Conference:
31st International Symposium on the Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (MASCOTS 2023)
16-18. October 2023
Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA

Authors:
Kuaban G, Gelenbe E, Czachórski T, Czekalski P.

Abstract:

There is a growing awareness of the need to reduce carbon emissions from the operation of mobile networks. The massive deployment of ultra-dense 5G and IoT networks will significantly increase energy demand and put the electricity grid under stress while also driving up operational costs. In this paper, we model the energy performance of an off-grid sustainable green cellular base station site which consists of a solar power system, Battery Energy Storage (BESS) and Hydrogen Energy Storage (HESS) system, and various types of macrocells, microcells, picocells, or femtocells, with broadband optical or microwave transmission systems, and other electrical and electronic systems (air conditioner, power converters, and controllers). We propose diffusion-based models of the charging and discharging processes of the energy storage systems, and obtain the probability of charging them to their full capacities during the day and completely discharging them at the end of each day. We also investigate the impact of design parameters such as the mean charging rate and the mean discharging rate on the probability densities of charging BESS and HESS to their full capacities during the day and of completely discharging them before the end of each night period.

Deliverable 7.4 describes the challenges, gains, and learnings: (1) on the security modules side, during development and integration; and, (2) on the pilot sites, during deployment, testing, and assessment of the validation results.

Please note that the European Commission has not approved yet this deliverable.

The contents of the deliverable reflect only the project Consortium’s view and the Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

This is the last newsletter of the IoTAC project covering the period between June and August 2023. The project has been successfully completed and reached its goals by validating the secure IoTAC platform in 4 different service environments.

The H2020 IoTAC project has been successfully completed

The consortium of industrial actors, research groups and academia from seven European countries designed and implemented a security platform for IoT architectures.

 

31. August 2023 – The Security by Design IoT Development and Certificate Framework with Front-end Access Control (IoTAC) project has reached its goals and came to an end with the successful completion of its four demonstration programs.

The project implemented an IoT security platform comprising the combination of multiple, flexibly configurable security modules – access control, attack detection, honeypot, runtime monitoring system, data repository & dashboard, and an internet gateway – and validated its operation and performance in four close-to-real-life pilot operations. The pilots have been organized in different industry and consumer domains – Prosumer cell, Connected car, Drone operation, and Smart home – to be able to assess the platform performance and limitations under various conditions and requirements.

The pilots have set numerous KPIs comprising security and performance metrics. The goal was to measurably increase the protection of the service environment without compromising the operational performance of the services. After a number of iterations all the modules and the combined platform not only met but exceeded the original expectations and during the course of actions the architecture and related integration requirements have also been substantially simplified.

After the successful completion of the project, the consortium partners will continue improving the technology and will jointly exploit the project results with the support of the IoTAC Association – formed by the project partners – that will coordinate all related activities.

Project Key Facts

Full Name: IOTAC: Security by Design IOT Development and Certificate Framework with Frontend Access Control
Contract No.: H2020 – 952684
Start date: 01 September 2020
Duration: 36 months
EU Contribution: € 5 million
Coordinator: Atos Hungary Ltd

Project Partners

France
Airbus Defence & Space SAS

Germany
Deutsche Telekom Security GmbH
QuanTag IT Solutions GmbH
FhG FOKUS
Technische Universität Berlin

Greece
Centre for Research and Technology-Hellas

Hungary
Atos Hungary Ltd.
Budapest University of Technology and Economics
SafePay Systems Ltd.

Luxembourg
Netcompany-Intrasoft

Poland
Institute of Theoretical and Applied Informatics

Spain
Fundacion Tecnalia Research & Innovation
Kaspersky Lab S.L.

Contact
Tamás Nagy
Atos Hungary Ltd.
Email: tamas.nagy@atos.net

Journal:
ACM Ubiquity, Volume: 2023, Issue: August

Authors:
Gelenbe E.

