Next-generation IoT wireless communication systems emphasise the importance and urgent need for energy-efficient security measures, thus requiring a balanced approach to address growing security vulnerabilities and fulfil energy demands in advanced wireless communication networks. However, the evolution of 6G networks and their integration with advanced technologies will revolutionise the IoT ecosystem while simultaneously introducing new security threats such as the Mirai malware, which targets IoT devices, infects multiple nodes, and depletes computational and energy resources. This study introduces a novel security algorithm designed to minimise energy consumption while effectively detecting botnet attacks at the smart device level. This research examines four distinct types of Mirai botnet attacks: scan, UDP, TCP, and ACK flooding.The experimental evaluation was conducted using real IoT device data collected from a Raspberry Pi setup combined with network traffic traces simulating the four Mirai attack scenarios to ensure realistic and reproducible results. Two ML algorithms, SVM and KNN, are employed to detect these botnet attacks, with each algorithm’s detection accuracy and energy efficiency thoroughly assessed. Results indicate that the proposed approach significantly enhances smart device security while minimising energy use. Findings show that the KNN algorithm outperforms SVM in terms of accuracy and energy efficiency for detecting Mirai botnet attacks, achieving detection rates above 99% across various attack types. This study highlights the importance of selecting suitable security techniques for IoT networks to address the evolving threats and energy demands of 6G-enabled wireless communication systems, providing valuable insights for future research.

Hybrid Wireless Body Area Networks (HyWBANs) are revolutionizing healthcare by integrating joint sensing and communication capabilities. However, this advancement introduces critical security challenges, as attackers can exploit sensing channels to intercept sensitive medical data. This paper introduces Secrecy Energy Efficiency (SEE) as a new performance metric for hybrid radio-optical wireless networks, enabling a quantitative assessment of secure communication under power-constrained conditions. We formulate and solve optimization problems to maximize the optical secrecy rate and SEE. We extend this analysis to a joint allocation framework for Ultra Wideband (UWB) and Near-Infrared (NIR) channels. Our approach leverages Sequential Fractional Programming (SFP), which enables to tackle the non-convex SEE maximization problem by a sequence of convex problems, addressing secure transmissions' inherent non-convexity and fractional nature with intentional jamming. Based on lab-based in-body measurements through porcine tissue and on radio and optical average synthetic phantoms, numerical evaluations demonstrate that the NIR link can achieve approximately 3 bit/Hz/Joule in SEE. Further, we show that optimal power allocation significantly outperforms random allocation methods, highlighting the potential of this approach for mission-critical healthcare applications. These findings provide a robust foundation for designing next-generation, low-power medical communication systems that balance security requirements with stringent energy constraints.

The rapid proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) and edge computing devices calls for solutions that deliver low latency, energy efficiency, and robust security-often challenging goals to balance simultaneously. This paper introduces a novel nanoservice-based framework that dynamically adapts to changing demands while achieving sustainable and secure edge operations. By breaking down functionalities into specialized and narrowly scoped nanoservices that are requested only as needed and eliminated when idle, the approach significantly reduces latency and energy usage compared to conventional, more static methods. Moreover, integrating a Zero-Trust Architecture (ZTA) ensures that every component-computational or security-related-is continuously verified and restricted through strict access controls and micro-segmentation. This framework's adaptability extends uniformly to all nanoservices, including those providing security features, thereby maintaining strong protective measures even as workloads and network conditions evolve. Experimental evaluations on IoT devices under varying workloads demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly reduces energy consumption and latency while maintaining security and scalability. These results underscore the potential for an integrated, flexible model that simultaneously addresses energy efficiency, performance, and security-an essential trifecta in future edge computing environments.

The introduction of Reflective Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) brings significant advancements in communication systems, such as increased capacity, communication secrecy, and novel physical layer-based authentication schemes. Besides Radio Frequency (RF) communications, RISs also benefit Visible Light Communications (VLC). Indeed, recent results showed that it is possible to increase the communication secrecy of VLC systems by leveraging RISs and their reconfiguration capabilities. However, no solution exists to authenticate a transmitter at the physical layer in VLC systems. Despite the existence of RIS-based Physical Layer Authentication (PLA) schemes in the RF domain, the geometrical behaviour of VLC channels renders these solutions not trivially portable to VLC systems. This paper proposes the first physical layer-based authentication scheme for VLC systems. The legitimate transmitter leverages a time-slotted communication to send a certain number of pre-agreed challenges to the receiver. Although an attacker might be able to replicate some of these challenges, the probability of correctly guessing all of them is very low. As an enabling component of our scheme, we propose the novel Distributed RIS (DRIS) concept, i.e., a RIS whose Reflecting Elements (RE) are spread over a wider area than traditional RISs. Thanks to DRIS, we increase the spatial diversity of the VLC channel model available at the transmitter, breaking hence the limits imposed by the symmetries of the widely accepted geometrical VLC channel. We validate our scheme via numerical simulations and compare our results with those obtained with a similar scheme implemented with a conventional RIS. We show that thanks to Distributed Reflective Intelligent Surface (DRIS), we achieve 10–3probability of false alarm and 10–1probability of misdetection with and Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of 10dB, while classical Reflective Intelligent Surface (RIS) achieve 0.7 probability of false alarm and 0.5 probability of misdetection for the same SNR value. DRIS represents a significant improvement for physical layer-based authentication schemes in VLC, paving the way for further research on the subject.

