Communication Sessions Research Articles

Vulnerability analysis of S7 PLCs: Manipulating the security mechanism

Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) are the point of interaction between the cyber and physical world, and thus have been the target of previous cyber-attacks that caused physical disruption. To understand the effectiveness of state-of-the-art security mechanisms built into these devices, this paper presents an in-depth analysis performed on the Siemens PLC environment, particularly the communication protocol known as S7CommPlus. This protocol enables communication between Siemens endpoints such as TIA Portal (the engineering software from the vendor), and PLCs like the S7–1211C, which has been used for experiments in the work. The analysis utilises the tools WinDbg and Scapy. The anti-replay mechanism, used in the protocol is investigated, including the identification of specific bytes necessary to craft valid network packets. Novel exploits, including the manipulation of cryptographic keys, are identified based on experimental analysis. Subsequently, exploits are demonstrated that enable the stealing of an existing communication session, denying the ability of an engineer to configure a PLC, making unauthorised changes to PLC states, and other potential violations of integrity and availability. The problems that lead to these exploits are also discussed and a number of potential mitigation strategies are proposed.

Management of patients with atherosclerotic lower extremity peripheral arterial disease in the outpatient setting

Aim. To analyze and scientifically substantiate the need for the creation of a program for the outpatient observation with COZANC using remote patronage.Methods. The study prospectively included 150 patients with atherosclerosis of the arteries of the lower extremities. The average age of the patients was 68.3 ± 9.7 years. Clinical and anamnestic data were studied, and patients were interviewed using questionnaires and scales. Two observation groups were formed: the main one consisted of 70 patients, who were included in the program of remote patronage clinical examination, and 80 patients were under the standard model of outpatient observation with COZANC.Results. For a 3-month period of outpatient observation, an audio communication session was carried out for 70 patients, once a month. During the reporting period, no acute cardiovascular events were recorded in the main group, while in the comparison group there were 3 (3.75%) myocardial infarctions. The development of CLI occurred in the main group in 1 case, while in the comparison group there were 4 (5%) patients, in one case the lower limb was amputated. In the comparison group, there were 3 ischemic events that resulted in a lethal outcome.Conclusion. For the first time, a personalized remote patronage program was created and introduced into clinical practice at the level of primary health care, as a tool for optimizing the clinical examination program for patients with COZANC. The effectiveness of the remote patronage program for patients with atherosclerosis of the arteries of the lower extremities is described in relation to the prevention of acute cardiovascular events and the progression of COZANC.

A multi-model based microservices identification approach

Microservices are hailed for their capabilities to tackle the challenge of breaking monolithic business systems down into small, cohesive, and loosely-coupled services. Indeed, these systems are neither easy to maintain nor to replace undermining organizations’ efforts to cope with user’s changing needs and governments’ complex regulations. Microservices constitute an architectural style for developing a new generation of systems as a suite of services that, although they are separate, engage in collaborative execution and communication sessions. However, microservices success depends, among many other things, on the existence of an approach that would automatically identify the necessary microservices according to organizations’ requirements. In this paper, we present such an approach and demonstrate its technical doability in the context of a case study, Bicing, for renting bikes. Some salient features of this approach are business processes as input for the identification needs, three models known as control, data, and semantic to capture dependencies between these processes’ activities, and, finally, a collaborative clustering technique that recommends potential microservices. Conducted experiments in the context of Bicing clearly indicate that our approach outperforms similar ones for microservices identification and reinforce the important role of business processes in this identification. The approach constitutes a major milestone towards a better architectural style for future microservices systems.

Review and Comparison of Digital Algorithms for Secure Data Transmission in Autonomous Mobile and Stationary Systems

Autonomous systems based on the "Internet of Things" paradigm have become widespread. The Internet of Things devices are used for collecting and analyzing data, control electrical systems. The Internet of Things the most common fields of use are smart houses, smart cities, smart traffic, environment monitoring, healthcare etc. With the automation to the degree of autonomy of such processes as cargo delivery and human transportation, the Internet of Things paradigm begins to extend not only to stationary devices, but also to mobile, primarily small unmanned aerial vehicles. UAV can be used not only for civil use but for police or military operations too. This poses a potential threat to skilled criminals such as terrorists, smugglers and drug couriers. There is an urgent problem of secure transmission of data and control signals at distances up to tens of kilometers without loss of communication and the possibility of interception of control. Wireless communication technologies are widely used in all areas of the economy: control systems, environmental safety monitoring, industrial automation, logistics, etc. Wireless networks have many characteristics in common with wireline networks, and therefore, many security issues of wireline networks apply to the wireless environment. Wireless data is easy to intercept by potential eavesdroppers. Issue of security and privacy become more notable with wireless networks. The paper substantiates the transition to cryptographically protected wireless communication channels in autonomous control systems for both fixed and mobile performance. Possible attack vectors in such systems are considered. An analytical review and classification of modern cryptographic protection (encryption) algorithms used at the representative, session and channel levels of communication interfaces together and functional diagrams for some of them are performed. Selected criteria for comparing cryptographic algorithms, which allows you to choose the best depending on the functions performed and the conditions of use of a particular autonomous system.

