, or forensic evidence management cannot by itself guarantee service trustworthiness, because the node that senses, signs, forwards, or processes the information may already be running an unauthorized software stack. This paper presents RISE-CT, a runtime-integrity assurance and self-healing recovery framework for roadside edge infrastructure. RISE-CT models each node through a layered security-state graph covering hardware roots, boot chains, firmware images, runtime processes, key usage, and service status. It combines boot-time, periodic, and event-triggered attestation with runtime drift diagnosis to detect firmware deviation, process injection, abnormal key access, replayed evidence, and service-behavior changes. When the risk score exceeds policy thresholds, a risk-aware admission state machine moves the affected node into degraded, quarantined, or recovering states, and coordinates service migration, key renewal, firmware rollback, and re-attestation before safe re-admission. Seed-controlled emulation under firmware tampering, malicious OTA updates, runtime injection, key misuse, replayed attestation, and roadside-service hijacking shows that, under the evaluated emulation settings, RISE-CT reduces the representative detection delay to 0.98 s and service interruption to 0.82 s, while achieving a 0.94 re-admission success rate with controlled attestation overhead. The results suggest that runtime node integrity can provide a potential security mechanism for improving the trustworthiness of roadside infrastructure under the evaluated conditions.
Fazeel Ahmed Khan, Andi Fitriah Binti Abdul Kadir, Adamu Abubakar Ibrahim, Mohammad Shadab Khan
Abstract The growing volume and complexity of network data necessitate advance solutions for network traffic analysis and security. The Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) offers a granular approach to monitoring, filtering and classifying network traffic to enforce security policies, optimize QoS and detect malicious activities. The proposed study addresses these issues by exploring the emerging but promising integration of blockchain and machine learning techniques to improve DPI. It contributes by providing a comprehensive details on the application domain of DPI with a focus on network security, performance and management. Also, the study proposes a research roadmap to guide the future development on the development of blockchain-enabled intelligent solutions for DPI. Using PRISMA methodology, several existing studies were evaluated addressing the potential application of blockchain and machine learning in DPI. The survey has identified significant challenges towards the integration including real-time IP packet inspection efficiency, QoS performance and the impact of high traffic volume on DPI. It concludes that DPI has wider applications to be integrated with emerging technologies particularly in machine learning and blockchain. The future research should focus on advance machine learning paradigms such as continual and federated learning while blockchain technology should be resolved with scalability challenges to be utilized effectively for next-generation DPI solutions.
Network slicing and resource provisioning in 6G focus on creating multiple customized virtual networks over a shared infrastructure. However, these approaches also introduce challenges, like increased architectural complexity, higher implementation costs, security vulnerabilities between slices in resource optimization across highly dynamic and heterogeneous network environments. In this work, Exponentially Tactical Unit Algorithm (ETUA) is devised for network slicing in 6G. Initially, blockchain-enabled 6G network is simulated, and the set of features, like user device type, delay rate and packet loss rate are collected from various devices. Moreover, network slicing is done by ETUA that integrates Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (EWMA) and Tactical Unit Algorithm (TUA). Finally, resource allocation is performed using Attention High-order Deep Network (AHoNet) by considering the parameters that includes bit error probability, sum rate and trust. The efficacy of ETUA is examined by bit error probability, utility and latency with 0.012, 0.950 and 0.509 Sec.
Mahdiyeh Velaei, Mehdi Aminian, Seyyed Amir Asghari, Mohammad Faraji‐Mehmandar
Abstract With the increasing number of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) networks, critical infrastructures are now more vulnerable to cyberattacks. In this context, the need for distributed and privacy-preserving intrusion detection systems has become essential. In this paper, we introduce a secure federated learning framework for intrusion detection in IIoT networks that supports model training in non-IID environments without sharing raw data. In this system, each client maintains a lightweight MLP model locally, and a client-level DP-SGD is used to enhance privacy and hashing to maintain update integrity. Also, to consciously select clients and reduce the impact of malicious clients, a reputation-based mechanism is proposed that leverages the ideas of trust management in blockchain, but can be implemented without the need for a full blockchain implementation. The performance of the proposed model on the Edge-IIoTset dataset in binary and multi-class classification and in 3, 5, and 7 clients shows that the proposed model achieves an accuracy of over 98% in all scenarios, which is close to the results of the centralized approach.
