Abstract
Messaging services are usually provided within social network platforms and allow these platforms to collect additional information about users, such as what time, for how long, with whom, and where a user communicates. This information allows the identification of users and is available to the messaging service provider even when communication is encrypted end-to-end. Thus, a gap still exists for alternative messaging services that enable anonymous and confidential communication and that are independent of a specific online service. Online services can still be used to support this messaging service, but in a way that enables users to communicate anonymously and without the knowledge and scrutiny of the online services. In this paper, we propose messaging using steganography and online services to support anonymous and confidential communication. In the proposed messaging service, only the sender and the receiver are aware of the existence of the exchanged data, even if the online services used or other third parties have access to the exchanged secret data containers. This work reviews the viability of using existing online services to support the proposed messaging service. Moreover, a proof-of-concept of the proposed message service is implemented and tested using two online services acting as proxies in the exchange of encrypted information disguised within images and links to those images. The obtained results confirm the viability of such a messaging service. © 2022 by the authors.

Abstract
[No abstract available]

Abstract
Recent studies in information computation technology (ICT) are focusing on Next-generation networks, SDN (Software-defined networking), 5G, and 6G. Optimal working mode for device-to-device (D2D) communication is aimed at improving the quality of service with the frequency spectrum structure is of research areas in 5G. D2D communication working modes are selected to meet both the predefined system conditions and provide maximum throughput for the network. Due to the complexity of the direct solutions, we formulated the problem as an optimization problem and found the optimal working modes under different parameters of the system through extensive simulations. After determining the links' optimal modes, we calculated the network throughput; because of selecting the best working modes, we obtained the highest throughput. A major finding from this research is that D2D communication pairs are more inclined to use full-duplex (FD) mode in short distances to meet system requirements, and so most communications take place in FD mode at these distances. According to these results, using FD communication at short distances offers better conditions and Quality of service (QoS) than QoS-D2D method.

Abstract
In the past years, the automotive industry has been integrating multiple hardware in the vehicle to enable new features and applications. In particular automotive applications, it is important to monitor the actions and behaviors of drivers and passengers to promote their safety and track abnormal situations such as social disorders or crimes. These applications rely on multiple sensors that generate real-time data to be processed, and thus, they require adequate data acquisition and analysis systems.This article proposes a prototype to enable in-vehicle data acquisition and analysis based on the middleware framework Robot Operating System (ROS). The proposed prototype features two processing devices and enables synchronized audio and video acquisition, storage, and processing. It was assessed through the implementation of a live inference system consisting of a face detection algorithm from the data gathered from the cameras and the microphone. The proposed prototype inherits the flexibility of the ROS framework and has a modular and scalable design; thus, more sensors, processing devices, and applications can be deployed.

Abstract
One of the technologies based on information technology used today is the VANET network used for inter-road communication. Today, many developed countries use this technology to optimize travel times, queue lengths, number of vehicle stops, and overall traffic network efficiency. In this research, we investigate the critical and necessary factors to increase the quality of VANET networks. This paper focuses on increasing the quality of service using multi-agent learning methods. The innovation of this study is using artificial intelligence to improve the network's quality of service, which uses a mechanism and algorithm to find the optimal behavior of agents in the VANET. The result indicates that the proposed method is more optimal in the evaluation criteria of packet delivery ratio (PDR), transaction success rate, phase duration, and queue length than the previous ones. According to the evaluation criteria, TSR 6.342%, PDR 9.105%, QL 7.143%, and PD 6.783% are more efficient than previous works.

Abstract
An intrusion detection system (IDS) is an important tool to prevent potential threats to systems and data. Anomaly-based IDSs may deploy machine learning algorithms to classify events either as normal or anomalous and trigger the adequate response. When using supervised learning, these algorithms require classified, rich, and recent datasets. Thus, to foster the performance of these machine learning models, datasets can be generated from different sources in a collaborative approach, and trained with multiple algorithms. This paper proposes a vote-based architecture to generate classified datasets and improve the performance of supervised learning-based IDSs. On a regular basis, multiple IDSs in different locations send their logs to a central system that combines and classifies them using different machine learning models and a majority vote system. Then, it generates a new and classified dataset, which is trained to obtain the best updated model to be integrated into the IDS of the companies involved. The proposed architecture trains multiple times with several algorithms. To shorten the overall runtimes, the proposed architecture was deployed in Fed4FIRE+ with Ray to distribute the tasks by the available resources. A set of machine learning algorithms and the proposed architecture were assessed. When compared with a baseline scenario, the proposed architecture enabled to increase the accuracy by 11.5% and the precision by 11.2%.