Malika Abid¹, Mohammed Kamel Benkaddour¹, Mohamed Benouis², Amine Khaldi¹, Monalisa Sahu³, Aditya Kumar Sahu^4,*

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.148, No.1, 2026, DOI:10.32604/cmes.2026.081055 - 27 July 2026

Abstract Federated Learning (FL) is a cutting-edge method in the medical imaging field that allows hospitals to collaboratively build models without revealing patient data. Nevertheless, FL is still vulnerable to numerous security and privacy issues, including, but not limited to, data poisoning, Byzantine attacks, and inference attacks. The existing literature has only partly dealt with this topic by focusing either on particular threats or on mitigation strategies, thus leaving the overall comprehension of the problems and their solutions in medical imaging as inadequate. The main threats to FL are systematically classified in this systematic review, with… More >

Hongzhen Liu¹, Liang Xie¹, Zhiqiang Ru^2,*, Yuan Wan¹, Zhe Zhang¹, Xi Fang^1,*

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.88, No.3, 2026, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2026.082755 - 23 July 2026

Abstract Federated learning is a privacy-preserving machine learning framework that facilitates model training directly on decentralized data that, due to privacy concerns or transmission costs, cannot be centralized on a server for traditional model training. To prevent adversaries from reconstructing the original data via parameters transmitted during the process, homomorphic encryption is a commonly adopted method. However, it introduces significant communication and computation costs and risks total security failure if any secret key is compromised. This paper proposes a privacy-preserving aggregation mechanism that enables each client to independently generate partial keys for encryption while allowing decryption… More >

M. Saad Bin Ilyas¹, Sohail Masood Bhatti¹, Ghazanfar Latif^2,*, Sherif Abdelhamid³, Arfan Jaffar¹

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.147, No.3, 2026, DOI:10.32604/cmes.2026.081720 - 30 June 2026

Abstract Federated learning (FL) has emerged as a promising approach for enabling collaborative model training across distributed Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices without sharing sensitive data. Existing FL frameworks face significant challenges in healthcare settings, including vulnerability to adversarial attacks, lack of verifiable update integrity, and limited robustness under heterogeneous data distributions. These limitations hinder reliable deployment in critical medical applications. To address these challenges, this paper proposes RP-IoMT, a robust and privacy-preserving FL framework that integrates secure multi-party computation (MPC), zero-knowledge proof-based gradient verification, and robust aggregation mechanisms. The objective of this work is… More >

Mohammed Shukur Alfaras^1,2,*, Oguz Karan³, Sefer Kurnaz¹, Ayca Kurnaz Turkben⁴

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.88, No.2, 2026, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2026.079577 - 15 June 2026

Abstract Despite deep learning’s high precision in emotion identification, centralized training is associated with privacy and scalability concerns. The privacy-preserving federated learning model, Federated Hybrid-Optimized Emotion Recognition (Fed-HOER), introduced in this paper is an auto-tuning hyperparameters optimizer based on a hybrid Dung Beetle Optimizer-Fick’s Law Algorithm (DBO-FLA) optimizer. The global and local searches are optimized at two levels, and validation loss is minimized by 22%–24% without sharing raw data. The experiments on Extended Cohn–Kanade (CK+), Japanese Female Facial Expressions (JAFFE), and Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces (KDEF) exhibit a high generalization rate with a mean accuracy of More >

Tao Bai¹, Yang Tang², Kuan Shao³, Zhenyong Zhang^3,*, Yuanteng Liu⁴

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.88, No.1, 2026, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2026.078473 - 08 May 2026

Abstract In recent years, the rapid development of artificial intelligence has greatly promoted the application of Machine Learning as a Service (MLaaS). Users can upload their requirements through front-end applications, and the server provides model inference services after receiving the user input. However, MLaaS may lead to serious privacy breaches. Large language model services are typical representatives of MLaaS, and the Transformer is a typical structure in large language models. Therefore, this paper proposes a privacy-protected Transformer inference scheme based on the CKKS fully homomorphic encryption scheme to optimize computational and communication efficiency. Firstly, this paper… More >