MODELING THE POWER CONSUMPTION OF A CLIENT DEVICE MULTICORE PROCESSOR DURING ONLINE INTERCONNECTION

During a pandemic, a large number of users are forced to work not at regular workplaces, but at home, using video conferencing and other online means of intercommunication. In this case, not only desktop computers but also mobile devices are often used. Wherein, for example, the application Zoom can diagnose insufficient connection speed, even if one session is established from one Internet connection. The paper shows that the reason may be the overload of the multicore processor's cluster on the client device. However, the functions of energy saving, embedded in the last actual versions of operation systems, also do not provide complete success. Often, it is needed maximum using the resource of the mobile application, but at the same, time it is necessary to keep up-to-date information about the battery charge. Increasing the number of cores in modern processors does not significantly improve the quality of communication in online communication, because the same type (multimedia) applications are still distributed to the same cluster. In this study, by modeling the power consumption of each core of such a processor, built on the big.LITTLE architecture, the results are achieved, according to which it is possible to adjust the power supply modes of a multi-core processor. The developed software application uses a new power consumption model optimized for modern multi-core processors. Using this model allows you to increase the time of use of the device without recharging to 6.8%, by making timely decisions about CPU load management (e.g., disabling processes and components that overload the CPU or run in the background). The positive difference between the developed software application and the existing schedulers is that this application does not overload client devices and does not affect running processes, i.e., does not slow them down. The power-efficient CPU loadingon the client device will ensure the non-breaking of the communication session during video conferences providing processes in the production industries, the remote provision of educational and medical services.

Thermal Testing of Spacecraft Radioelectronic Equipment Operating in Brief Communication Sessions

Thermal Testing of Spacecraft Radioelectronic Equipment Operating in Brief Communication Sessions

Multihypothesis Sequential Testing for Illegitimate Access and Collision-Based Attack Detection in Wireless IoT Networks

Jamming or illegitimate wireless network access interferes with legitimate communication sessions by mimicking the legitimate transmissions and degrades the network performance. In this article, we propose a methodology to detect such attacks by implementing a multiple hypotheses sequential testing-based detection framework with variance and channel state information (CSI)-based algorithms. The detection framework focuses on distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate transmissions and the nature of illegitimate transmissions with a quaternary hypotheses test. The quaternary hypotheses include no transmission, legitimate node transmission, illegitimate node transmission, and collision-based attack. We first devise a sequential testing problem on a ternary hypothesis problem and then tackle the remaining hypothesis with both variance-based approach and CSI-based approach. We devise algorithms based on the same and compare their performance. We also compare our approach with the generalized Neyman-Pearson approach based on detection speed. In addition, we present a multiple sensor-based approach to further improve the detection performance through soft- and hard-decision combining. We conduct extensive performance evaluations based on both simulated and measurement data. The numerical results show fewer sample size requirements for the proposed algorithms, leading to faster detection.

The culture of security developed through education

The article argues for the need to develop a culture of security, which must be a benchmark of conduct, morals, education and training; to promote the ensemble of information, attitudes, beliefs and values through which the individual relates them to the political, military and economic system, which characterizes the level of ensuring security to each individual and to society as a whole. The need to develop a culture of security and to educate the population in this spirit derives from the diversification of threats to national security and how they are spread. Educating and promoting a strong culture of security will prevent the transformation of vulnerabilities into threats to national security. Due to the fact that the citizens are at the basis of the development of the culture of security, education in this field brings a considerable contribution in the proper promotion of the given culture at all levels of education, based on the principle of lifelong learning. The actors concerned with security education use several means of training through concrete actions, such as: meetings with civil society representatives, round tables, conferences, debates or various partnerships with academic or research institutions, scientific communication sessions, meetings with pupils and students in educational institutions of all levels, trainings with active young people, introduction of course units on the development of the culture of security, with all its components, from healthy living and personal development to work protection, civil protection, education for society, etc. Therefore, the culture of security is vital in the information age we are going through, in which we all need guidelines at both personal and state level. A citizen with a high culture of security is the natural and invaluable partner for the community he belongs to and for the nation.

