Ph.D. Candidate · INRIA Nord Europe

Aymen Bouferroum

Security and machine learning for the Industrial Internet of Things.

Working at the intersection of machine learning, cybersecurity, and network systems, from ML-driven trust models to physical-layer sensor attacks.

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01

About

I am a third-year Ph.D. candidate at INRIA Nord Europe in Lille, France, supervised by Valeria Loscri and co-supervised by Abderrahim Benslimane (University of Avignon). My thesis investigates machine learning for security in multi-technology Industrial Internet of Things.

My work sits at the intersection of cybersecurity, machine learning, and network systems. I explore how ML can enhance trust management, detect adversarial attacks on physical-layer sensors, and build resilient security frameworks for industrial networks. This spans theoretical modeling (Markov chains, stochastic optimization, statistical learning) and hands-on experimentation with real hardware including LiDAR sensors, WiFi CSI, and embedded platforms.

Recently I was a visiting researcher at CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security in Saarbrücken, Germany, investigating mirror-based LiDAR spoofing attacks on autonomous and industrial systems.

Aymen Bouferroum
Photo
Industrial IoT SecurityTrust ManagementFederated LearningLiDAR SpoofingWiFi CSIMachine LearningPhysical-Layer SecurityAdversarial AttacksCyber-Physical SystemsDeep Learning Industrial IoT SecurityTrust ManagementFederated LearningLiDAR SpoofingWiFi CSIMachine LearningPhysical-Layer SecurityAdversarial AttacksCyber-Physical SystemsDeep Learning
02

Publications

Most Wi-Fi sensing models are trained on simulated data built by adding noise to recorded channel estimates. We tested that assumption on six commodity receivers and found it breaks: the receiver's automatic gain control compresses the signal in ways no additive noise can reproduce. Our answer is MQTC, a measurement-calibrated model combining quantile mapping, temporal filtering, and copula-based reordering, which cuts amplitude error 8-fold and closes 89% of the fidelity gap. Classifiers trained on MQTC data recover 93% of real-world jamming-detection performance, while noise-trained ones remain near random.

Channel State InformationWi-Fi SensingSimulation ValidationSim-to-Real TransferReceiver ChainData Augmentation
PDF HAL
@misc{bouferroum2026csisimulationadditivenoise,
      title={CSI Simulation: Why Additive Noise Fails and How to Fix It},
      author={Aymen Bouferroum and Ildi Alla and Vincent Lenders and Valeria Loscri},
      year={2026},
      eprint={2607.01882},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.NI},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.01882},
}

A jamming attack can silence an entire wireless factory floor. CITADEL detects and classifies jamming using only Channel State Information, a signal that commodity IIoT devices already produce for free, and it recognizes attacks it has never been trained on. Across 6 known and 15 zero-day attack scenarios it reaches 100% and 97.1% detection at a 0.4% false-positive rate, resists adversarial evasion, and runs end-to-end in 14.2 ms on an edge GPU, outperforming eight baselines.

Wi-Fi SecurityChannel State InformationJamming DetectionOpen-Set RecognitionAdversarial RobustnessEdge Computing
PDF HAL
@misc{bouferroum2026citadelcsibasedjammingdetection,
      title={CITADEL: CSI-Based Jamming Detection and Open-Set Classification for IIoT Networks},
      author={Aymen Bouferroum and Ildi Alla and Valeria Loscri and Abderrahim Benslimane and Vincent Lenders},
      year={2026},
      eprint={2606.22939},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.CR},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.22939},
}

This paper is the roadmap of my doctoral thesis: a lightweight, multi-layer, ML-based security framework for the Industrial IoT. It builds on the Tm-IIoT trust model and the Hybrid IIoT architecture, adds the Trust Convergence Acceleration approach for up to 28.6% faster trust decisions on degraded networks, and extends toward physical-layer threat detection and resilience against adversarial ML, aiming at real deployments on affordable, open-source hardware rather than simulation alone.

IIoTTrust ManagementMachine LearningSecurity FrameworkNetwork Quality
@article{bouferroum2026toward,
  title={Toward a Multi-Layer ML-Based Security Framework for Industrial IoT},
  author={Bouferroum, Aymen and Loscri, Valeria and Benslimane, Abderrahim},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.24111},
  year={2026}
}

Trust scores are only useful once they converge, and on real networks with fluctuating quality that can take far too long. TCA (Trust Convergence Acceleration) puts a Random Forest in the loop: it predicts how long convergence will take and adapts the trust model's transition probabilities on the fly. Under realistic Wi-Fi 6 conditions, TCA cuts trust-convergence time by up to 28.6% in challenging conditions while improving accuracy against malicious nodes.

