arXiv subjects

Naima Kaabouch

Publications and source records attributed to Naima Kaabouch.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A Physics-Informed Neuro-Fuzzy Framework for Quantum Error Attribution

As quantum processors scale beyond 100 qubits, distinguishing software bugs from stochastic hardware noise becomes a critical diagnostic challenge. We present a neuro-fuzzy framework that addresses this attribution problem by combining Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference Systems (ANFIS) with physics-grounded feature engineering. We introduce the Bhattacharyya Veto, a hard physical constraint grounded in the empirically characterized weak-noise floor of the device, with CPTP contraction guaranteeing one-sided soundness that prevents the classifier from attributing topologically impossible output distributions to noise. Validated on IBM's 156-qubit Heron r2 processor (ibm_fez) across 105 circuits spanning 17 algorithm families, the framework achieves 89.5% effective accuracy (+/- 5.9% CI). The system implements a safe failure mode, flagging 14.3% of ambiguous cases for manual review rather than forcing low-confidence predictions. We resolve key ambiguities - such as distinguishing correct Grover amplification from bug-induced collapse - and identify fundamental limits of single-basis diagnostics, including a Z-basis blind spot where phase-flip errors remain statistically invisible. This work establishes a robust, interpretable diagnostic layer that prevents error mitigation techniques from being applied to logically flawed circuits.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Exploring Silicon-Based Societies: An Early Study of the Moltbook Agent Community

The rapid emergence of autonomous large language model agents has given rise to persistent, large-scale agent ecosystems whose collective behavior cannot be adequately understood through anecdotal observation or small-scale simulation. This paper introduces data-driven silicon sociology as a systematic empirical framework for studying social structure formation among interacting artificial agents. We present a pioneering large-scale data mining investigation of an in-the-wild agent society by analyzing Moltbook, a social platform designed primarily for agent-to-agent interaction. At the time of study, Moltbook hosted over 150,000 registered autonomous agents operating across thousands of agent-created sub-communities. Using programmatic and non-intrusive data acquisition, we collected and analyzed the textual descriptions of 12,758 submolts, which represent proactive sub-community partitioning activities within the ecosystem. Treating agent-authored descriptions as first-class observational artifacts, we apply rigorous preprocessing, contextual embedding, and unsupervised clustering techniques to uncover latent patterns of thematic organization and social space structuring. The results show that autonomous agents systematically organize collective space through reproducible patterns spanning human-mimetic interests, silicon-centric self-reflection, and early-stage economic and coordination behaviors. Rather than relying on predefined sociological taxonomies, these structures emerge directly from machine-generated data traces. This work establishes a methodological foundation for data-driven silicon sociology and demonstrates that data mining techniques can provide a powerful lens for understanding the organization and evolution of large autonomous agent societies.

cs.MA↗

arXiv2025

A Lightweight Federated Learning Approach for Privacy-Preserving Botnet Detection in IoT

The rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) has expanded opportunities for innovation but also increased exposure to botnet-driven cyberattacks. Conventional detection methods often struggle with scalability, privacy, and adaptability in resource-constrained IoT environments. To address these challenges, we present a lightweight and privacy-preserving botnet detection framework based on federated learning. This approach enables distributed devices to collaboratively train models without exchanging raw data, thus maintaining user privacy while preserving detection accuracy. A communication-efficient aggregation strategy is introduced to reduce overhead, ensuring suitability for constrained IoT networks. Experiments on benchmark IoT botnet datasets demonstrate that the framework achieves high detection accuracy while substantially reducing communication costs. These findings highlight federated learning as a practical path toward scalable, secure, and privacy-aware intrusion detection for IoT ecosystems.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

A Quantum-Secure Voting Framework Using QKD, Dual-Key Symmetric Encryption, and Verifiable Receipts

Electronic voting systems face growing risks from cyberattacks and data breaches, which are expected to intensify with the advent of quantum computing. To address these challenges, we introduce a quantum-secure voting framework that integrates Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), Dual-Key Symmetric Encryption, and verifiable receipt mechanisms to strengthen the privacy, integrity, and reliability of the voting process. The framework enables voters to establish encryption keys securely, cast encrypted ballots, and verify their votes through receipt-based confirmation, all without exposing the vote contents. To evaluate performance, we simulate both quantum and classical communication channels using the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol. Results demonstrate that the system can process large numbers of votes efficiently with low latency and minimal error rates. This approach offers a scalable and practical path toward secure, transparent, and verifiable electronic voting in the quantum era.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Leveraging Machine Learning for Botnet Attack Detection in Edge-Computing Assisted IoT Networks