Mobile Cloud Computing Cryptographic Scheme

The ubiquitous network like Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) provides a high quality of wireless services depending upon the wireless communication system network security level. And so many researches are carried out by the researcher on security algorithms for wireless communication system constructed in different network reliability. In our proposed thesis paper, on a theoretical basis, we developed the theory of MCC Security Layer Protocol security system in which we used the cryptographic hash function SHA-256 to generate a private key for entities, RC5 encryption, and decryption algorithm, Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) generating a dynamic sequential key and CRC-32 checksum to detecting the error in our packets. The MSLP uses the stored symmetric secret key calculated on the basis of the Diffie-Hellman Key sharing scheme to generate keystream for cryptography functions. The secret key stored in the device’s filesystem our database prior to the deployment on Mobile Cloud Computing and remains the same throughout the session of communication. These systems use the dynamic initialization vector to avoid reply attacks and message integrity code calculated on source and destination devices addresses and actual frame contents. In the proposed thesis paper we analyze the security measures at the MSLP level and before transmitting information over the mobile networks, the information is encrypted in the form of frames and at the physical layer, this frame converted into its equivalent radio signals.

Instantaneous Beam Prediction Scheme against Link Blockage in mmWave Communications

Millimeter wave (mmWave) bands formulate the standalone (SA) operation mode in the new radio (NR) access technology of 5G systems. These bands rely on beamforming architectures to aggregate antenna array gains that compensate for dynamic channel fluctuations and propagation impairments. However, beamforming results in directional transmission and reception, thus resulting in beam management challenges, foremost initial access, handover, and beam blockage recovery. Here, beam establishment and maintenance must feature ultra-low latencies in the control and data planes to meet network specifications and standardization. Presently, existing schemes rely on arrays redundancy, multi-connectivity, such as dual-beam and carrier aggregation, and out-of-band information. These schemes still suffer from prolonged recovery times and aggregated power consumption levels. Along these lines, this work proposes a fast beam restoration scheme based on deep learning in SA mmWave networks. Once the primary beam is blocked, it predicts alternative beam directions in the next time frame without any reliance on out-of-band information. The scheme adopts long short-term memory (LSTM) due to the robust memory structure, which uses past best beam observations. The scheme achieves near-instantaneous recovery times, i.e., maintaining communications sessions without resetting beam scanning procedures.

To praise or not to praise? Examining the effects of ability vs. effort praise on speaking anxiety and willingness to communicate in EFL classrooms

ABSTRACT This study examined the effects of praise for intelligence and praise for effort on Iranian EFL learners’ language mindsets, perceived communication competence, speaking anxiety, and willingness to communicate (WTC). The students in three English classes (N = 63, all junior high school students) in a private language institute filled in self-report scales on language mindsets, perceived communication competence, speaking anxiety, and WTC, and then were assigned to praise for effort, praise for intelligence, and control conditions for 14 classroom communication sessions. They answered the same scales in the last session of the experiment. The results of quantitative analysis indicated that praise for effort enhanced learners’ growth mindsets, communicative competence, and WTC, and decreased their speaking anxiety. In contrast, praise for intelligence and no praise decreased students’ growth mindsets. Praise for intelligence further decreased students’ WTC and increased their speaking anxiety. Follow-up qualitative data gathered by interviews with 12 students further suggested that praise for effort facilitated learners’ WTC by increasing their growth mindsets and lowering their speaking anxiety. Finally, we discussed practical implications for how language teachers enhance students’ success in classroom communication.

