arXiv subjects

Biplab Sikdar

Publications and source records attributed to Biplab Sikdar.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2025

Generative AI for Data Augmentation in Wireless Networks: Analysis, Applications, and Case Study

Data augmentation as a technique can mitigate data scarcity in machine learning. However, owing to fundamental differences in wireless data structures, traditional data augmentation techniques may not be suitable for wireless data. Fortunately, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) can be an effective solution to wireless data augmentation due to its excellent data generation capability. This article systematically explores the potential and effectiveness of generative data augmentation in wireless networks. We first briefly review data augmentation techniques, discuss their limitations in wireless networks, and introduce generative data augmentation, including reviewing GenAI models and their applications in data augmentation. We then explore the application prospects of generative data augmentation in wireless networks from the physical, network, and application layers, providing a generative data augmentation architecture for each application. Subsequently, we propose a general generative data augmentation framework for Wi-Fi gesture recognition. Specifically, we leverage transformer-based diffusion models to generate high-quality channel state information data. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed framework, we conduct a case study using the Widar 3.0 dataset, which employs a residual network model for Wi-Fi gesture recognition. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed framework can enhance the performance of Wi-Fi gesture recognition. Finally, we discuss research directions for generative data augmentation.

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arXiv2025

CyGATE: Game-Theoretic Cyber Attack-Defense Engine for Patch Strategy Optimization

Modern cyber attacks unfold through multiple stages, requiring defenders to dynamically prioritize mitigations under uncertainty. While game-theoretic models capture attacker-defender interactions, existing approaches often rely on static assumptions and lack integration with real-time threat intelligence, limiting their adaptability. This paper presents CyGATE, a game-theoretic framework modeling attacker-defender interactions, using large language models (LLMs) with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to enhance tactic selection and patch prioritization. Applied to a two-agent scenario, CyGATE frames cyber conflicts as a partially observable stochastic game (POSG) across Cyber Kill Chain stages. Both agents use belief states to navigate uncertainty, with the attacker adapting tactics and the defender re-prioritizing patches based on evolving risks and observed adversary behavior. The framework's flexible architecture enables extension to multi-agent scenarios involving coordinated attackers, collaborative defenders, or complex enterprise environments with multiple stakeholders. Evaluated in a dynamic patch scheduling scenario, CyGATE effectively prioritizes high-risk vulnerabilities, enhancing adaptability through dynamic threat integration, strategic foresight by anticipating attacker moves under uncertainty, and efficiency by optimizing resource use.

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arXiv2025

Privacy-Preserving Collaborative Split Learning Framework for Smart Grid Load Forecasting

Accurate load forecasting is crucial for energy management, infrastructure planning, and demand-supply balancing. Smart meter data availability has led to the demand for sensor-based load forecasting. Conventional ML allows training a single global model using data from multiple smart meters requiring data transfer to a central server, raising concerns for network requirements, privacy, and security. We propose a split learning-based framework for load forecasting to alleviate this issue. We split a deep neural network model into two parts, one for each Grid Station (GS) responsible for an entire neighbourhood's smart meters and the other for the Service Provider (SP). Instead of sharing their data, client smart meters use their respective GSs' model split for forward pass and only share their activations with the GS. Under this framework, each GS is responsible for training a personalized model split for their respective neighbourhoods, whereas the SP can train a single global or personalized model for each GS. Experiments show that the proposed models match or exceed a centrally trained model's performance and generalize well. Privacy is analyzed by assessing information leakage between data and shared activations of the GS model split. Additionally, differential privacy enhances local data privacy while examining its impact on performance. A transformer model is used as our base learner.

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arXiv2025

VulCPE: Context-Aware Cybersecurity Vulnerability Retrieval and Management

The dynamic landscape of cybersecurity demands precise and scalable solutions for vulnerability management in heterogeneous systems, where configuration-specific vulnerabilities are often misidentified due to inconsistent data in databases like the National Vulnerability Database (NVD). Inaccurate Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) data in NVD further leads to false positives and incomplete vulnerability retrieval. Informed by our systematic analysis of CPE and CVEdeails data, revealing more than 50% vendor name inconsistencies, we propose VulCPE, a framework that standardizes data and models configuration dependencies using a unified CPE schema (uCPE), entity recognition, relation extraction, and graph-based modeling. VulCPE achieves superior retrieval precision (0.766) and coverage (0.926) over existing tools. VulCPE ensures precise, context-aware vulnerability management, enhancing cyber resilience.

