Ehab R. Mohamed

The convergence of Software-Defined Networking and the Internet of Things (SD-IoT) enhances network orchestration but exposes centralized controllers and application-layer services to sophisticated, multi-stage cyber threats such as structural web injections and stealthy application-layer floods. This study aims to develop and validate the PISMA framework, an integrated defense mechanism designed to bridge programmable data planes with intelligence-driven control layers to achieve real-time, accurate threat detection and precision mitigation without causing collateral service disruptions. The framework incorporates P4-programmable in-switch feature extraction, sliding-window behavioral aggregation, a hybrid deep learning classification engine combining convolutional representations with bidirectional recurrent neural networks, and confidence-aware policy orchestration. Comprehensive experimental evaluations were conducted across a hybrid emulation testbed using five benchmark security datasets (CICIoT2023, ToN_IoT, IoT-ID20, UNSW-NB15, and Edge-IIoTset) to assess classification performance, error rates, and operational response times. Across the benchmark evaluations, PISMA consistently outperformed alternative ensemble baselines, achieving a peak binary classification accuracy of 98.75%, an F1-score of 98.59%, a Matthews Correlation Coefficient of 0.97, and an Area Under Curve of 0.99, while keeping false positive and false negative rates below 1.5%. Furthermore, multi-class categorizations for SQL injection, cross-site scripting, command injection, and HTTP floods maintained recognition rates exceeding 96.8% with an ultra-low total mitigation response time averaging 1.12 milliseconds. The findings demonstrate that combining programmable data-plane telemetry with hybrid deep learning and confidence-aware policy enforcement successfully neutralizes application-layer intrusions, eliminates centralized processing bottlenecks, and preserves high service continuity in resource-constrained IoT networks.

Federated learning (FL) is a machine learning technique where clients exchange only local model updates with a central server that combines them to create a global model after local training. While FL offers privacy benefits through local training, privacy-preserving strategies are needed since model updates can leak training data information due to various attacks. To enhance privacy and attack robustness, techniques like homomorphic encryption (HE), Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC), and the Private Aggregation of Teacher Ensembles (PATE) can be combined with FL. Currently, no study has combined more than two privacy-preserving techniques with FL or comparatively analyzed their combinations. We conducted a comparative study of privacy-preserving techniques in FL, analyzing performance and security. We implemented FL using an artificial neural network (ANN) with a Malware Dataset from Kaggle for malware detection. To enhance privacy, we proposed models combining FL with the PATE, SMPC, and HE. All models were evaluated against poisoning attacks (targeted and untargeted), a backdoor attack, a model inversion attack, and a man in the middle attack. The combined models maintained performance while improving attack robustness. FL_SMPC, FL_CKKS, and FL_CKKS_SMPC improved both their performance and attack resistance. All the combined models outperformed the base FL model against the evaluated attacks. FL_PATE_CKKS_SMPC achieved the lowest backdoor attack success rate (0.0920). FL_CKKS_SMPC best resisted untargeted poisoning attacks (0.0010 success rate). FL_CKKS and FL_CKKS_SMPC best defended against targeted poisoning attacks (0.0020 success rate). FL_PATE_SMPC best resisted model inversion attacks (19.267 MSE). FL_PATE_CKKS_SMPC best defended against man in the middle attacks with the lowest degradation in accuracy (1.68%), precision (1.94%), recall (1.68%), and the F1-score (1.64%).

Identity management (IDM) systems in cloud computing struggle to securely manage user identities and access privileges in distributed environments. However, centralized IDM solutions come with high trust costs, single points of failure, and a need for appropriate security response. This paper proposes a novel decentralized IDM framework utilizing blockchain technology and automatic provisioning (AP) techniques to improve cloud computing’s security, scalability, and operational efficiency. The framework employs Ethereum smart contracts and role‐based access control (RBAC) to ensure secure, transparent, and automated management of user identities. Key features include support for single sign‐on (SSO), multifactor authentication (MFA), and delegated proof‐of‐stake (DPoS) consensus for secure transaction validation. Our proposed scheme utilizes the Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts for managing user access, ensuring transparent and immutable record‐keeping. The scheme introduces RBAC mechanisms to ensure precise privilege allocation and dynamic updates. The scheme also supports key IDM processes, including SSO, MFA, and lifecycle management of identities. The framework incorporates DPoS consensus to enhance security for efficient transaction validation and the prevention of fraud. To address fraudulent activities, the scheme uses machine learning to detect blockchain fraud with 99.1% accuracy, demonstrating robustness and efficiency for large‐scale cloud infrastructures.

