The transition to smarter and more resilient power grids requires advanced testing and validation methodologies to ensure the reliability and interoperability of new technologies, equipment and protection schemes. This paper introduces a fully integrated Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) framework designed to bridge the gap between offline simulations and real-world implementations in smart grid environments. The framework enables the automation of Electromagnetic Transient (EMT) simulations, while publishing the the simulated results as Sampled Values (SV) compliant with the IEC 61850-9-2 light edition. By leveraging this integration, the framework enables bidirectional communication with real Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) via Manufacturing Message Specification (MMS) protocol facilitating Common Format for Transient Data Exchange (COMTRADE) data retrieval and dynamic EMT simulation updates.

This study introduces MCOF, a multi-camera, computer vision-based system designed to assist visually impaired individuals with mobility on university campuses. The system operates locally and achieves the following performance metrics: (i) detecting body points within 1.2. 10–2seconds, (ii) identifying people, objects, and animals in 2.4. 10–2seconds, and (iii) detecting movements in 5.1. 10−2seconds. These results were obtained using a GTX 1,660 GPU with up to 6 cameras (or a 6,112MB stream) running concurrently. According to the MCOF architecture, events trigger tickets that are sent to an external information system, which can then implement its own safety and personnel protocols. Additionally, MCOF includes modules to handle electrical and network failures and features an obstruction detection routine for the cameras.

Fast identification of new network attack patterns is crucial for improving network security. Nevertheless, identifying an ongoing attack in a heterogeneous network is a non-trivial task. Federated learning emerges as a solution to collaborative training for an Intrusion Detection System (IDS). The federated learning-based IDS trains a global model using local machine learning models provided by federated participants without sharing local data. However, optimization challenges are intrinsic to federated learning. This paper proposes the Federated Simulated Annealing (FedSA) metaheuristic to select the hyperparameters and a subset of participants for each aggregation round in federated learning. FedSA optimizes hyperparameters linked to the global model convergence. The proposal reduces aggregation rounds and speeds up convergence. Thus, FedSA accelerates learning extraction from local models, requiring fewer IDS updates. The proposal assessment shows that the FedSA global model converges in less than ten communication rounds. The proposal requires up to 50% fewer aggregation rounds to achieve approximately 97% accuracy in attack detection than the conventional aggregation approach.

Electronic medical records (EMRs) are highly sensitive information shared among peers to keep up-to-date patient history. Providing security, privacy, and availability to these sensitive data is a challenge because, typically, after data publication the patient loses control over them. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based approach to secure EMR for healthcare applications, where access control is patient-centric. Our proposal keeps encrypted EMRs in the blockchain, and the patient shares the decryption key only with healthcare professionals in which he/she trusts. Blockchain allows untrusted node, in a distributed peer-to-peer network to correctly and verifiably interact with each other, without any reliable intermediary. We investigate the scalability of our approach through simulations. Results show that it scales well since increasing the number of nodes in the network implies a linear increase in the size of the stored chain. Results also reveal that the time for inserting a new EMR in the blockchain remains low even when the number of nodes in the network increases.

In smart grids, the broad use of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) in distribution networks introduces the need for protective relaying schemes similar to those used in high-voltage networks. The introduction of intermittent DERs, as solar panels, also requires more autonomic and dynamic SCADA networks. Hence, power systems experience an increased demand for resilience in the distribution communication network. However, resilience methods currently in use still cannot meet those protection requirements. This work proposes ARES, a framework for autonomic and resilient communication for smart grids. ARES provides resilient, robust, and flexible communication for smart grids with Software Defined Network (SDN). Our proposal also provides autonomic services for SCADA that can improve smart grid application performance and efficiency. ARES fault resilience module is implemented and tested using Mininet 2.2.1 and RYU controller and presents maximum recovery time of 610 microseconds, which is an important advance compared to other proposals. In addition, ARES is transparent to end devices, keeping compatibility with legacy measurement and actuation devices.

