Towards an Analysis of Security Issues, Challenges, and Open Problems in the Internet of Things

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) devices have become popular in diverse domains such as e-Health, e-Home, e-Commerce, and e-Trafficking, etc. With increased deployment of IoT devices in the real world, they can be, and in some cases, already are subject to malicious attacks to compromise the security and privacy of the IoT devices. While a number of researchers have explored such security challenges and open problems in IoT, there is an unfortunate lack of a systematic study of the security challenges in the IoT landscape. In this paper, we aim at bridging this gap by conducting a thorough analysis of IoT security challenges and problems. We present a detailed analysis of IoT attack surfaces, threat models, security issues, requirements, forensics, and challenges. We also provide a set of open problems in IoT security and privacy to guide the attention of researchers into solving the most critical problems.

A Survey of Potential Security Issues in Existing Wireless Sensor Network Protocols

“…• Resource restrictions -Limited processing abilities, storage capacity and communication bandwidth allow the use of a lightweight security mechanisms only, which can prevent most of external attacks, but provide no protection from internal attacks [7].…”

“…Also, they demand computational resources typically unavailable to such devices. New lightweight security mechanisms are needed and their complexity will vary depending on device specification, network technology, and type of application/service provided [7].…”

A Comprehensive Analysis on the Security Threats and their Countermeasures of IoT

“…The adversary can access secret information and other useful data which are from RFID technology because of its wireless attribute. Before applying this attack the attacker initially captures information and data about the connected network [30]. This work is accomplishing by using some sniffing operations such port scanning applications, packet sniffer applications etc.…”

Data Security in Smart Cities: Challenges and Solutions

“…In [10], Hossain et al present a comprehensive classification of attacks in a smart city. They can be made with simpler or more complex devices, provoking losses of small/big size.…”

“…Smart things suffer from hardware limitations (computational and energy constraint, memory constraint, tamper resistant packaging), software restrictions (embedded software constraint, dynamic security patch), hard network-requirements (mobility, scalability, multiplicity of devices, multiplicity of communication medium, multi-protocol networking, dynamic network topology). [10] These resource-constraints restrict the inclusion of adequate security mechanisms (e.g., cryptography) directly in smart objects. In consequence, designers let the security aside, hoping it could be add lateron, and attack-resistance is usually losing the race against other design-factors, as good performance, small form, and low energy consumption.…”