Saleh Alharbi^*

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.87, No.3, 2026, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2026.073584 - 09 April 2026

Abstract Real-time threat detection in Internet of Things (IoT) networks requires scalable, privacy-preserving, and interpretable models capable of operating under strict latency constraints. This paper presents EdgeTrustX, a privacy-aware federated transformer framework that addresses these challenges by combining transformer-based representation learning with federated optimisation, differential privacy, and homomorphic encryption. The framework enables collaborative model training across heterogeneous IoT devices without exposing sensitive local data while maintaining computational feasibility for edge deployment. A multi-head attention mechanism integrated with a secure aggregation protocol supports adaptive feature weighting and privacy-protected parameter exchange. To enhance transparency, an explainability module that… More >

Mohammed M. Alenazi^*

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.87, No.2, 2026, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2026.075966 - 12 March 2026

Abstract Multimodal spatiotemporal data from smart city consumer electronics present critical challenges including cross-modal temporal misalignment, unreliable data quality, limited joint modeling of spatial and temporal dependencies, and weak resilience to adversarial updates. To address these limitations, EdgeST-Fusion is introduced as a cross-modal federated graph transformer framework for context-aware smart city analytics. The architecture integrates cross-modal embedding networks for modality alignment, graph transformer encoders for spatial dependency modeling, temporal self-attention for dynamic pattern learning, and adaptive anomaly detection to ensure data quality and security during aggregation. A privacy-preserving federated learning protocol with differential privacy guarantees enables… More >

Yuewei Tian¹, Yang Su², Yujia Wang¹, Lisa Guo¹, Xuyang Wu^3,*, Lei Cao⁴, Fang Ren³

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.86, No.3, 2026, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2025.072081 - 12 January 2026

Abstract This study addresses the risk of privacy leakage during the transmission and sharing of multimodal data in smart grid substations by proposing a three-tier privacy-preserving architecture based on asynchronous federated learning. The framework integrates blockchain technology, the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) for distributed storage, and a dynamic differential privacy mechanism to achieve collaborative security across the storage, service, and federated coordination layers. It accommodates both multimodal data classification and object detection tasks, enabling the identification and localization of key targets and abnormal behaviors in substation scenarios while ensuring privacy protection. This effectively mitigates the single-point… More >

Fang Liu^*, Xianghui Meng, Jiachen Li, Sibo Guo

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.86, No.2, pp. 1-21, 2026, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2025.069243 - 09 December 2025

Abstract With the popularization of smart devices, Location-Based Services (LBS) greatly facilitates users’ life, but at the same time brings the risk of users’ location privacy leakage. Existing location privacy protection methods are deficient, failing to reasonably allocate the privacy budget for non-outlier location points and ignoring the critical location information that may be contained in the outlier points, leading to decreased data availability and privacy exposure problems. To address these problems, this paper proposes a Mix Location Privacy Preservation Method Based on Differential Privacy with Clustering (MLDP). The method first utilizes the DBSCAN clustering algorithm… More >

Nujud Aloshban^*, Abeer A.K. Alharbi

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.85, No.3, pp. 4795-4826, 2025, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2025.067523 - 23 October 2025

Abstract The rise of 6G networks and the exponential growth of smart city infrastructures demand intelligent, real-time traffic forecasting solutions that preserve data privacy. This paper introduces NeuroCivitas, a federated deep learning framework that integrates Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) for spatial pattern recognition and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks for temporal sequence modeling. Designed to meet the adaptive intelligence requirements of cognitive cities, NeuroCivitas leverages Federated Averaging (FedAvg) to ensure privacy-preserving training while significantly reducing communication overhead—by 98.7% compared to centralized models. The model is evaluated using the Kaggle Traffic Prediction Dataset comprising 48,120 hourly records… More >