IoTIIoTTrust ManagementMachine LearningNetwork Quality
PDF IEEE
@inproceedings{bouferroum2025accelerating,
  title={Accelerating Trust Convergence in IIoT: A ML Approach for Dynamic Network Conditions},
  author={Bouferroum, Aymen and Loscri, Valeria and Benslimane, Abderrahim},
  booktitle={IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM) 2025},
  year={2025}
}

Drones in 6G networks need ultra-reliable, low-latency links while moving fast through three dimensions. We tackle spectrum allocation for aerial users in user-centric cell-free massive MIMO: a deep reinforcement learning agent (DDPG) assigns frequency subbands while balancing interference, spectral efficiency, and fairness under strict bandwidth limits. The learned policy adapts to altitude-varying conditions better than two bio-inspired optimizers (BGWO and BMFO) and shows the architecture can meet 6G performance targets for aerial networks.

Reinforcement LearningCell-Free mMIMOUAV CommunicationsResource Allocation
IEEE
@INPROCEEDINGS{11099147,
  author={Cheggour, Selina and Bouferroum, Aymen and Krishnan, Rahul},
  booktitle={2025 International Conference on Computer, Information and Telecommunication Systems (CITS)},
  title={Reinforcement Learning-Driven UC-CFmMIMO for UAVs: A Subband Allocation Framework},
  year={2025},
  volume={},
  number={},
  pages={1-8},
  keywords={6G mobile communication;Wireless communication;Reinforcement learning;Quality of service;Massive MIMO;Interference;Dynamic scheduling;Resource management;Vehicle dynamics;Radio spectrum management;Sixth-generation (6G);User-Centric Cell-Free Massive MIMO (UC-CFmMIMO);Aerial Vehicular Networks;Resource Allocation;Reinforcement Learning (RL);Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG)},
  doi={10.1109/CITS65975.2025.11099147}}

FITNESS is a national research initiative funded by the French Research Agency (ANR) under France 2030, asking what still stands between the IoT and large-scale adoption. This white paper presents the project's vision and first findings on three fronts: IoT architecture and interoperability, the place of artificial intelligence in IoT, and energy efficiency, validated against concrete industrial use cases on the road to a secure, efficient, and interoperable IoT ecosystem.

IoTFuture NetworksFITNESSPEPRArchitecture
HAL
@misc{cassiau2025fitness,
  author = {Cassiau, Nicolas and Achir, Nadjib and Adjih, Cédric and Andrieux, Guillaume and Bechkit, Walid and others},
  title  = {Overcoming the Technical Hurdles of IoT Adoption: the FITNESS Project Vision and Insights},
  year   = {2025},
  doi    = {10.5281/zenodo.17119689},
  note   = {hal-05257163},
  url    = {https://hal.science/hal-05257163}
}
03

Research

01 / Trust

Trust Management in Industrial IoT

Machine-learning approaches that accelerate trust convergence and enable reliable device assessment in dynamic IIoT networks, designing trust models resilient to manipulation as topology and channels shift.

Markov chains · Machine learning · Stochastic optimization

02 / Sensing

Physical-Layer Security & Sensor Attacks

Vulnerabilities in physical-layer sensors for IIoT and autonomous systems: mirror-based LiDAR spoofing (Ouster, Hesai, Livox, RoboSense) and CSI-based jamming detection over WiFi channel state information.

LiDAR · WiFi CSI · CARLA · Point clouds · ESP32 · HackRF

03 / Frameworks

ML-Based Network Security Frameworks

Multi-layer security architectures uniting physical-layer authentication, traffic analysis, and application-level anomaly detection for resource-constrained industrial devices across heterogeneous networks.

Deep learning · Federated learning · Flower · PyTorch · TensorFlow

04

Skills

A toolkit that spans research and engineering: training deep and federated models, probing wireless physical layers with software-defined radios, and deploying security systems on real embedded hardware.