Oleksandr Pidpalyi, Олександр Романов, Larysa Globa, Антон Романов · 6 authors
The subject matter of the article is the iTZBEI (Integrated Trust–ZTA–Blockchain SDN Efficiency Index) – a novel composite metric for quantitative security assessment of software-defined networks (SDN) integrating Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) and Blockchain technologies. The relevance of the research is determined by the fact that the centralized SDN control model generates critical vulnerabilities, including DDoS attacks, unauthorized routing manipulation, and insider threats – for which no unified quantitative evaluation framework currently exists. The study introduced a formalized aggregated security metric that enables continuous monitoring and comparative assessment across all components of the SDN–ZTA–Blockchain architecture. The tasks to be solved include: (1) identification of principal SDN attack vectors; (2) formalization of a transaction-processing algorithm covering the full access lifecycle; (3) definition of nine local security indicators; and (4) construction of the iTZBEI index with justified weighting coefficients. The methods used combine mathematical formalization of access control processes, cryptographic transaction verification, and experimental emulation of attack scenarios in a Mininet–OpenDaylight–Hyperledger Fabric environment. Conclusions. The obtained results of the article consist in the development of a functional algorithm that performs dynamic verification of user requests, makes adaptive authorization decisions according to the principles of least privilege, and records these decisions in an immutable distributed ledger. A metrics system is proposed, including local indicators such as the Continuous Authorisation Integrity Score (CAIS), the Blockchain Audit Integrity Score (BAIS), and the Local Policy Integrity (LPI). On this basis, the generalized Integrated Trust and Zero-Trust Blockchain Evaluation Index (iTZBEI) is described as an aggregated metric for comparative evaluation and continuous monitoring of the network’s security state. Scientific novelty. This study introduces a unified SDN + ZTA + Blockchain framework for network security, formalizes a transaction-level algorithm that directly links access decisions with distributed audit procedures, and proposes the iTZBEI metric as the first integral indicator for evaluating the integration’s effectiveness in dynamic network environments.
Kapil K. Jajulwar, Priya Dasarwar, Uma Yadav, Bhakti Prasad Thakre · 6 authors
Blockchain consensus mechanisms are important to ensure the safe validation of transactions. However, the limitations of high computational complexity, energy consumption, and mining latency restrict the scalability of blockchain in large-scale IP-based and wireless network environments. Current methods mainly rely on single optimization methods without jointly optimizing miner selection and hash computation, resulting in inferior performance under dynamic network conditions. To fill this gap, this study presents a new hybrid bioinspired optimization framework for efficient blockchain mining, integrating Genetic Algorithm (GA), Firefly optimization, and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) into a unified architecture to take advantage of their complementary strengths. The proposed method uses both historical and real-time performance metrics to determine the best mining nodes. The Firefly algorithm is used to optimize the selection of hash ranges to reduce CPU workload. PSO is used to select high-performance neighboring nodes for collaborative mining. The model is implemented using the NS-2 simulator and tested over a network of 1000 wireless nodes under different consensus protocols. The experimental results illustrate 4.3% decrease in computational complexity, 4% decrease in energy consumption, and 5% decrease in mining delay. The model further reduces mining complexity by up to 34.2% and reduces the energy utilization from 24.5% to 16.6%, demonstrating its effectiveness for scalable and energy-efficient blockchain deployment.
This perspective examines whether nuclear fusion can provide a scalable, low-carbon power source for rapidly growing AI-driven data center demand. As large language models, cloud computing, and cryptocurrency mining accelerate electricity consumption growth, data centers are projected to account for a substantially larger share of U.S. and global electricity use in the coming decades, creating significant pressure on grid reliability and decarbonization goals. We evaluate the technical and economic alignment between data center load profiles and nuclear power, particularly fusion, through a comparative analysis of capacity factors, levelized cost of electricity, grid interconnection constraints, and deployment pathways. Unlike intermittent renewables, nuclear fission and fusion offer high-capacity-factor, firm baseload generation suited to AI training and inference workloads that require continuous, reliable power. Preliminary techno-economic analysis suggests that several Nth-of-a-kind fusion concepts, particularly magnetic confinement systems, may become cost-competitive with firmed renewable systems and advanced fission for hyperscale data center applications. Co-location of fusion plants with data centers further reduces transmission bottlenecks, improves resilience, and aligns with emerging hyperscaler procurement strategies. We also assess recent regulatory developments and argue that fusion's favorable safety profile and reduced waste burden improve its long-term social and political viability relative to fission. We conclude that fusion represents a strategically important pathway for sustainably powering next-generation computing infrastructure and should be prioritized in both policy and industrial deployment planning.
Multi-cloud adoption has widened the enterprise attack surface to a degree that perimeter-based defence can no longer address. Traffic is now flowing continuously across AWS, Azure, and GCP, and the majority of deployed Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) systems are still using static rule tables, with no ability to provide an audit trail of the reasoning behind decisions, and with logs stored in datastores that can be modified by an insider without detection. This paper proposes ZT-ChainGuard, a framework that overcomes these three limitations in one architecture that integrates an ensemble machine learning trust-scoring engine, ZTA policy enforcement and a blockchain-based audit trail. The trust-scoring engine is a two-layer stacking ensemble, with XGBoost and Random Forest as base learners, and Logistic Regression as a meta-learner, and it returns a continuous trust score, P(Attack | flow), for each network flow, which is then used to trigger the ZT policy decision at a threshold of 0.5. The explanation of each decision is provided by SHAP values at both the global and per-flow level, and each decision is stored as an immutable, SHA-256 hash-chained block. On CICIDS2017 (2.83 million flows, 14 attack classes) the framework achieves 99.90% accuracy, 99.71% F1-score, and 99.99% ROC-AUC; on ToN-IoT (2.23 million IoT records, 9 attack types) it achieves 99.81% accuracy, 99.88% F1-score, and 100% ROC-AUC. The latency of inferences is 0.006ms per sample, and the overhead of auditing the blockchain is 0.019ms per block. This performance is not just a quirk of a particular split, as it is shown to be stable across the three folds of three-fold cross validation.