The increase of IoT devices, driven by advancements in hardware technologies, has led to widespread deployment in large-scale networks that process massive amounts of data daily. However, the reliance on Edge Computing to manage these devices has introduced significant security vulnerabilities, as attackers can compromise entire networks by targeting a single IoT device. In light of escalating cybersecurity threats, particularly botnet attacks, this paper investigates the application of machine learning techniques to enhance security in Edge-Computing-Assisted IoT environments. Specifically, it presents a comparative analysis of Random Forest, XGBoost, and LightGBM -- three advanced ensemble learning algorithms -- to address the dynamic and complex nature of botnet threats. Utilizing a widely recognized IoT network traffic dataset comprising benign and malicious instances, the models were trained, tested, and evaluated for their accuracy in detecting and classifying botnet activities. Furthermore, the study explores the feasibility of deploying these models in resource-constrained edge and IoT devices, demonstrating their practical applicability in real-world scenarios. The results highlight the potential of machine learning to fortify IoT networks against emerging cybersecurity challenges.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2022

A Comprehensive Survey on the Cyber-Security of Smart Grids: Cyber-Attacks, Detection, Countermeasure Techniques, and Future Directions

One of the significant challenges that smart grid networks face is cyber-security. Several studies have been conducted to highlight those security challenges. However, the majority of these surveys classify attacks based on the security requirements, confidentiality, integrity, and availability, without taking into consideration the accountability requirement. In addition, some of these surveys focused on the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) model, which does not differentiate between the application, session, and presentation and the data link and physical layers of the Open System Interconnection (OSI) model. In this survey paper, we provide a classification of attacks based on the OSI model and discuss in more detail the cyber-attacks that can target the different layers of smart grid networks communication. We also propose new classifications for the detection and countermeasure techniques and describe existing techniques under each category. Finally, we discuss challenges and future research directions.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2022

Phishing Attacks Detection -- A Machine Learning-Based Approach

Phishing attacks are one of the most common social engineering attacks targeting users emails to fraudulently steal confidential and sensitive information. They can be used as a part of more massive attacks launched to gain a foothold in corporate or government networks. Over the last decade, a number of anti-phishing techniques have been proposed to detect and mitigate these attacks. However, they are still inefficient and inaccurate. Thus, there is a great need for efficient and accurate detection techniques to cope with these attacks. In this paper, we proposed a phishing attack detection technique based on machine learning. We collected and analyzed more than 4000 phishing emails targeting the email service of the University of North Dakota. We modeled these attacks by selecting 10 relevant features and building a large dataset. This dataset was used to train, validate, and test the machine learning algorithms. For performance evaluation, four metrics have been used, namely probability of detection, probability of miss-detection, probability of false alarm, and accuracy. The experimental results show that better detection can be achieved using an artificial neural network.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2020

A Novel Jamming Attacks Detection Approach Based on Machine Learning for Wireless Communication

Jamming attacks target a wireless network creating an unwanted denial of service. 5G is vulnerable to these attacks despite its resilience prompted by the use of millimeter wave bands. Over the last decade, several types of jamming detection techniques have been proposed, including fuzzy logic, game theory, channel surfing, and time series. Most of these techniques are inefficient in detecting smart jammers. Thus, there is a great need for efficient and fast jamming detection techniques with high accuracy. In this paper, we compare the efficiency of several machine learning models in detecting jamming signals. We investigated the types of signal features that identify jamming signals, and generated a large dataset using these parameters. Using this dataset, the machine learning algorithms were trained, evaluated, and tested. These algorithms are random forest, support vector machine, and neural network. The performance of these algorithms was evaluated and compared using the probability of detection, probability of false alarm, probability of miss detection, and accuracy. The simulation results show that jamming detection based random forest algorithm can detect jammers with a high accuracy, high detection probability and low probability of false alarm.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2020

Metrics for Evaluating the Efficiency of Compressing Sensing Techniques

Compressive sensing has been receiving a great deal of interest from researchers in many areas because of its ability in speeding up data acquisition. This framework allows fast signal acquisition and compression when signals are sparse in some domains. It extracts the main information from high dimensional sparse signals using only a few samples, then the sparse signals are recovered from the few measurements. There are two main points to consider when it comes to using compressive sensing. The first one is how to design the linear measurement matrix to ensure that the compressive sensing is meeting the objectives of the application. The second is how to recover the sparse signal from few measurements. Performing compressive sensing requires analyzing and investigating the efficiency of the measurement matrix and the recovery algorithm. To date, constructing explicit measurement matrices and developing efficient recovery algorithms are still open challenges in applications. Thus, this paper describes metrics to evaluate the performance of compressive sensing techniques.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2019