Skin Cancer (SC) is among the most hazardous due to its high mortality rate. Therefore, early detection of this disease would be very helpful in the treatment process. Multilevel Thresholding (MLT) is widely used for extracting regions of interest from medical images. Therefore, this paper utilizes the recent Coronavirus Disease Optimization Algorithm (COVIDOA) to address the MLT issue of SC images utilizing the hybridization of Otsu, Kapur, and Tsallis as fitness functions. Various SC images are utilized to validate the performance of the proposed algorithm. The proposed algorithm is compared to the following five meta-heuristic algorithms: Arithmetic Optimization Algorithm (AOA), Sine Cosine Algorithm (SCA), Reptile Search Algorithm (RSA), Flower Pollination Algorithm (FPA), Seagull Optimization Algorithm (SOA), and Artificial Gorilla Troops Optimizer (GTO) to prove its superiority. The performance of all algorithms is evaluated using a variety of measures, such as Mean Square Error (MSE), Peak Signal-To-Noise Ratio (PSNR), Feature Similarity Index Metric (FSIM), and Normalized Correlation Coefficient (NCC). The results of the experiments prove that the proposed algorithm surpasses several competing algorithms in terms of MSE, PSNR, FSIM, and NCC segmentation metrics and successfully solves the segmentation issue.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) and Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) attacks pose significant threats to the security of Software-Defined Internet of Things (SD-IoT) networks. The standard Software-Defined Networking (SDN) architecture faces challenges in effectively detecting, preventing, and mitigating these attacks due to its centralized control and limited intelligence. In this paper, we present P4-HLDMC, a novel collaborative secure framework that combines machine learning (ML), stateful P4, and a hierarchical logically distributed multi-controller architecture. P4-HLDMC overcomes the limitations of the standard SDN architecture, ensuring scalability, performance, and an efficient response to attacks. It comprises four modules: the multi-controller dedicated interface (MCDI) for real-time attack detection through a distributed alert channel (DAC), the MSMPF, a P4-enabled stateful multi-state matching pipeline function for analyzing IoT network traffic using nine state tables, the modified ensemble voting (MEV) algorithm with six classifiers for enhanced detection of anomalies in P4-extracted traffic patterns, and an attack mitigation process distributed among multiple controllers to effectively handle larger-scale attacks. We validate our framework using diverse test cases and real-world IoT network traffic datasets, demonstrating high detection rates, low false-alarm rates, low latency, and short detection times compared to existing methods. Our work introduces the first integrated framework combining ML, stateful P4, and SDN-based multi-controller architecture for DDoS and ARP detection in IoT networks.

Skin cancer is a senior public health issue that could profit from computer-aided diagnosis to decrease the encumbrance of this widespread disease. Researchers have been more motivated to develop computer-aided diagnosis systems because visual examination wastes time. The initial stage in skin lesion analysis is skin lesion segmentation, which might assist in the following categorization task. It is a difficult task because sometimes the whole lesion might be the same colors, and the borders of pigment regions can be foggy. Several studies have effectively handled skin lesion segmentation; nevertheless, developing new methodologies to improve efficiency is necessary. This work thoroughly analyzes the most advanced algorithms and methods for skin lesion segmentation. The review begins with traditional segmentation techniques, followed by a brief review of skin lesion segmentation using deep learning and optimization techniques. The main objective of this work is to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of a wide range of algorithms. Additionally, it examines various commonly used datasets for skin lesions and the metrics used to evaluate the performance of these techniques.

