In the Social Internet of Things (SIoT) environment, malware propagation is attracting more and more attention due to increasing damages. Markov chain models have been used to predict epidemic behavior qualitatively and quantitatively, but most of them model random propagation as a basic multiplicative factor. In this article, we propose an epidemic model Susceptible-Infected without command-Infected with command$(SII^{\prime })$, and derive an exact Markov chain for SIoT malware propagation. We also employ a Markov chain for an SIoT malware mitigation system that groups random devices alongside those with detected infections during the malware eradication process. This mitigation mechanism operates at the network scale, addressing the risks associated with large-scale SIoT deployments through a strategic, yet assertive, approach of widespread disconnections. Such a system effectively drives down the basic reproduction number to less than 1, preventing malware from gaining dominance over the network—all accomplished without modifying the recovery rate. We conducted experimental simulations of the proposed model’s dynamic predictions, and the experimental results show that the use of an exact Markov chain model better matches the benchmark results of our proposed model and also verifies the different effects of group-based mitigation in different SIoT contexts.

Opportunistic computation offloading is an effective way to improve the computing performance of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices. However, as more and more computing tasks are being offloaded to mobile-edge computing (MEC) servers for processing, it can lead to IIoT privacy and security issues, such as personal usage habits. In this paper, we aim to design a Lyapunov-based privacy-aware framework that defines the amount of IIoT user privacy and designs a “reduced amount of privacy” mechanism. We first define the cumulative privacy amount for each IIoT user and trigger the privacy protection mechanism when the cumulative privacy amount exceeds the set privacy threshold. The offloading data generated by the IIoT user is then transferred to local processing, and finally, the cumulative privacy amount of the IIoT user is reduced. This model ensures that the cumulative privacy of all IIoT users remains stable. We further combine the advantages of Lyapunov optimization and actor-critic networks to address the problem of how to make the model learn the optimal policy and maintain the minimum energy consumption in the long run. Especially, this framework integrates model-based optimization and model-free actor-critic networks to handle the offloading problem with very low computational complexity, and Lyapunov optimization ensures that this framework minimizes energy consumption while stabilizing the data queue. It is demonstrated through experimental simulation results that the proposed scheme can maintain data queue stability and minimize energy consumption under strict security.

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has brought a lot of convenience for the industrial world to digitization, automation and intelligence, but it inevitably introduces inherent cyber security risks, resulting in an issue that traditional intrusion detection techniques are no longer sufficient for IIoT environments. To solve this issue, we propose an open-set solution called DC-IDS for IIoT based on deep reinforcement learning. In this solution, the open-set recognition problem in intrusion detection is modeled as a discrete-time Markov decision process, and Deep Q-Network (DQN) is employed to solve it. Meanwhile, a Conditional Variational Auto-Encoder is introduced to the value network in DQN. Therefore, the open-set recognition problem in intrusion detection is divided into two subproblems, namely known traffic fine-grained classification problem and unknown attacks recognition problem. We use DQN to solve the known traffic fine-grained classification problem. Since the reconstruction error of known traffic is generally smaller than the reconstruction error of unknown attacks, we use reconstruction error to recognize unknown attacks. Experiments on IIoT dataset TON-IoT demonstrate the effectiveness of DC-IDS model, which achieves better performance in terms of the recognition rate of unknown attacks as well as the stability of the model compared to previous proposed methods.

Smart devices (SDs) used in the Industrial Internet of Things can generate computational tasks for processing the data generated during production. However, due to the limited processing power of SDs, it is necessary to transfer these computational tasks to more powerful devices for processing. To this end, we propose a Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) system based on a Software Defined Network (SDN) for SDs to offload their computational tasks. This MEC system includes multiple MEC servers to handle numerous SDs, which leads to load-balancing challenges among these servers. To tackle this problem, we develop a computational offloading model based on mean-field game theory and introduce a mean-field game-based load-balancing algorithm (MFGLB), which reduces processing latency and facilitates task scheduling through Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning. Each SD in the MEC system is considered a participant in the mean-field game, simplifying the complex stochastic game into a more manageable dual-agent game. We then prove the existence of Nash Equilibrium for this mean-field game. To evaluate the effectiveness of our MFGLB algorithm, we compare its performance with traditional load-balancing algorithms and a stochastic game-based load-balancing algorithm. Our experimental results demonstrate the superiority of MFGLB in reducing processing latency and addressing load imbalances.

