6G follows the footsteps of 5G and pursues the integration of communications and sensing. Through sensing the physical world and human-beings, 6G should be capable of programming to offer automation systems that span a rich variety of devices, several types of network and communication technologies and humans. 6G should timely offer user expected and satisfied networking services. It will embrace emerging technologies, such as quantum communication, molecular communication, real-time intelligent edge, Internet of everything, etc. As a consequence, personal and national safety will highly depend on network and information security. But sensing human-beings and physical world brings serious concern on privacy preservation, which however, conflicts with trust. Another view of 6G is it is a large-scale heterogeneous network (LS-HetNet) by integrating terrestrial networks, space satellite networks, marine networks. Such an integrated network can seamlessly support anywhere and anytime networking. But high Quality-of-Trust should be offered by LS-HetNet to meet mobile user expectations. By integrating with cloud computing, edge computing, network resources can be economically arranged with high flexibility across multiple domains according to user demands. But this requests virtual collaboration among multiple network operators in a trustworthy way with privacy preservation at both operator level and user level. Anticipating future development, ITU-T specifies that Trustworthy Networking should be provided. Trustworthy networking in 6G should ensure security and overcome privacy leakage in an integrated way. In short, 6G is expected to hold such attractive features as trustworthy and autonomous networking based on effective sensing to automatically satisfy user demands through integration of heterogeneous communication and networking technologies. However, such promising features introduce new challenges on trust, security and privacy, which motivate research and practice.

This special issue aims to bring together recent advances on trust, security and privacy in the 6G networks. It welcomes original and innovative perspectives on theories, methodologies, schemes, algorithms, and systems related to 6G trust, security and privacy, from academia, industry, and government. We invite survey and tutorial articles directed to the special issue. Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Theories, architectures and applications of 6G trustworthy networking
• Trustworthy and intelligent routing
• Trust modeling, trust policies and trust mechanisms
• Network trust evaluation and measurement
• 6G network security architecture
• Machine learning for network trust, security and privacy
• Blockchain and 6G trustworthy networking
• End-to-end communication security, privacy and trust
• Cryptography and trustworthy networking
• Smart handover with security and privacy
• Network resource arrangement for trustworthy networking
• Intrusion detection in integrated HetNets
• Security and privacy protection in 6G
• Trust management of 6G
• Network data collection, classification and trust analytics
• Incentive mechanisms of trust management
• Physical security and trust of 6G
• 6G positioning and its trust, security and privacy
• 6G service trust, security and privacy
• Post-quantum cryptography for 6G
• Embedded trust and distributed trust
• Distributed ledger technologies and differential privacy approaches
• Regulation and standardization about 6G security, privacy and trust
• Credibility authentication in 6G
• Edge intelligence/IoT security
• Trust, security and privacy of promising communication technologies in 6G
• Sensing with privacy preservation
• Analysis and design of 6G protocol security
• Domain specific security, privacy and trust in 6G
• Trust, security and privacy of digital twin in 6G"


Important Dates:

Manuscript Submission Deadline: 15 December 2021
Initial Decision Notification: 1 February 2022
Revised Manuscript Due: 1 March 2022
Final Decision Notification: 1 April 2022
Final Manuscript Due: 15 April 2022
Publication Date: July 2022

Guest Editors
• Zheng Yan, Xidian University, China, Aalto University, Finland (zyan@xidian.edu.cn; zheng.yan@aalto.fi)
• Laurence T. Yang, St Francis Xavier University, Canada (ltyang@gmail.com)
• Tieyan Li, Huawei, Singapore (Li.Tieyan@huawei.com)
• Yoan Miche, Nokia, Finland (yoan.miche@nokia-bell-labs.com)
• Shui Yu, University of Technology Sydney, Australia (Shui.Yu@uts.edu.au)
• Stephen Yau, Arizona State University, USA (yau@asu.edu)