With current advances in the deployment of testbeds for Future Internet (FI), a new challenge arises: identity management in a globally distributed environment. In this context, it is necessary to understand local and federated models of identity management to integrate testbeds. This paper presents the design and implementation of a module for credential translation that enables a user of an academic authentication and authorization (A&A) federation, such as CAFe (the Brazilian Federated Academic Community), to access the FI testbed federation. The proposed model supports the integration of testbed federations and academic federations. The proposal generates X.509 certificates and other standard credentials used in the testbed federation, following the SFA standard, based on user attributes obtained from the A&A federation (CAFe). The developed module also allows an attribute-based access control, denying or allowing a user access according to his/her attributes obtained from CAFe. Other contributions are based on facilities for the user to delegate his SFA credential to an experimenter control interface. The study was conducted using a real experimentation laboratory (GIDLab), in which mirrors of the CAFe federation and of the MySlice platform were set up to allow the comparison of security features of our scheme to other proposals.

Address assignment is a key challenge in ad hoc networks due to the lack of infrastructure. Autonomous addressing protocols require a distributed and self-managed mechanism to avoid address collisions in a dynamic network with fading channels, frequent partitions, and joining/leaving nodes. We propose and analyze a lightweight protocol that configures mobile ad hoc nodes based on a distributed address database stored in filters that reduces the control load and makes the proposal robust to packet losses and network partitions. We evaluate the performance of our protocol, considering joining nodes, partition merging events, and network initialization. Simulation results show that our protocol resolves all the address collisions and also reduces the control traffic when compared to previously proposed protocols.

Isolation and performance are critical issues for virtual networking. In this paper, we consider the use of Xen virtualization platform for building software-based virtual routers. We propose a network monitor for Xen to increase the isolation and the performance on packet forwarding. The network monitor controls the use of shared resources and punishes misbehaving virtual routers, guaranteeing an isolated operation of the virtual networks. The results obtained with the developed prototype show that our proposal guarantees availability of the virtual-network control and packet forwarding services and also provides a fair resource sharing.

Anonymity is one of the main motivations for conducting denial-of-service attacks. Currently, there is no mechanism to either identify the true source of an IP packet or to prove its authenticity. In this paper we propose a stateless IP traceback technique that identifies the origin network of each individual packet. We show that the proposed traceback system is the only one that scales with the number of attackers and also satisfies practical requirements, such as no state stored at routers and a header overhead (25 bits) that can be allocated in IPv4 header. The proposed system exploits the customer-provider hierarchy of the Internet at autonomous system (AS) level and introduces the idea of checkpoints, which are the two most important nodes in an AS-level path. Simulation results using a real-world topology trace show that the proposed system narrows the source of an attack packet down to less than two candidate ASes on average. In addition, considering a partial deployment scenario, we show that the proposed system is able to successfully trace more than 90% of the attacks if only 8% of the ASes (i.e., just the core ASes) implement the system. The achieved success rate is quite better than using the classical hop-by-hop path reconstruction.

This paper introduces a self-organized mechanism to control user access in ad hoc networks without requiring any infrastructure or a central administration entity. The proposed mechanism authenticates and monitors nodes with the so-called controller sets, which are resistant to the dynamic network membership. The analysis shows that the proposed scheme is robust even to collusion attacks and provides availability up to 90% better than proposals based on threshold cryptography. The performance improvement arises mostly from the controller sets autonomy to recover after network partitions.

Address autoconfiguration is an important issue for ad hoc networks in order to provide autonomous networking and self-management. The IP address assignment for ad hoc nodes requires a distributed procedure that resolves all the address collisions in a dynamic network with fading channels, frequent partitions, and joining/leaving nodes. We propose a filter-based addressing protocol for autoconfiguration of mobile ad hoc networks that is lightweight and robust to packet losses. We present a probabilistic analysis of address collisions and discuss filters functionalities in the address autoconfiguration. We evaluate the performance of our protocol for static and mobile scenarios, considering joining nodes and partition mergings. Simulation results show that our protocol resolves all the address collisions and reduces up to 22 times the control traffic when compared to the other addressing protocols.

This paper proposes and specifies a protocol for distributing and managing group keys in ad hoc environments, which applies for the Secure Optimized Link State Routing Protocol. Our protocol manages group keys taking into consideration the frequent network partitions and the absence of infrastructure. The analysis shows that the protocol is energy efficient for high key replacement rates and frequent network partitions. The proposal reduced up to 512 times the control traffic load and 356 times the energy spent with cryptographic operations when compared to contributory algorithms. The proposed protocol is robust even in the presence of non-cooperative nodes and provides an efficient key management in a timely manner.