despite the extensive use of IoT and mobile devices in the different applications, their computing power, memory, and battery life are still limited. Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) has recently emerged to address the drawbacks of these limitations. With MEC on the network's edge, mobile and IoT devices can offload their computing operations to adjacent edge servers or remote cloud servers. However, task offloading is still a challenging research issue, and it is necessary to improve the overall Quality of Service (QoS) and attain optimized performance and resource utilization. Another crucial issue that is usually overlooked while handling this issue is offloading an application that consists of dependent tasks. In this study, we suggest a Refined Whale Optimization Algorithm (RWOA) for solving the multiuser dependent tasks offloading problem in the Edge-Cloud computing environment with three objectives: 1- minimizing application execution latency, 2- minimizing the energy consumption of end devices, and 3- the charging cost for used resources. We also avoid the traditional binary planning mechanisms by allowing each task to be partially processed simultaneously at three processing locations (local device, MEC, cloud). We compare RWOA with the other Optimizers, and the results demonstrate the RWOA's superiority.

The absence of standards and the diverse nature of the Internet of Things (IoT) have made security and privacy concerns more acute. Attacks such as distributed denial of service (DDoS) are becoming increasingly widespread in IoT, and the need for ways to stop them is growing. The use of newly formed Software-Defined Networking (SDN) significantly lowers the computational burden on IoT network nodes and makes it possible to perform more security measurements. This paper proposes an SDN-based, four-module DDoS attack detection and mitigation framework for IoT networks called FMDADM. The proposed FMDADM framework comprises four main modules and five-tier architecture. The first module implements an early detection process based on the average drop rate (ADR) principle using a 32-packet window size. The second module uses a novel double-check mapping function (DCMF), that aids in earlier attack detection at the data plane level. The third module is an ML-based detection application comprising four phases: data preprocessing, feature extraction, training and testing, and classification. This module detects DDoS attacks using only seven features: two selected and five newly computed features. The last module introduces an attack mitigation process. We applied the proposed framework to three test cases: one single-node attack test case and two multi-node attack test cases, all with real IoT traffic generated and deployed in Mininet-IoT. The proposed FMDADM framework efficiently detects DDoS attacks at high and low rates, can discriminate between attack traffic and flash crowds, and protects both local and remote IoT nodes by preventing infection from propagating to the ISP level. The FMDADM outperformed most existing cutting-edge approaches across ten different evaluation criteria. According to the experimental results, FMDADM achieved the following accuracy, precision, F-measure, recall, specificity, negative predictive value, false positive rate, false detection rate, false negative rate, and average detection time benchmarks:- 99.79%, 99.43%, 99.77%, 99.79%, 99.95%, 00.21%, 00.91%, 00.23%, and 2.64 μs, respectively.

Face mask detection has several applications, including real-time surveillance, biometrics, etc. Identifying face masks is also helpful for crowd control and ensuring people wear them publicly. With monitoring personnel, it is impossible to ensure that people wear face masks; automated systems are a much superior option for face mask detection and monitoring. This paper introduces a simple and efficient approach for masked face detection. The architecture of the proposed approach is very straightforward; it combines deep learning and local binary patterns to extract features and classify them as masked or unmasked. The proposed system requires hardware with minimal power consumption compared to state-of-the-art deep learning algorithms. Our proposed system maintains two steps. At first, this work extracted the local features of an image by using a local binary pattern descriptor, and then we used deep learning to extract global features. The proposed approach has achieved excellent accuracy and high performance. The performance of the proposed method was tested on three benchmark datasets: the real-world masked faces dataset (RMFD), the simulated masked faces dataset (SMFD), and labeled faces in the wild (LFW). Performance metrics for the proposed technique were measured in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. Results indicated the efficiency of the proposed technique, providing accuracies of 99.86%, 99.98%, and 100% for RMFD, SMFD, and LFW, respectively. Moreover, the proposed method outperformed state-of-the-art deep learning methods in the recent bibliography for the same problem under study and on the same evaluation datasets.