Feature articles – June 2026

Our first monthly feature paper, co-authored by researchers and industry practitioners from Aarhus University, National University of Science and Technology POLITEHNICA Bucharest, COMSATS University Islamabad, and SmartAvatar B.V., provides a comprehensive overview with tutorials and presents the state-of-the-art of physical layer security, focusing mainly on NTN wireless communications, and current research challenges, open issues, and future research directions related to UAV security.  Complementing the tutorial paper is a feature article, coauthored by researchers and industry practitioners from Ford Motor Company, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Institute of Informatics and Telematics, which provides a comprehensive overview of emerging cybersecurity risks in the connected vehicle ecosystem, focusing on the evolving architecture of vehicle platforms and the exchange of vehicle data.

We’ve provided short summaries of these feature articles, written in accessible language that we hope will make your reading experience enjoyable.

Need of UAVs and Physical Layer Security in Next-Generation Non-Terrestrial Wireless Networks:
Potential Challenges and Open Issues
Asim Ul Haq; Seyed Salar Sefati; Syed Junaid Nawaz; Albena Mihovska; Michail J. Beliatis
Published in Volume 6, IEEE Open Journal of Vehicular Technology
Read on IEEE Xplore

Summary contributed by Asim Ul Haq (author):
In order to accommodate the massive number of wireless-connected devices and fulfil the reliability, capacity and global coverage demands for future applications, 6th Generation (6G) and beyond networks aim to integrate terrestrial and Non-Terrestrial Network (NTNs) into a unified, intelligent 3D communication architecture able to provide ultra-reliable, high-speed, and ubiquitous connectivity. However, this highly decentralized and heterogeneous environment introduces significant security challenges that conventional security approaches are not fully capable of addressing. This paper highlights the critical role of Physical Layer Security (PLS) as a promising, infrastructure-free security framework that ensures confidentiality, integrity, and availability in integrated NTN-terrestrial systems.

The paper provides a comprehensive tutorial and state-of-the-art of PLS techniques for NTN communications, covering key approaches such as secrecy beamforming, artificial noise, cooperative jamming, secure relaying, and channel-based secret key generation. It further explores how emerging 6G technologies, including massive MIMO, millimeter-wave communications, intelligent reflecting surfaces, and Machine Learning in mobile networks, can be explored to enhance resilience against eavesdropping and improve secrecy performance in space-air-ground integrated networks.

Finally, the paper synthesizes current advances and identifies open research challenges and future directions, including cross-layer design, AI-enabled adaptive security, spectrum sharing, and practical implementation issues aligned with the upcoming 3GPP NTN standardization.
 

Security Risks and Designs in the Connected Vehicle Ecosystem: In-Vehicle and Edge Platforms
Marco De Vincenzi; John Moore; Bradley Smith; Sanjay E. Sarma; Ilaria Matteucci
Published in Volume 6, IEEE Open Journal of Vehicular Technology
Read on IEEE Xplore

Summary contributed by Marco De Vincenzi (author):
Modern vehicles are rapidly evolving into software-defined platforms, where in-vehicle applications, onboard sensors, and edge infrastructure continuously interact to enable intelligent and autonomous mobility. While this tight integration unlocks advanced capabilities such as cooperative perception and real-time decision-making, it also introduces a new class of cybersecurity risks that span across traditionally separate domains. Up to now, most research efforts have addressed security either inside the vehicle, focusing on infotainment systems and in-vehicle networks, or outside the vehicle, targeting V2X communication and edge platforms. However, these components are deeply interconnected, and vulnerabilities in one domain can propagate across the entire ecosystem.

In our work, we take a holistic perspective by jointly analyzing in-vehicle platforms and vehicle-edge architectures. We investigate concrete technologies such as Android Automotive and MQTT-based publish–subscribe communication, identifying key threats including malicious third-party applications, multi-user privacy conflicts, remote control exploitation, data manipulation, and denial-of-service attacks. The flexibility of modern architectures, such as dynamic pub-sub communication, enables efficient data exchange but also increases the attack surface for adversaries. To address these challenges, we propose a set of security design strategies inspired by the Internet of Things domain. These include transparency for user interactions, dynamic, and fine-grained access control in multi-user environments, and trust management mechanisms based on certificates and authentication across distributed edge nodes. We further distinguish between intra-domain and inter-domain trust, highlighting the need for secure cooperation across heterogeneous systems and organizations.