A Performance Comparison of Data Mining Algorithms Based Intrusion Detection System for Smart Grid

Smart grid is an emerging and promising technology. It uses the power of information technologies to deliver intelligently the electrical power to customers, and it allows the integration of the green technology to meet the environmental requirements. Unfortunately, information technologies have its inherent vulnerabilities and weaknesses that expose the smart grid to a wide variety of security risks. The Intrusion detection system (IDS) plays an important role in securing smart grid networks and detecting malicious activity, yet it suffers from several limitations. Many research papers have been published to address these issues using several algorithms and techniques. Therefore, a detailed comparison between these algorithms is needed. This paper presents an overview of four data mining algorithms used by IDS in Smart Grid. An evaluation of performance of these algorithms is conducted based on several metrics including the probability of detection, probability of false alarm, probability of miss detection, efficiency, and processing time. Results show that Random Forest outperforms the other three algorithms in detecting attacks with higher probability of detection, lower probability of false alarm, lower probability of miss detection, and higher accuracy.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2019

A Cooperative Spectrum Sensing Scheme Based on Compressive Sensing for Cognitive Radio Networks

In this paper, a cooperative spectrum sensing scheme based on compressive sensing is proposed. In this scheme, secondary users (SUs) are organized in clusters. In each cluster, SUs forward their compressed signals to the cluster head. Then, the cluster heads report the local sensing data to the fusion center to make the final decision. Analog to information converter is adopted to acquire the received SUs signals. The proposed scheme is evaluated using several metrics, including probability of detection, compression ratio, probability of error, and processing time. The simulation results are compared with those of other cooperative sensing schemes. With our proposed scheme, cooperative spectrum sensing achieves a high probability of detection of 97%, a processing time of 2ms, a low compression ratio of 10%, and low error rate of 35 %. These results show that our proposed method outperforms the spectrum sensing without compressive sensing.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2019

Primary User Emulation Attacks: A Detection Technique Based on Kalman Filter

Cognitive radio technology addresses the problem of spectrum scarcity by allowing secondary users to use the vacant spectrum bands without causing interference to the primary users. However, several attacks could disturb the normal functioning of the cognitive radio network. Primary user emulation attacks are one of the most severe attacks in which a malicious user emulates the primary user signal characteristics to either prevent other legitimate secondary users from accessing the idle channels or causing harmful interference to the primary users. There are several proposed approaches to detect the primary user emulation attackers. However, most of these techniques assume that the primary user location is fixed, which does not make them valid when the primary user is mobile. In this paper, we propose a new approach based on the Kalman filter framework for detecting the primary user emulation attacks with a non-stationary primary user. Several experiments have been conducted and the advantages of the proposed approach are demonstrated through the simulation results.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2018

Cyber-Security in Smart Grid: Survey and Challenges

Smart grid uses the power of information technology to intelligently deliver energy to customers by using a two-way communication, and wisely meet the environmental requirements by facilitating the integration of green technologies. Although smart grid addresses several problems of the traditional grid, it faces a number of security challenges. Because communication has been incorporated into the electrical power with its inherent weaknesses, it has exposed the system to numerous risks. Several research papers have discussed these problems. However, most of them classified attacks based on confidentiality, integrity, and availability, and they excluded attacks which compromise other security criteria such as accountability. In addition, the existed security countermeasures focus on countering some specific attacks or protecting some specific components, but there is no global approach which combines these solutions to secure the entire system. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of the relevant published works. First, we review the security requirements. Then, we investigate in depth a number of important cyber-attacks in smart grid to diagnose the potential vulnerabilities along with their impact. In addition, we proposed a cyber security strategy as a solution to address breaches, counter attacks, and deploy appropriate countermeasures. Finally, we provide some future research directions.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2018

Bayesian Compressive Sensing with Circulant Matrix for Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks

