Abstract
In the current landscape of software testing, challenges persist in test case data generation, including variability in data quality and the inherent difficulty of data synthesis. These challenges are further exacerbated in scenarios where data are widely distributed across heterogeneous organizational environments. Privacy regulations and security concerns impose strict constraints on data sharing, preventing centralized data aggregation and highlighting the necessity of a federated environment as a more practical solution. To address the privacy protection and data sharing challenges in federated test case data generation, we propose a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN)-based method specifically designed for federated settings. By leveraging the strong data generation capabilities of GANs, the proposed approach is able to generate high-quality and diverse test case data while preserving data privacy. Specifically, through a protocol grammar-based deep learning framework combined with test case encoder–decoder encoding mechanisms and a GAN-driven sample character generator, the proposed method can predict and generate variant test case samples. In the federated environment, each participant trains the generator and discriminator locally, while model parameters are securely aggregated to achieve global model optimization. Experimental results demonstrate that the generated test case data outperforms traditional methods in terms of coverage and effectiveness, significantly enhancing the efficiency and quality of software testing. Ultimately, the proposed framework provides a scalable solution for identifying latent vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure while strictly adhering to data sovereignty requirements in cross-organizational environments.
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Data availability
To ensure protocol diversity and operational authenticity, three industrial datasets were employed: Modbus-TCP (50,000 messages spanning read/write operations), OPC UA (30,000 requests covering Read, Write, and Browse functions), and CoAP (20,000 IoT interaction messages including GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE operations). Data requests can be made to corresponding author via this email: lu.yiqing@fecomee.org.cn.
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Funding
This research was partially funded by the GEF project—Strengthening coordinated approaches to reduce invasive alien species (IAS) threats to globally significant agrobiodiversity and agroecosystems in China, with project number 9874. This paper has also received funding from the Excellent Talent Training Funding Project in Dongcheng District, Beijing, with project number 2024-dchrcpyzz-9.
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Z.W. and L.Z. designed research plans, methodology and made writing-original draft preparation. Z.W., L.Z., and F.Me. put forward research ideas, conceptualization, and made writing-reviewing and editing. Z.Z. and Y.L. contributed significantly to analysis and writing-reviewing and editing. All authors reviewed the manuscript.
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Wang, Z., Zhao, L., Meng, F. et al. Secure multi-party test case data generation through generative adversarial networks. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-35773-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-35773-2