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arXiv2025

UIBDiffusion: Universal Imperceptible Backdoor Attack for Diffusion Models

Recent studies show that diffusion models (DMs) are vulnerable to backdoor attacks. Existing backdoor attacks impose unconcealed triggers (e.g., a gray box and eyeglasses) that contain evident patterns, rendering remarkable attack effects yet easy detection upon human inspection and defensive algorithms. While it is possible to improve stealthiness by reducing the strength of the backdoor, doing so can significantly compromise its generality and effectiveness. In this paper, we propose UIBDiffusion, the universal imperceptible backdoor attack for diffusion models, which allows us to achieve superior attack and generation performance while evading state-of-the-art defenses. We propose a novel trigger generation approach based on universal adversarial perturbations (UAPs) and reveal that such perturbations, which are initially devised for fooling pre-trained discriminative models, can be adapted as potent imperceptible backdoor triggers for DMs. We evaluate UIBDiffusion on multiple types of DMs with different kinds of samplers across various datasets and targets. Experimental results demonstrate that UIBDiffusion brings three advantages: 1) Universality, the imperceptible trigger is universal (i.e., image and model agnostic) where a single trigger is effective to any images and all diffusion models with different samplers; 2) Utility, it achieves comparable generation quality (e.g., FID) and even better attack success rate (i.e., ASR) at low poison rates compared to the prior works; and 3) Undetectability, UIBDiffusion is plausible to human perception and can bypass Elijah and TERD, the SOTA defenses against backdoors for DMs. We will release our backdoor triggers and code.

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arXiv2025

A Survey on Vulnerability Prioritization: Taxonomy, Metrics, and Research Challenges

In the highly interconnected digital landscape of today, safeguarding complex infrastructures against cyber threats has become increasingly challenging due to the exponential growth in the number and complexity of vulnerabilities. Resource constraints necessitate effective vulnerability prioritization strategies, focusing efforts on the most critical risks. This paper presents a systematic literature review of 82 studies, introducing a novel taxonomy that categorizes metrics into severity, exploitability, contextual factors, predictive indicators, and aggregation methods. Our analysis reveals significant gaps in existing approaches and challenges with multi-domain applicability. By emphasizing the need for dynamic, context-aware metrics and scalable solutions, we provide actionable insights to bridge the gap between research and real-world applications. This work contributes to the field by offering a comprehensive framework for evaluating vulnerability prioritization methodologies and setting a research agenda to advance the state of practice.

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arXiv2025

VulRG: Multi-Level Explainable Vulnerability Patch Ranking for Complex Systems Using Graphs

As interconnected systems proliferate, safeguarding complex infrastructures against an escalating array of cyber threats has become an urgent challenge. The increasing number of vulnerabilities, combined with resource constraints, makes addressing every vulnerability impractical, making effective prioritization essential. However, existing risk prioritization methods often rely on expert judgment or focus solely on exploit likelihood and consequences, lacking the granularity and adaptability needed for complex systems. This work introduces a graph-based framework for vulnerability patch prioritization that optimizes security by integrating diverse data sources and metrics into a universally applicable model. Refined risk metrics enable detailed assessments at the component, asset, and system levels. The framework employs two key graphs: a network communication graph to model potential attack paths and identify the shortest routes to critical assets, and a system dependency graph to capture risk propagation from exploited vulnerabilities across interconnected components. Asset criticality and component dependency rules systematically assess and mitigate risks. Benchmarking against state-of-the-art methods demonstrates superior accuracy in vulnerability patch ranking, with enhanced explainability. This framework advances vulnerability management and sets the stage for future research in adaptive cybersecurity strategies.

