IoT Security Mechanisms in the Example of BLE

Abstract

In recent years, a lot of IoT devices, wireless sensors, and smart things contain information that must be transmitted to the server for further processing. Due to the distance between devices, battery power, and the possibility of sudden device failure, the network that connects the devices must be scalable, energy efficient, and flexible. Particular attention must be paid to the protection of the transmitted data. The Bluetooth mesh was chosen as such a network. This network is built on top of Bluetooth Low-Energy devices, which are widespread in the market and whose radio modules are available from several manufacturers. This paper presents an overview of security mechanisms for the Bluetooth mesh network. This network provides encryption at two layers: network and upper transport layers, which increases the level of data security. The network uses sequence numbers for each message to protect against replay attacks. The introduction of devices into the network is provided with an encryption key, and the out-of-band (OOB) mechanism is also supported. At the moment, a comparison has been made between attacks and defense mechanisms that overlap these attacks. The article also suggested ways to improve network resiliency.

A Survey on Industrial Internet of Things Security: Requirements, Attacks, AI-Based Solutions, and Edge Computing Opportunities

“…Without authentication mechanisms, an intruder can capture a previously legitimate message transmitted from an IIoT device to another entity, then modify and replay the message to its final destination [128]. This kind of attack is possible when the authentication is applied in a certain IIoT environment.…”

Securing Synchronous Flooding Communications: An Atomic-SDN Implementation

“…Our approach is based on the widely-adopted Counter with Cipher Block Chaining-Message Authentication Code (CCM) mode [21], used in a number of protocols such as Bluetooth Mesh [10], ZigBee [11], and WiFi [8] (with minor variations for each). Its implementation allows both authenticity and confidentiality to be achieved with a single algorithm.…”

“…Security implementations can be found in other wireless protocols in the IoT literature. For example, Bluetooth Mesh [10] protects against trash-can attacks using multiple keys and a multi-layer security. Furthermore, the protocol's sequence numbers and an Initialisation Vector (IV) are utilised to protect against replay attacks.…”

“…Similarly, our approach is based on multipart IVs and encryption keys to ensure protection against these attacks. Bluetooth Mesh, hopping between three channels in a pre-defined sequence makes it vulnerable to jamming attacks [10]. Atomic, employing a more diverse channel hopping mechanism, improves resilience to interference and can better protect against jamming attacks.…”

“…The problem with SF protocols is the tight time synchronisation required between the devices. All current solutions found in Bluetooth Mesh [10], ZigBee [11] and WiFi [8] introduce increased overhead that leads to network desynchronisation and thus reduced reliability. Our solution will tackle this problem and provide secure communications without compromising the network performance.…”