The emergence of mobile edge computing (MEC) imposes an unprecedented pressure on privacy protection, although it helps the improvement of computation performance including energy consumption and computation delay by computation offloading. To this end, we concern about the privacy protection in the MEC system with a curious edge server. We present a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-driven computation offloading strategy designed to concurrently optimize privacy protection and computation cost. We investigate the potential privacy breaches resulting from offloading patterns, propose an attack model of privacy theft, and correspondingly define an analytical measure to assess privacy protection levels. In pursuit of an ideal computation offloading approach, we propose an algorithm, SAC-PP, which integrates actor-critic, off-policy, and maximum entropy to improve the efficiency of learning processes. We explore the sensitivity of SAC-PP to hyperparameters and the results demonstrate its stability, which facilitates application and deployment in real environments. The relationship between privacy protection and computation cost is analyzed with different reward factors. Compared with benchmarks, the empirical results from simulations illustrate that the proposed computation offloading approach exhibits enhanced learning speed and overall performance.

In the scenario of Industry 4.0, mobile smart devices (SDs) on production lines have to process massive amounts of data. These computing tasks sometimes far exceed the computing capability of SDs and require lots of energy and time to process. How to effectively reduce energy consumption and latency is necessary to be solved. To this end, we first propose a software-defined network (SDN)-based mobile edge computing (MEC) system. In the MEC system, SDs can offload computation tasks to edge servers to decrease the processing latency and avoid the waste of energy. At the same time, taking advantage of SDN’s programmability, scalability, and isolation of the control plane and the data plane, an SDN controller can manage edge devices within the MEC system. Second, based on a stochastic game, we study the computation offloading and resource allocation problems in the MEC system and establish a stochastic game-based computation offloading model. Furthermore, we prove that the multiuser stochastic game in this system can achieve Nash Equilibrium. We further consider each SD as an independent agent and design a stochastic game-based resource allocation algorithm with prioritized experience replays (SGRA-PERs) to minimize energy consumption and processing latency with Multiagent Reinforcement Learning. Experiment results demonstrate that the proposed SGRA-PER is superior to MADDPG,$Q$-Mix, and MAPPO algorithms, which can significantly reduce the processing delay and energy consumption with dynamic resource allocation. Moreover, SGRA-PER can still keep a higher performance under the increase of SDs, which can be applied in a large-scale MEC system.

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), which has the capability of perception, monitoring, communication and decision–making, has already exposed more security problems that are easy to be invaded by malware because of many simple edge devices that help smart factories, smart cities and smart homes. In this paper, a two–layer malware spread–patch modelIIPVis proposed based on a hybrid patches distribution method according to the simple edge equipments and limited central computer resources of IIoT. The spread process of malware in IIoT was deeply analyzed using differential game and a differential game model was established. Then optimization theory was further used to solve the optimization problem extracted by introducing subjective effort parameters to obtain the optimal control strategies of devices for malware and patches. In addition, we combined the deep reinforcement learning algorithm into the modelIIPVto design a new algorithmDDQN–PVsuitable for suppressing the spread of malware in IIoT during the experiments. Finally, the effectiveness of modelIIPVand algorithmDDQN–PVare verified by numerous comparative experiments.

of NB-IoT Based Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks Under Malware Infection" [1], there were errors that have been corrected in the revised version shown below.(i) Related Works (ii) Topology Structure of NBIOT-HWSNs (iii) Malicious Program Propagation Mechanism in NBIOT-HWSNs (iv) Node Availability Analysis of NBIOT-HWSN (v) Numerical Simulation and Analysis (vi) Conclusion (vii) Acknowledgement Section (viii) Figures 1, 2, 3, and 4 have been corrected(ix) Tables 1 and2 have been corrected.The corrected article is as follows.

The Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is a main stream technology based on mobile communication system. The combination of NB-IoT and WSNs can active the application of WSNs. In order to evaluate the influence of node heterogeneity on malware propagation in NB-IoT based Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks, we propose a node heterogeneity model based on node distribution and vulnerability differences, which can be used to analyze the availability of nodes. We then establish the node state transition model by epidemic theory and Markov chain. Further, we obtain the dynamic equations of the transition between nodes and the calculation formula of node availability. The simulation result is that when the degree of node is small and the node vulnerability function is a power function, the node availability is the highest; when the degree of node is large and the node vulnerability function satisfies the exponential function and the power function, the node availability is high. Therefore, when constructing a NBIOT-HWSNs network, node protection is implemented according to the degree of node, so that when the node vulnerability function satisfies the power function, all nodes can maintain high availability, thus making the entire network more stable.