Cyber-Security Threats and Side-Channel Attacks for Digital Agriculture

Abstract

The invention of smart low-power devices and ubiquitous Internet connectivity have facilitated the shift of many labour-intensive jobs into the digital domain. The shortage of skilled workforce and the growing food demand have led the agriculture sector to adapt to the digital transformation. Smart sensors and systems are used to monitor crops, plants, the environment, water, soil moisture, and diseases. The transformation to digital agriculture would improve the quality and quantity of food for the ever-increasing human population. This paper discusses the security threats and vulnerabilities to digital agriculture, which are overlooked in other published articles. It also provides a comprehensive review of the side-channel attacks (SCA) specific to digital agriculture, which have not been explored previously. The paper also discusses the open research challenges and future directions.

Implications of Cyberbiosecurity in Advanced Agriculture

“…In advanced agriculture at the field level, this can take the form of actuators, sensors, and vehicles. These can be used for monitoring critical environmental parameters, executing farming functions, and delivering automated transport (Alahmadi et al, 2022;Saiz-Rubio & Rovira-Más, 2020). While these technologies provide great utility and convenience, not enough attention is given to these devices.…”

“…While these technologies provide great utility and convenience, not enough attention is given to these devices. Many of these hardware devices do not include an integrated security mechanism to examine their usage, status, or memory access which is essential in securely storing cryptographic keys (Alahmadi et al,2022). This in turn makes them vulnerable to certain threats.…”

“…These are attacks made through exploiting information extracted from the data leakage of a physical cryptosystem. This can take the form of exploiting timing, power consumption, electromagnetic emissions, and thermal signatures which deliver valuable data capable of revealing the encryption standard as well as the keys to crack the encryption (Alahmadi et al, 2022). This can cause the leakage of very sensitive data which can be used or manipulated by attackers.…”

“…Stolen data from vulnerable digital and hardware infrastructure and framework can be utilized to attack individuals, companies, corporations, and more. Insights from Alahmadi et al (2022) suggest that relationships between producers of agricultural products and those who trade them are important security intersections to examine. Through the monitoring of parameters that trading competitors use to gauge production efficiency, an actor can isolate weak links in a region's bioeconomy (Alahmadi et al, 2022).…”

IoT based Agriculture (IoTA): Architecture, Cyber Attack, Cyber Crime and Digital Forensics Challenges

“…[85], authors classified CA in IoTA based on the physical layer, network layer, middleware layer, and application layer. The CA on the physical layer is such a RF jamming, side-channel attack, which aims to gather unauthorized information regarding the implementation description of the IoTA system using monitoring parameters of hardware like an electric current or voltage [86]. Attacks on the network layer are DoS, MITM, and cloud computing attacks.…”