Inspiring our future psychiatrists: a quality improvement project to optimise the medical student experience in community CAMHS settings

AimsTo improve the structure, quality and experience of medical student placements in Community Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). To increase the likelihood of pursuing a career in Psychiatry or CAMHS by 50% over their 3 week placement.BackgroundThere is evidence in the literature of the widely variable medical student experiences when it comes to Psychiatry placements. Medical students from Kings’ College London (KCL) have a 3 week placement in Lambeth Community CAMHS services. Despite this being a good opportunity for learning and development, the feedback from students reports that they often feel lost and were unable to fulfil the potential of the placement. The main challenges reported were identifying beneficial educational experiences and gaining clinically relevant exposure. This exposure includes getting involved beyond observation and following a patient longitudinally. These challenges will likely have a knock-on effect on their attitude towards Psychiatry and overall enjoyment of CAMHS placements when there is already a struggle to recruit trainee Psychiatrists.MethodA structured and immersive educational placement was designed through consultation with previous students, the multidisciplinary team and the university program directors. This included: •A new induction•Having a role in initial assessments of young people•Formalised medical and psychology teaching•Communication sessions•Case discussions in a ‘grand round’ format providing opportunity for end of placement assessmentFeedback was gathered using the Qualtrics analytical software, which was easily accessible through student's mobile devices.Pre placement questionnaires were used to assess the student's initial level of knowledge, expectations from the placement and motivation or interest in a career in CAMHS. Post placement questionnaires were used to assess any change in the above baseline scores. Brief, online feedback was collected after every clinical activity and was used to assess the interest and utility of each attended session during the placement. The questionnaire feedback was analysed and using these data, adjustments were made to improve the program for the next students in a “Plan-Do Study-Act” quality improvement methodology format. We analysed whether improving placement experience and learning affected students’ interest in careers in Psychiatry.ResultThe Quality Improvement Project is currently on-going and results are pending. So far, there is an improvement in student attendance and engagement following the introduction of induction, structure and active involvement in case management.ConclusionThe COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in community services having significantly reduced face to face contact, therefore our proposed changes for future cycles include various virtual elements. Ensuring medical students have access to online platforms such as Microsoft teams is vital in ensuring an effective medical student placement can be established Although the change to more remote working has been challenging , it is vital that medical students gain appropriate clinical experience during their Psychiatry placement to support further developments in Psychiatric recruitment.

Performance evaluation of massively parallel and high speed connectionless vs. connection oriented communication sessions

In this paper we focus on the fast communication issues of the Big Data processing tasks shared between High Performance Computing systems. In our performance evaluation framework we designed and developed two traffic measurement tools in order to answer some theoretical questions related to congestion control in practice. The first one is based on iperf and tcpdump softwares to capture data flows of TCP and UDP sessions. Classification aspects of the measurement cases were: homogeneity of the traffics, number of parallel communication sessions, and implementation types of the TCP congestion control algorithm. Dozens of parallel traffic scenarios were executed in a dumbbell topology to evaluate effects of the massively parallel communication sessions in wireline local and metropolitan area networks. Since we found that connection oriented data transfer sessions have limited performance features during communication, we implemented a second communication tool named Fast Manager of File Transfer (FMFT). This application with transfer rate monitoring and regulation capability is based on parallel connectionless data transfer sessions supervised by a common connection oriented control session and provides better transfer rate than the classical file transfer mechanisms using TCP services. Methodology of the statistical analysis and highlights of this heterogeneous parallel communication mechanism are explained, too.

5G New Radio channel coding for messaging in Smart Grid

The integration of the fifth generation of mobile communications (5G) into the distribution network has the potential to empower Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) applications, thus further advancing the concept of Smart Grid (SG). This paper analyzes the compatibility of 5G-NR (New Radio) standard-recommended coding schemes: Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) and Polar coding with message formats for generalized AMI and PMU communication recommended by standards IEEE Std 1703 and IEEE Std C37.118.2, respectively. Two standard-defined examples of communication sessions have been considered to determine the required 5G-NR transmission channel and associated coding scheme to be used for AMI and PMU-specific messages. The corresponding simulations have been performed following the specifics and boundaries defined by communication standards for 5G, AMI, and PMUs. In the AMI use case, simulation results indicate LDPC code superiority leading to the recommendation to be used for all message formats. PMU use case results reveal the Polar code application benefits for command messaging and its potential to be used for data messaging instead of LDPC code, which would require future adjustments of PMU data message format and further research on latency issues.