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arXiv2025

MITRE ATT&CK Applications in Cybersecurity and The Way Forward

The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a widely adopted tool for enhancing cybersecurity, supporting threat intelligence, incident response, attack modeling, and vulnerability prioritization. This paper synthesizes research on its application across these domains by analyzing 417 peer-reviewed publications. We identify commonly used adversarial tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and examine the integration of natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) with ATT&CK to improve threat detection and response. Additionally, we explore the interoperability of ATT&CK with other frameworks, such as the Cyber Kill Chain, NIST guidelines, and STRIDE, highlighting its versatility. The paper further evaluates the framework from multiple perspectives, including its effectiveness, validation methods, and sector-specific challenges, particularly in industrial control systems (ICS) and healthcare. We conclude by discussing current limitations and proposing future research directions to enhance the applicability of ATT&CK in dynamic cybersecurity environments.

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arXiv2025

False Sense of Security on Protected Wi-Fi Networks

The Wi-Fi technology (IEEE 802.11) was introduced in 1997. With the increasing use and deployment of such networks, their security has also attracted considerable attention. Current Wi-Fi networks use WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2) for security (authentication and encryption) between access points and clients. According to the IEEE 802.11i-2004 standard, wireless networks secured with WPA2-PSK (Pre-Shared Key) are required to be protected with a passphrase between 8 to 63 ASCII characters. However, a poorly chosen passphrase significantly reduces the effectiveness of both WPA2 and WPA3-Personal Transition Mode. The objective of this paper is to empirically evaluate password choices in the wild and evaluate weakness in current common practices. We collected a total of 3,352 password hashes from Wi-Fi access points and determine the passphrases that were protecting them. We then analyze these passwords to investigate the impact of user's behavior and preference for convenience on passphrase strength in secured private Wi-Fi networks in Singapore. We characterized the predictability of passphrases that use the minimum required length of 8 numeric or alphanumeric characters, and/or symbols stipulated in wireless security standards, and the usage of default passwords, and found that 16 percent of the passwords show such behavior. Our results also indicate the prevalence of the use of default passwords by hardware manufacturers. We correlate our results with our findings and recommend methods that will improve the overall security and future of our Wi-Fi networks.

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arXiv2024

Delay and Power consumption Analysis for Queue State Dependent Service Rate Control in WirelessHart System

To solve the problem of power supply limitation of machines working in wireless industry automation, we evaluated the workload aware service rate control design implanted in the medium access control component of these small devices and proposed a bio-intelligence based algorithm to optimise the design regarding the delay constraint while minimizing power consumption. To achieve this, we provide an accurate analysis of the delay cost of this design and for the first time pinpoint an exact departure process model in order to evaluate the overall delay cost in consideration of the medium access time.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2024

Leveraging A New GAN-based Transformer with ECDH Crypto-system for Enhancing Energy Theft Detection in Smart Grid

Detecting energy theft is vital for effectively managing power grids, as it ensures precise billing and prevents financial losses. Split-learning emerges as a promising decentralized machine learning technique for identifying energy theft while preserving user data confidentiality. Nevertheless, traditional split learning approaches are vulnerable to privacy leakage attacks, which significantly threaten data confidentiality. To address this challenge, we propose a novel GAN-Transformer-based split learning framework in this paper. This framework leverages the strengths of the transformer architecture, which is known for its capability to process long-range dependencies in energy consumption data. Thus, it enhances the accuracy of energy theft detection without compromising user privacy. A distinctive feature of our approach is the deployment of a novel mask-based method, marking a first in its field to effectively combat privacy leakage in split learning scenarios targeted at AI-enabled adversaries. This method protects sensitive information during the model's training phase. Our experimental evaluations indicate that the proposed framework not only achieves accuracy levels comparable to conventional methods but also significantly enhances privacy protection. The results underscore the potential of the GAN-Transformer split learning framework as an effective and secure tool in the domain of energy theft detection.