Recent studies highlighted the advantages of Visible Light Communication (VLC) over radio technology for future 6G networks. Thanks to the use of Reflective Intelligent Surfaces (RISs), researchers showed that is possible to guarantee communication secrecy in a VLC network where the adversary location is unknown. However, the problem of authenticating the transmitter with a low-complexity physical layer solution while guaranteeing communication secrecy is still open. This paper proposes a novel multi-RIS architecture to guarantee source authentication, communication secrecy, and integrity in a VLC scenario. We leverage the intuition that a signal transmitted by users located in different positions will undergo a different propagation path to discriminate between the legitimate intended transmitter and an attacker. To increase the channel's variability and reduce the chances that an adversary might be able to replicate it, we leverage the reconfiguration capabilities of RIS. We derive a statistical characterization of the non-line-of-sight VLC channel, representing the light reflected by RIS elements. Via numerical simulations, we show that the channel variability combined with the configurability capabilities of RISs provide sufficient statistics to authenticate the legitimate transmitter at the physical layer.

Physical layer security mechanisms use primitives that exploit physical properties of the communication channel to protect data. Protecting communications at the physical layer offers some advantages, e.g., in terms of reduced computations, since complex cryptographic procedures are not executed, However, these mechanisms lack a formal specification that prevent protocols and applications that use them from being verified and compared with those based on cyptography. Here we start filling this gap by providing an axiomatization of key physical layer security primitives and proposing a variant of the Dolev–Yao attacker model that takes them into account. We show that our formalization enables applying existing automatic tools for verifying security of protocols. Then, we show that these primitives are a valuable alternative and effective complement to cryptography, because they ensure confidentiality and integrity but require a lower energy consumption and often they also reduce transmission time. Finally, we characterize the specific application domains and network features that make adopting these security mechanisms particularly profitable with respect to the AES cypher.

The Control Area Network (CAN) represents the standard bus for intra-vehicular networks communication. Unfortunately, CAN was not designed to be a secure protocol. Communications over CAN do not take advantage of any security feature (e.g., cryptography and authentication), raising different vulnerabilities in critical applications. This lack of security is even more emphasized in recent CAN networks, which integrate remote connection capabilities (e.g., Bluetooth and WiFi). This insecurity-by-design led to the development of specific mechanisms to patch CAN vulnerabilities. Many proposed solutions rely on implementing optimized cryptographic primitives and assume that the cryptographic keys were previously shared among the different nodes during the production phase, omitting the issue related to keys distribution and update. We propose SENECAN, a solution that combines watermarking and wired jamming to secure the CAN bus's key distribution. Our solution leverages intentional interference and spread spectrum watermarking to achieve security properties such as confidentiality, integrity, authentication, and anti-replay. Compared to other works, SENECAN does not require any modification of the CAN protocol and system architecture. Instead, it requires an additional CAN transceiver and an initial transmission overhead. Finally, we tested the effectiveness and functioning of the SENECAN distribution schema in a real CAN environment.

Technological advances in the telecommunications industry have brought significant advantages in the management and performance of communication networks. The railway industry is among the ones that have benefited the most. These interconnected systems, however, have a wide area exposed to cyberattacks. This survey examines the cybersecurity aspects of railway systems by considering the standards, guidelines, frameworks, and technologies used in the industry to assess and mitigate cybersecurity risks, particularly regarding the relationship between safety and security. To do so, we dedicate specific attention to signaling, which fundamental reliance on computer and communication technologies allows us to explore better the multifaceted nature of the security of modern hyperconnected railway systems. With this in mind, we then move on to analyzing the approaches and tools that practitioners can use to facilitate the cyber security process. In detail, we present a view on cyber ranges as an enabling technology to model and emulate computer networks and attack-defense scenarios, study vulnerabilities’ impact, and finally devise countermeasures. We also discuss several possible use cases strongly connected to the railway industry reality.

Visible Light Communication (VLC) is one the most promising enabling technology for future 6G networks to over-come Radio-Frequency (RF)-based communication limitations thanks to a broader bandwidth, higher data rate, and greater efficiency. However, from the security perspective, VLCs suffer from all known wireless communication security threats (e.g., eavesdropping and integrity attacks). For this reason, security re-searchers are proposing innovative Physical Layer Security (PLS) solutions to protect such communication. Among the different solutions, the novel Reflective Intelligent Surface (RIS) technology coupled with VLCs has been successfully demonstrated in recent work to improve the VLC communication capacity. However, to date, the literature still lacks analysis and solutions to show the PLS capability of RIS-based VLC communication. In this paper, we combine watermarking and jamming prim-itives through the Watermark Blind Physical Layer Security (WBPLSec) algorithm to secure VLC communication at the physical layer. Our solution leverages RIS technology to improve the security properties of the communication. By using an opti-mization framework, we can calculate RIS phases to maximize the WBPLSec jamming interference schema over a predefined area in the room. In particular, compared to a scenario without RIS, our solution improves the performance in terms of secrecy capacity without any assumption about the adversary's location. We validate through numerical evaluations the positive impact of RIS-aided solution to increase the secrecy capacity of the legitimate jamming receiver in a VLC indoor scenario. Our results show that the introduction of RIS technology extends the area where secure communication occurs and that by increasing the number of RIS elements the outage probability decreases.

New automated solutions are needed, e.g., in mining industry to improve efficiency and productivity of every process. In addition, costs have to be reduced, and health and safety of employees need to be enhanced. This paper studies vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication to be utilized in, e.g., mining vehicles in a tunnel to increase safety and productivity of a transportation of mining goods. The objective of the paper is to experimentally evaluate maximum achievable range of WiFi radio in a real tunnel environment including line-of-sight (LOS) and non-LOS (NLOS) links. The measurement campaign was carried out in an artificial tunnel using commercial off-the-shelf WiFi radios and antennas. The experimental system was able to reach 150 m range when applying a single data stream, and 100 m for two simultaneous data streams without loss in throughput.