SYNTACTICAL CONVERSATIONAL ERRORS: DOCUMENTATION ON DELIVERY OF COMPETENT IN DIVERGENT SITUATIONS

The target of this study is to reach the most recurrently occurring syntactical errors committed by competent who are affiliated with language field. English in Pakistan is calculated as an official and academics language as is in many countries. The main intension behind conducting this type of research is to explore unintentional speaking errors committed by learner. In Pakistan, distinct languages are spoken, if English is spoken in Sindh, it is spoken as second language or third language, as mother tongue is Sindhi and national language is Urdu, same is in Punjab and in other provinces of Pakistan. Hence, there is an impact of each first language on target language. Resultantly, it shows some errors, it may be syntactical errors, grammatical or phonological errors. In this study, error analysis theory, by Gas & Selinker in 2008 through different phases named, 1: collecting data 2: identifying errors 3: classifying error4: quantifying error 5: analyzing errors 6: remediation was used as framework.15 professionals were selected randomly with probability sampling. Communication sessions were conducted with them with semi-structured based interviews. This study deals with qualitative descriptive approach. After applying CICQAR process of error identifier, it is found that even professionals make syntactical error in their communication, most common error was found structural and tenses errors, that speaker does sometimes unintentionally. Researchers have identified and gave suggestions that how to overcome these errors? Findings of this study show that during communication many intentional and unintentional errors occur, these errors may be due to little cognizance of grammar, structure of the sentence or it may happen deliberately.

Необходимость изменения конструкции следственных действий, направленных на получение сведений, передаваемых по средствам связи

Abstract: Relevance of the research topic. The obvious trend of social activity was the digitalization of almost all aspects of people’s lives, which led to a sharp increase in information transmitted in digital (electronic) form. The Criminal Procedure Law provides for investigative actions aimed at obtaining this information for subsequent use in criminal evidence. However, some changes to the law are not quite systemic, are not supported by theoretical studies, which complicates law enforcement practice, forms the prerequisites for violating the uniformity of application of the law, and infringement of the rights of participants in criminal procedure. Problem setting. The constant improvement of the means of communication objectively leads to an expansion of their scope. In response, the legislator designs investigative actions that allow obtaining information transmitted by means of communication. However, some legislative decisions could not be considered optimal. Thus, having fixed in Art. 185 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation the possibility of obtaining information transmitted by e-mail, the legislator did not take into account that this norm applies only to postal operators. In addition, since 2018, telecommunication operators have been required to record and store the content of all communication sessions served by them. However, these provisions are not taken into account in the criminal procedure law, which establishes another procedure for obtaining information. Research objectives and methods. The purpose of the study is to develop proposals for improving the normative design of investigative actions aimed at obtaining information transmitted by means of communication. The tasks of the study are to analyze the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Law and the legislation on communication, to identify conflicts between them. The methodological basis of the study was the dialectical-materialistic method, as well as the general scientific methods of scientific knowledge: analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, formal-logical, systemic. Results and key findings. To eliminate the resulting collision, it is necessary to design a universal investigative action that allows you to obtain information transmitted by telecommunication means, both the content of negotiations and the billing parameters of the connection.

An investigation into the effectiveness of various professionals and behavior modification programs, with or without medication, for the treatment of canine aggression

In this follow up study, we investigate a subset of 963 dogs whose owners (n = 800) described as having at least one form of aggressive behavior. We were particularly interested in learning which types of professionals, if any, were sought for assistance for the presenting behavior. Owners were also asked to indicate the resolutions employed, including training methods and equipment, behavior modification programs, behavior modification and training techniques, medications, and forms of alternative medicine. Using a self-reported questionnaire, both cohesive and dispersive aggressive behaviors were investigated including conflict aggression (CA), interdog housemate aggression (HA), fear aggression toward people (FA), fear aggression toward dogs (FAD), and predatory aggression (PA). Fifty-three percent of dogs with reported aggressive behaviors were mixed breeds. The study sample was 56% male, a majority (91%) of which was neutered. Most commonly, the dogs with reported aggressive behaviors were the sole dog in the household. Fifty-six percent of dogs were brought to at least one professional for remedial assistance. Of the owners that sought help from a DACVB, a majority (81%) found the advice to be helpful for treating their dog's aggression. Fifteen percent of dogs brought to veterinarians for advice about behavior problems were found to have an underlying medical problem contributing to the dog's misbehavior. As far as training equipment was concerned, we found that anti-bark collars and muzzles decreased the probability for successful treatment of aggression. Thirty-six percent of dogs were exposed to behavior modification programs as a form of treatment and an association was found between employment of a systematic desensitization and counterconditioning for treatment of overall aggression. When employing behavior modification training techniques, response blocking was found to decrease probability for improvement when employed for treatment of fear aggression to other dogs and predatory aggression. Improved dog-owner communication, habituation, relaxation protocols, and short and frequent training sessions were the most consistently beneficial behavior modification techniques. At least one beneficial behavior modification technique was identified for each investigated form of aggression. Twenty-one percent of dogs received medication as a form of treatment for aggression. Surprisingly, we failed to find any significant associations between treatment response and the administration of specific medications. When investigating alternative medicines, we found nutraceuticals to be helpful when treating overall aggression.