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arXiv2024

Privacy-preserving Robotic-based Multi-factor Authentication Scheme for Secure Automated Delivery System

Package delivery is a critical aspect of various industries, but it often incurs high financial costs and inefficiencies when relying solely on human resources. The last-mile transport problem, in particular, contributes significantly to the expenditure of human resources in major companies. Robot-based delivery systems have emerged as a potential solution for last-mile delivery to address this challenge. However, robotic delivery systems still face security and privacy issues, like impersonation, replay, man-in-the-middle attacks (MITM), unlinkability, and identity theft. In this context, we propose a privacy-preserving multi-factor authentication scheme specifically designed for robot delivery systems. Additionally, AI-assisted robotic delivery systems are susceptible to machine learning-based attacks (e.g. FGSM, PGD, etc.). We introduce the \emph{first} transformer-based audio-visual fusion defender to tackle this issue, which effectively provides resilience against adversarial samples. Furthermore, we provide a rigorous formal analysis of the proposed protocol and also analyse the protocol security using a popular symbolic proof tool called ProVerif and Scyther. Finally, we present a real-world implementation of the proposed robotic system with the computation cost and energy consumption analysis. Code and pre-trained models are available at: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18B2YbxtV0Pyj5RSFX-ZzCGtFOyorBHil

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arXiv2024

Toward Democratized Generative AI in Next-Generation Mobile Edge Networks

The rapid development of generative AI technologies, including large language models (LLMs), has brought transformative changes to various fields. However, deploying such advanced models on mobile and edge devices remains challenging due to their high computational, memory, communication, and energy requirements. To address these challenges, we propose a model-centric framework for democratizing generative AI deployment on mobile and edge networks. First, we comprehensively review key compact model strategies, such as quantization, model pruning, and knowledge distillation, and present key performance metrics to optimize generative AI for mobile deployment. Next, we provide a focused review of mobile and edge networks, emphasizing the specific challenges and requirements of these environments. We further conduct a case study demonstrating the effectiveness of these strategies by deploying LLMs on real mobile edge devices. Experimental results highlight the practicality of democratized LLMs, with significant improvements in generalization accuracy, hallucination rate, accessibility, and resource consumption. Finally, we discuss potential research directions to further advance the deployment of generative AI in resource-constrained environments.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2024

CombU: A Combined Unit Activation for Fitting Mathematical Expressions with Neural Networks

The activation functions are fundamental to neural networks as they introduce non-linearity into data relationships, thereby enabling deep networks to approximate complex data relations. Existing efforts to enhance neural network performance have predominantly focused on developing new mathematical functions. However, we find that a well-designed combination of existing activation functions within a neural network can also achieve this objective. In this paper, we introduce the Combined Units activation (CombU), which employs different activation functions at various dimensions across different layers. This approach can be theoretically proven to fit most mathematical expressions accurately. The experiments conducted on four mathematical expression datasets, compared against six State-Of-The-Art (SOTA) activation function algorithms, demonstrate that CombU outperforms all SOTA algorithms in 10 out of 16 metrics and ranks in the top three for the remaining six metrics.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

VFLGAN-TS: Vertical Federated Learning-based Generative Adversarial Networks for Publication of Vertically Partitioned Time-Series Data

In the current artificial intelligence (AI) era, the scale and quality of the dataset play a crucial role in training a high-quality AI model. However, often original data cannot be shared due to privacy concerns and regulations. A potential solution is to release a synthetic dataset with a similar distribution to the private dataset. Nevertheless, in some scenarios, the attributes required to train an AI model are distributed among different parties, and the parties cannot share the local data for synthetic data construction due to privacy regulations. In PETS 2024, we recently introduced the first Vertical Federated Learning-based Generative Adversarial Network (VFLGAN) for publishing vertically partitioned static data. However, VFLGAN cannot effectively handle time-series data, presenting both temporal and attribute dimensions. In this article, we proposed VFLGAN-TS, which combines the ideas of attribute discriminator and vertical federated learning to generate synthetic time-series data in the vertically partitioned scenario. The performance of VFLGAN-TS is close to that of its counterpart, which is trained in a centralized manner and represents the upper limit for VFLGAN-TS. To further protect privacy, we apply a Gaussian mechanism to make VFLGAN-TS satisfy an $(ε,δ)$-differential privacy. Besides, we develop an enhanced privacy auditing scheme to evaluate the potential privacy breach through the framework of VFLGAN-TS and synthetic datasets.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

Swarm-Net: Firmware Attestation in IoT Swarms using Graph Neural Networks and Volatile Memory