Abstract:

This paper considers key issues surrounding energy consumption by information and communication technologies (ICT), which has been steadily growing and is now attaining approximately 10% of the worldwide electricity consumption with a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions. The perimeter of ICT systems is discussed, and the role of the subsystems that compose ICT is considered.
Data from recent years is used to understand how each of these sub-systems contribute to ICT’s energy consumption. The quantitatively demonstrated positive correlation between the penetration of ICT in the world’s different economies and the same economies’ contributions to undesirable greenhouse gas emissions is also discussed. We also examine how emerging technologies such as 5G, edge computing, and cryptocurrencies are contributing to the worldwide increase in electricity consumption by ICT, despite the increases in ICT efficiency, in terms of energy consumed per bit processed, stored, or transmitted. The measurement of specific ICT systems’ electricity consumption is also addressed, and the manner in which this consumption can be minimized in a specific edge-computing context is discussed.

Journal:
Information and Software Technology, Vol. 164, 2023.

Authors:
Kalouptsoglou I, Siavvas M, Ampatzoglou A, Kehagias D, Chatzigeorgiou A.

Abstract:
Context: Software security is considered a major aspect of software quality as the number of discovered vulnerabilities in software products is growing. Vulnerability prediction is a mechanism that helps engineers to prioritize their inspection efforts focusing on vulnerable parts. Despite the recent advancements, current literature lacks a systematic mapping study on vulnerability prediction.
Objective: This paper aims to analyze the state-of-the-art of vulnerability  prediction focusing on: (a) the goals of vulnerability prediction-related studies; (b) the data collection processes and the types of datasets that exist in the literature; (c) the mostly examined techniques for the construction of the prediction models and their input features; and (d) the utilized evaluation techniques.
Method: We collected 180 primary studies following a broad search methodology across four popular digital libraries. We mapped these studies to the variables of interest and we identified trends and relationships between the studies.
Results: The main findings suggest that: (i) there are two major study types, prediction of vulnerable software components and forecasting of the evolution of vulnerabilities in software; (ii) most studies construct their own vulnerability-related dataset retrieving information from vulnerability databases for real-world software; (iii) there is a growing interest for deep learning models along with a trend on textual source code representation; and (iv) F1-score was found to be the most widely used evaluation metric.
Conclusions: The results of our study indicate that there are several open challenges in the domain of vulnerability prediction. One of the major conclusions, is the fact that most studies focus on within-project prediction, neglecting the real-world scenario of cross-project prediction.

Journal:
Sensors 2023, 23(13)

Authors:
Kuaban G, Gelenbe E, Czachórski T, Czekalski P, Tangka J.

Abstract:

The Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming almost every industry, including agriculture, food processing, health care, oil and gas, environmental protection, transportation and logistics, manufacturing, home automation, and safety. Cost-effective, small-sized batteries are often used to power IoT devices being deployed with limited energy capacity. The limited energy capacity of IoT devices makes them vulnerable to battery depletion attacks designed to exhaust the energy stored in the battery rapidly and eventually shut down the device. In designing and deploying IoT devices, the battery and device specifications should be chosen in such a way as to ensure a long lifetime of the device. This paper proposes diffusion approximation as a mathematical framework for modelling the energy depletion process in IoT batteries. We applied diffusion or Brownian motion processes to model the energy depletion of a battery of an IoT device. We used this model to obtain the probability density function, mean, variance, and probability of the lifetime of an IoT device. Furthermore, we studied the influence of active power consumption, sleep time, and battery capacity on the probability density function, mean, and probability of the lifetime of an IoT device. We modelled ghost energy depletion attacks and their impact on the lifetime of IoT devices. We used numerical examples to study the influence of battery depletion attacks on the distribution of the lifetime of an IoT device.
We also introduced an energy threshold after which the device’s battery should be replaced in order to ensure that the battery is not completely drained before it is replaced.

According to the mid-year update to the 2023 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report, in the first six months of 2023, IoT malware globally was up by 37%, resulting in a total of 77.9 million attacks, compared to 57 million attacks in the first six months of 2022.

This time, the number of attacks decreased in North America by 3%, but Asia and Latin America saw three-digit growths, 170%, and 164% respectively. Regarding the countries with the highest increase and decrease, the number of IoT attacks in India was up by a staggering 311% but was down by 30% in Germany.

When it comes to industry-specific figures, the good news is that government and education both saw a decline of 73%, finance and healthcare a 60% drop, and it was only the retail sector where the number of attacks was up by 13%.

You can access the mid-year update to the 2023 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report at https://www.sonicwall.com/2023-mid-year-cyber-threat-report/.