arXiv subjects

Atmane Ayoub Mansour Bahar

Publications and source records attributed to Atmane Ayoub Mansour Bahar.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

How Feasible are Passive Network Attacks on 5G Networks and Beyond? A Survey

Privacy concerns around 5G, the latest generation of mobile networks, are growing, with fears that its deployment may increase exposure to privacy risks. This perception is largely driven by the use of denser deployments of small antenna systems, which enable highly accurate data collection at higher speeds and closer proximity to mobile users. At the same time, 5G's unique radio communication features can make the reproduction of known network attacks more challenging. In particular, passive network attacks, which do not involve direct interaction with the target network and are therefore nearly impossible to detect, remain a pressing concern. Such attacks can reveal sensitive information about users, their devices, and active applications, which may then be exploited through known vulnerabilities or spear-phishing schemes. This survey examines the feasibility of passive network attacks in 5G and beyond (B5G/6G) networks, with emphasis on two major categories: information extraction (system identification, website and application fingerprinting) and geolocation (user identification and position tracking). These attacks are well documented and reproducible in existing wireless and mobile systems, including short-range networks (IEEE 802.11) and, to a lesser extent, LTE. Current evidence suggests that while such attacks remain theoretically possible in 5G, their practical execution is significantly constrained by directional beamforming, high-frequency propagation characteristics, and encryption mechanisms. For B5G and early 6G networks, the lack of public tools and high hardware cost currently renders these attacks infeasible in practice, which highlights a critical gap in our understanding of future network threat models.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2025

CONTINUUM: Detecting APT Attacks through Spatial-Temporal Graph Neural Networks

Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) represent a significant challenge in cybersecurity due to their sophisticated and stealthy nature. Traditional Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) often fall short in detecting these multi-stage attacks. Recently, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have been employed to enhance IDS capabilities by analyzing the complex relationships within networked data. However, existing GNN-based solutions are hampered by high false positive rates and substantial resource consumption. In this paper, we present a novel IDS designed to detect APTs using a Spatio-Temporal Graph Neural Network Autoencoder. Our approach leverages spatial information to understand the interactions between entities within a graph and temporal information to capture the evolution of the graph over time. This dual perspective is crucial for identifying the sequential stages of APTs. Furthermore, to address privacy and scalability concerns, we deploy our architecture in a federated learning environment. This setup ensures that local data remains on-premise while encrypted model-weights are shared and aggregated using homomorphic encryption, maintaining data privacy and security. Our evaluation shows that this system effectively detects APTs with lower false positive rates and optimized resource usage compared to existing methods, highlighting the potential of spatio-temporal analysis and federated learning in enhancing cybersecurity defenses.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2024

On the Validity of Traditional Vulnerability Scoring Systems for Adversarial Attacks against LLMs

This research investigates the effectiveness of established vulnerability metrics, such as the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), in evaluating attacks against Large Language Models (LLMs), with a focus on Adversarial Attacks (AAs). The study explores the influence of both general and specific metric factors in determining vulnerability scores, providing new perspectives on potential enhancements to these metrics. This study adopts a quantitative approach, calculating and comparing the coefficient of variation of vulnerability scores across 56 adversarial attacks on LLMs. The attacks, sourced from various research papers, and obtained through online databases, were evaluated using multiple vulnerability metrics. Scores were determined by averaging the values assessed by three distinct LLMs. The results indicate that existing scoring-systems yield vulnerability scores with minimal variation across different attacks, suggesting that many of the metric factors are inadequate for assessing adversarial attacks on LLMs. This is particularly true for context-specific factors or those with predefined value sets, such as those in CVSS. These findings support the hypothesis that current vulnerability metrics, especially those with rigid values, are limited in evaluating AAs on LLMs, highlighting the need for the development of more flexible, generalized metrics tailored to such attacks. This research offers a fresh analysis of the effectiveness and applicability of established vulnerability metrics, particularly in the context of Adversarial Attacks on Large Language Models, both of which have gained significant attention in recent years. Through extensive testing and calculations, the study underscores the limitations of these metrics and opens up new avenues for improving and refining vulnerability assessment frameworks specifically tailored for LLMs.

cs.CR↗