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of billions of interconnected, primarily low-end embedded devices. Despite large-scale deployment, studies have highlighted critical security concerns in IoT networks, many of which stem from firmware-related issues. Furthermore, IoT swarms have become more prevalent in industries, smart homes, and agricultural applications, among others. Malicious activity on one node in a swarm can propagate to larger network sections. Although several Remote Attestation (RA) techniques have been proposed, they are limited by their latency, availability, complexity, hardware assumptions, and uncertain access to firmware copies under Intellectual Property (IP) rights. We present Swarm-Net, a novel swarm attestation technique that exploits the inherent, interconnected, graph-like structure of IoT networks along with the runtime information stored in the Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) using Graph Neural Networks (GNN) to detect malicious firmware and its downstream effects. We also present the first datasets on SRAM-based swarm attestation encompassing different types of firmware and edge relationships. In addition, a secure swarm attestation protocol is presented. Swarm-Net is not only computationally lightweight but also does not require a copy of the firmware. It achieves a 99.96% attestation rate on authentic firmware, 100% detection rate on anomalous firmware, and 99% detection rate on propagated anomalies, at a communication overhead and inference latency of ~1 second and ~10^{-5} seconds (on a laptop CPU), respectively. In addition to the collected datasets, Swarm-Net's effectiveness is evaluated on simulated trace replay, random trace perturbation, and dropped attestation responses, showing robustness against such threats. Lastly, we compare Swarm-Net with past works and present a security analysis.

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arXiv2024

VFLGAN: Vertical Federated Learning-based Generative Adversarial Network for Vertically Partitioned Data Publication

In the current artificial intelligence (AI) era, the scale and quality of the dataset play a crucial role in training a high-quality AI model. However, good data is not a free lunch and is always hard to access due to privacy regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). A potential solution is to release a synthetic dataset with a similar distribution to that of the private dataset. Nevertheless, in some scenarios, it has been found that the attributes needed to train an AI model belong to different parties, and they cannot share the raw data for synthetic data publication due to privacy regulations. In PETS 2023, Xue et al. proposed the first generative adversary network-based model, VertiGAN, for vertically partitioned data publication. However, after thoroughly investigating, we found that VertiGAN is less effective in preserving the correlation among the attributes of different parties. This article proposes a Vertical Federated Learning-based Generative Adversarial Network, VFLGAN, for vertically partitioned data publication to address the above issues. Our experimental results show that compared with VertiGAN, VFLGAN significantly improves the quality of synthetic data. Taking the MNIST dataset as an example, the quality of the synthetic dataset generated by VFLGAN is 3.2 times better than that generated by VertiGAN w.r.t. the Fréchet Distance. We also designed a more efficient and effective Gaussian mechanism for the proposed VFLGAN to provide the synthetic dataset with a differential privacy guarantee. On the other hand, differential privacy only gives the upper bound of the worst-case privacy guarantee. This article also proposes a practical auditing scheme that applies membership inference attacks to estimate privacy leakage through the synthetic dataset.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

PhenoAuth: A Novel PUF-Phenotype-based Authentication Protocol for IoT Devices

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) have been shown to be a highly promising solution for enabling high security systems tailored for low-power devices. Commonly, PUFs are utilised to generate cryptographic keys on-the-fly, replacing the need to store keys in vulnerable, non-volatile memories. Due to the physical nature of PUFs, environmental variations cause noise, manifesting themselves as errors which are apparent in the initial PUF measurements. This necessitates expensive active error correction techniques which can run counter to the goal of lightweight security. ML-based techniques for authenticating noisy PUF measurements were explored as an alternative to error correction techniques, bringing about the concept of a PUF Phenotype, where PUF identity is considered as a structure agnostic representation of the PUF, with relevant noise encoding. This work proposes a full noise-tolerant authentication protocol based on the PUF Phenotype concept and methodology for an Internet-of-Things (IoT) network, demonstrating mutual authentication and forward secrecy in a setting suitable for device-to-device communication. Upon conducting security and performance analyses, it is evident that our proposed scheme demonstrates resilience against various attacks compared to the currently existing PUF protocols.

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