Security and privacy protection in swarm intelligence systems: a review

Swarm intelligence systems are recognized for their significant potential in advancing the intelligent development of social production and lifestyle, owing to their distributed architecture, high self-organization, and strong robustness. However, security and privacy protection issues were identified as critical factors limiting their stable operation and widespread application, directly impacting user trust and the large-scale deployment of the technology. Consequently, ensuring the operational security of swarm intelligence systems, achieving data privacy protection, and enhancing their anti-attack capabilities and robustness in complex environments were highlighted as urgent challenges to be addressed. In this context, their definitions, characteristics, general structures, and application scenarios of swarm intelligence systems were comprehensively described. The security objectives covering data, communication, system reliability, robustness, and trust management, as well as the privacy protection objectives related to data, identity, and intent, were explicitly proposed. Additionally, the main attack methods and related defense techniques were analyzed. Based on this, current mainstream solutions were systematically reviewed to address the security and privacy protection issues in swarm intelligence systems. Finally, the core challenges faced by swarm intelligence systems in this field were thoroughly discussed, and potential future development directions were explored, aiming to provide theoretical support and technical guidance for subsequent research.