For wideband spectrum sensing, compressive sensing has been proposed as a solution to speed up the high dimensional signals sensing and reduce the computational complexity. Compressive sensing consists of acquiring the essential information from a sparse signal and recovering it at the receiver based on an efficient sampling matrix and a reconstruction technique. In order to deal with the uncertainty, improve the signal acquisition performance, and reduce the randomness during the sensing and reconstruction processes, compressive sensing requires a robust sampling matrix and an efficient reconstruction technique. In this paper, we propose an approach that combines the advantages of a Circulant matrix with Bayesian models. This approach is implemented, extensively tested, and its results have been compared to those of l1 norm minimization with a Circulant or random matrix based on several metrics. These metrics are Mean Square Error, reconstruction error, correlation, recovery time, sampling time, and processing time. The results show that our technique is faster and more efficient.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2018

Compressive Sensing: Performance Comparison Of Sparse Recovery Algorithms

Spectrum sensing is an important process in cognitive radio. A number of sensing techniques that have been proposed suffer from high processing time, hardware cost and computational complexity. To address these problems, compressive sensing has been proposed to decrease the processing time and expedite the scanning process of the radio spectrum. Selection of a suitable sparse recovery algorithm is necessary to achieve this goal. A number of sparse recovery algorithms have been proposed. This paper surveys the sparse recovery algorithms, classify them into categories, and compares their performances. For the comparison, we used several metrics such as recovery error, recovery time, covariance, and phase transition diagram. The results show that techniques under Greedy category are faster, techniques of Convex and Relaxation category perform better in term of recovery error, and Bayesian based techniques are observed to have an advantageous balance of small recovery error and a short recovery time.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2018

Noise Cancellation in Cognitive Radio Systems: A Performance Comparison of Evolutionary Algorithms

Noise cancellation is one of the important signal processing functions of any communication system, as noise affects data integrity. In existing systems, traditional filters are used to cancel the noise from the received signals. These filters use fixed hardware which is capable of filtering specific frequency or a range of frequencies. However, next generation communication technologies, such as cognitive radio, will require the use of adaptive filters that can dynamically reconfigure their filtering parameters for any frequency. To this end, a few noise cancellation techniques have been proposed, including least mean squares (LMS) and its variants. However, these algorithms are susceptible to non-linear noise and fail to locate the global optimum solution for de-noising. In this paper, we investigate the efficiency of two global search optimization based algorithms, genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization in performing noise cancellation in cognitive radio systems. These algorithms are implemented and their performances are compared to that of LMS using bit error rate and mean square error as performance evaluation metrics. Simulations are performed with additive white Gaussian noise and random nonlinear noise. Results indicate that GA and PSO perform better than LMS for the case of AWGN corrupted signal but for non-linear random noise PSO outperforms the other two algorithms.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2018

Denoising Signals in Cognitive Radio Systems Using An Evolutionary Algorithm Based Adaptive Filter

Noise originating from several sources in a RF environment degrades the performance of communication systems. In wideband systems, such as cognitive radios, noise at the receiver can originate from non-linearity present in the RF front end, time-varying thermal noise within the receiver radio system, and noise from adjacent network nodes. Several denoising techniques have been proposed for cognitive radios, some of which are applied during spectrum sensing and others to received noisy signal during communication. Examples of some of these techniques used for noise cancellation in received signals are least mean square (LMS) and its variants. However, these algorithms have low performance with non-linear signals and cannot locate a global optimum solution for noise cancellation. Therefore, application of global search optimization techniques, such as evolutionary algorithms, is considered for noise cancellation. In this paper, particle swarm optimization (PSO) and LMS algorithms are implemented and their performances are evaluated. Extensive simulations were performed where Gaussian and non-linear random noise were added to the transmitted signal. The performance comparison was done using two metrics: bit error rate and mean square error. The results show that PSO outperforms LMS under both Gaussian and nonlinear random noise.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2018

A Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Program at the University of North Dakota

This paper describes some of the results of a National Science Foundation Nanotechnology Undergraduate Education project that aims to establish a nanoscience and nanotechnology program at the University of North Dakota. The goal is to generate new interest in nanoscience and nanotechnology among engineering and science students and prepare them with the knowledge and skills necessary for the next generation of graduates to compete in the global market and contribute to the nanoscience and nanotechnology field. The project explored several aspects of student learning, including students motivations for investigating nanotechnology through interdisciplinary coursework. To collect this information, a survey was administered to students who enrolled to two nanoscience and nanotechnology courses. Data collected from the survey will be used to improve the design and delivery of future courses as part of constructing a complete nanoscience and nanotechnology curriculum.

physics.ed-ph↗