An adaptive and distributed network selection mechanism for 5G networks

5G networks aim to support a vast amount of data exchange, through network densification, including the integration of multiple radio access technologies (RATs) under a unified radio access and core network. This integration creates a heterogeneous environment where end devices dynamically select the most suitable RAT for consuming a service via a new or even an ongoing communication session. This paper proposes a distributed and adaptive network selection mechanism to address this challenge. The proposed mechanism comprises two co-operating algorithms, one located at the user equipment (UE), and the other at the core network. Its main objective is to satisfy user preferences regarding monetary cost, quality of service, security, energy consumption etc., while safeguarding an operator's traffic engineering policy to avoid congestion. A key feature of the mechanism is the use of a dynamic threshold used to find the sweet spot between a well-balanced access network and maximizing the number of user sessions placed into their most preferred RAT. This threshold is adjusted in real time according to the experienced network conditions. Extensive network performance and quality of experience simulations show that the proposed mechanism accomplishes its objectives and can be used to provide efficient traffic steering decisions.

Exploiting Beam Features for Spoofing Attack Detection in mmWave 60-GHz IEEE 802.11ad Networks

Spoofing attacks pose a serious threat to wireless communications. Exploiting physical-layer features to counter spoofing attacks is a promising solution. Although various physical-layer spoofing attack detection (PL-SAD) techniques have been proposed for conventional 802.11 networks in the sub-6GHz band, the study of PL-SAD for 802.11ad networks in 5G millimeter wave (mmWave) 60GHz band is largely open. In this paper, to achieve efficient PL-SAD in 5G networks, we propose a unique physical layer feature in IEEE 802.11ad networks, i.e., the signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) trace obtained at the receiver in the sector level sweep (SLS) process. The SNR trace is readily extractable from the off-the-shelf device, and it is dependent on both transmitter location and intrinsic hardware impairment. Therefore, it can be used to achieve an efficient detection no matter the attacker is co-located with the legitimate transmitter or not. To achieve spoofing attack detection, we provide two methods based on different machine learning models. For the first method, the detection problem is formulated as a machine learning classification problem. To tackle the small sample learning and fast model construction challenges, we propose a novel neural network framework consisting of a backpropation network, a forward propagation network, and generative adversarial networks (GANs). Another method involves a Siamese network, in which the similarity between sample pairs from one device is used to achieve PL-SAD. It can tackle the training problem that the historical data cannot support the identification of the same device in a new communication session. We conduct experiments using off-the-shelf 802.11ad devices, Talon AD7200s and MG360, to evaluate the performance of the proposed PL-SAD schemes. Experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed PL-SAD schemes, and the detection accuracy can reach 99% using small sample sizes under different scenarios.

A mutual authentication scheme for establishing secure device-to-device communication sessions in the edge-enabled smart cities

Internet of Things (IoT) and edge-enabled networking infrastructures have been used to provide data processing capabilities at the edge rather than transferring it to the concerned cloud in the smart cities. However, security and privacy of both data and device Ci are among common issues associated with the edge-enabled IoT networking paradigm. Numerous edge-enabled mechanisms have been presented in literature to resolve these issues, but device-to-device authentication (preferably in multi-hop enabled networking) to resolve the black-hole issue is not addressed yet. In this paper, a mutual authentication scheme, a hybrid of Medium Access Control (MAC) address and EAODV-enabled scheme, for establishing secure device-to-device communication sessions in IoT networks is presented to make edge-enabled smart cities safe and secure. Every device Ci is bounded to register its Mac address with the concerned base station or edge module Sj in an off-line phase to prevent entry of the intruder device(s) in the operational edge-enabled IoT network. Moreover, the initiation of a proper communication session with both device Ci and edge or base station Sj is subjected to the authentication process. Only those devices Ci are allowed to initiate a communication session which are already registered in the off-line phase where entry of the intruder node(s) at any stage is not possible. Apart from it, a well-known encryption and decryption mechanism is used to guarantee a secure communication session. Simulation results have verified that the proposed mutual authentication scheme performance is better than existing schemes specifically in terms of processing and communication overheads.