AI & Machine Learning

PyTorchTensorFlowKerasscikit-learnFederated LearningFlowerDeep LearningCNNRNN / LSTMDiffusion ModelsVAE

Networks & Wireless

TCP/IPBGPIEEE 802.114G / 5GVLAN / ACLFirewall / VPNWiFi CSILiDARESP32Jetson Orin NanoRaspberry Pi

Security & Offensive

Penetration TestingWiresharkKali LinuxNmapMetasploitBurp SuitesqlmapReverse EngineeringTrust ManagementHackRF OneSDRGNU Radio

Cloud & DevOps

DockerKubernetesAWSOpenStackVMwareRancherApache Spark

Software Development

PythonFlaskPyQt6JavaJavaFXJADEJavaScriptHTML / CSSGitUMLPostgreSQLMySQLMongoDBSQLite

Modeling & Theory

Markov ChainsStochastic OptimizationFinite State MachinesPetri NetsRandom ForestsGame Theory

Languages

ArabicNative
EnglishFull Professional · Linguaskill B2
FrenchFull Professional

Certifications

  • Neural Networks and Deep Learning
  • Preparing for a Career in Cybersecurity · Microsoft & LinkedIn
  • Linguaskill Business B2
  • Claude Code in Action
05

Experience

Mar 2026 – May 2026

Visiting PhD Researcher

CISPA Helmholtz Center · Saarbrücken, Germany

Research stay at the world's #1-ranked institution in computer security and cryptography (CSRankings), working on cyber-physical systems security for autonomous vehicles in the Industry 5.0 paradigm. Rebuilt a mirror-based LiDAR spoofing pipeline in CARLA and evaluated it across five sensors (Ouster, Hesai, Livox, RoboSense).

Oct 2023 – Present

Ph.D. Candidate

INRIA Nord Europe · Lille, France

Designing an energy-efficient trust-management architecture for the multi-technology Industrial IoT in the Industry 4.0 and 6G context: high security at low latency and overhead across heterogeneous, resource-constrained nodes. Supervised by Valeria Loscri, co-supervised by Abderrahim Benslimane.

Mar 2022 – Aug 2022

Research Intern

LIA · University of Avignon, France

Incentive design for efficient federated learning via game-theoretic coalition strategies with Shapley-value optimization.

2020 – 2022

M.Sc. Communicating Computer Systems

University of Avignon · France

2018 – 2020

M.Sc. Networks & Distributed Systems

University of Constantine · Algeria

2015 – 2018

B.Sc. Computer Science

University of Constantine · Algeria

06

Training & Events

Doctoral schools, conferences, and live demonstrations across Europe, where I present my research and sharpen it against the wider community.

Doctoral Schools

Flag of Greece

BEiNG-WISE Third Training School

Litochoro, Greece · Aug 2025 Attended

Cybersecurity and human factors in advanced communication technologies.

Flag of Albania

BEiNG-WISE Summer School

Tirana, Albania · Jun 2025 Attended

Specialized training on advanced communication technologies and cybersecurity.

Flag of North Macedonia

BEiNG-WISE Summer School

North Macedonia · Jun 2024 Attended

Cybersecurity and human factors in advanced communication technologies.

Flag of France

PEPR Cybersecurity Winter School

Grenoble, France · Jan 2025 Attended

Thematic sessions on malware, hardware security, and cryptanalysis, with a student presentation of ongoing work.

Conferences & Events

Flag of Spain

EuCNC & 6G Summit 2026

Málaga, Spain · Jun 2026 Live Demo Poster

Real-time wireless jamming detection on an Industrial IoT testbed, shown at the PEPR Réseaux du Futur booth.

Flag of Luxembourg

RESSI 2026

Clervaux, Luxembourg · May 2026 Paper Talk Poster

Presented the multi-layer ML-based security framework of my doctoral thesis.

Flag of Taiwan

IEEE GLOBECOM 2025

Taipei, Taiwan · Dec 2025 Paper

Presented the Trust Convergence Acceleration (TCA) approach for ML-driven trust management in Industrial IoT.

Flag of France

PEPR Réseaux du Futur

Grenoble · Toulouse · Bordeaux · Rennes · 2024–2026 Posters & Talks

Annual scientific days, FITNESS plenary sessions, and workshops across France.

07

Contact

Interested in collaborating on IIoT security, trust management, or applied machine learning? I am always glad to talk.