Answer To: NIT6130 Assignment 1 - Literature Review Title of the project: IOT based smart home device security...
Jayageetha answered on Sep 29 2021
Securing IoT devices with Blockchain solutions
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1. Abstract
Internet of Things (IoT) [1] is the new buzz word in the field of Information Technology. IoT is interconnecting two or more smart devices, installed with sensors, through certain protocols so as to send or receive information in between them. This exchange of information does not require human interaction and hence it we call them smart devices. Since IoT handle a lot of data which are sensitive, privacy is the major problem and hence its penetration into information sensitive areas is still miles away. The more the term is appealing, the more is the concern over its commitment to confidentiality of information. One possible approach is to implement the blockchain technology in addressing the security issues. A block chain technology [2] in which information is stored in the form of blocks and each block contains a personal hash and a hash of the previous block. This hash entry makes it almost impossible to change the sequence of the blocks and hence are not vulnerable to attacks or duplications. The paper will define the solutions to the security threats posed by IoT with the help of block chain technology, the emergence of which has a positive gesture towards a threat-free inter connectivity of devices.
2. Introduction
Internet of Things is a sizzling and appealing topic of discussion. The smartly fabricated technology puts its face off when it comes to answering security questions. For an IoT, privacy is to be maintained at all its layers, particularly at the network layer and the application layer. Since both these layers are susceptible to information thefts, security cannot be compromised. There is a lot of research on how to enhance the security of IoT over these layers, for the threats which may be categorized into low, intermediate and high severities. Though regular security checks like node authentication, strong communication protocols, cloud audits, CSA standards, anti-virus software, etc., are present at each level, there seems to be an overall slip in securing the data from the expected level. This is because of the large size of IoT, its heterogenetic characteristic and the inability to feed the huge resource requirement. But on the bright side, there have been innovations towards a possible security implementation. These include, introducing cryptographic techniques for authentication, capability-based access control, using digital certificates for access issues, light weight authentication protocol, etc., All these are a definite move towards a meaningful improvement in confidentiality. But what they lack is the necessary infrastructure, since they eat up more CPU space and battery to be implemented. Yet, to make all these efforts fruitful, a more innovative technique has to be used. It is called the block chain technology, where every information is split and sent across the network and one block has information about its previous block. Here tampering the chain’s continuity is nearly impossible. The report holds vital information about how block chain technology gives solution to the security threats IoT faces. Even though there are areas needed to be researched under the block chain technology like, its high power of computation and scalability, the technology on the whole is promising.
3. Related work
Researchers are keen about the emerging technology, IoT since it drives us towards living a smart life by building smart homes, smart travels, smart hospitals, etc., To understand the security issues related to using IoT, researches first tried to understand its architecture, separate it by layers and see what more can be done to which layer where information is found to have spoofed. Technically, IoT has four layers viz., Physical layer, Network layer, Support layer and Application layer. Among these, the most susceptible layers are the network and application layers. Hence researches focussed on important changes to be implemented at this level to enhance security of information put across the internet. Though many technologies and healthy communication protocols are readily available for satellite and mobile networks, the problems of spoofing, sybil attacks, routing attacks, eavesdropping, denial of service are still not being handled to the needed extent. Apart from this, the application layer is also prone to spyware attacks, malware attacks, phishing problems, and other authentication and key stroke thefts.
The existing papers report on possible solutions to these problems. They include different approaches at different levels of IoT. The authors Ferrag M.A., Maglaras L.A., Janicke H., Jiang J., Shu L., [3] in their research paper, “Authentication protocols for Internet of Things: A comprehensive survey”, demonstrated a list of protocols operable for IoT. They put them into 4 categories namely: Internet of Energy, Machine-to-Machine Communication, Internet of Sensors and Internet of Vehicles. This segregation provided a lead for further study. Following this, the authors, Wu Z.Q., Zhou Y.W., Ma J.F. A, [4] proposed the usage of Object Naming service (ONS) to ask the DNS (Domain name server) to look for an information, given that either its IP address or product ID is known. This method ensured anonymity and the usage of less likely to decipher encryption technologies.
The authors, Ning, Liu and Yang, differently approached the perception/physical layer of IoT and focussed on the critical data collection [5]. In their view, unit IoT is critical in the perception layer and that data is processed in the application layer, which shares the collected ubiquitous information. In order to provide real time security checks, their research was further progressed by authors, Rao, Newe, and Grout by implementing an encrypted technology imbibed hash function called, Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-3) [6]. This technique later got to be known for its flexibility in reconfiguration and hence suitable for any IoT application for that matter.
All these researches focussed on IoT at different levels. Segregating the layers was a major move forward, which helped look at security issues in a more specific way. This approach is different the traditional approaches which included physical layer approaches and providing infrastructure related solutions. All these did not help overcome the security level issues which showed their heads in the layers to come, the network and the application layer.
Based on the above study, one significant success is the achievement of the encryption technology. Now there are many such cryptographic technologies which prove to be secured. Proven examples include, attribute-based encryption (Key policy and cipher text policy), certificate-based authentication system, elliptic curve cryptography, advance encryption standard (AES), symmetric key cryptographic algorithms, digital certificates and signatures, etc., [7] All these technologies are highly secured but are highly power eating and use a lot of CPU energy and battery. Since IoT is a large chain of network, there is always a problem of resource crunch. With this in hand, cryptographic technologies may not always prove efficient. In the same way, using keys or certificates for authentication also gives a lot of traffic to the network and overloads it. This technique is also to be studied deeper for effective solutions in handling IoT’s large network.
Hence there is always for a scope for improvement in assuring the strictest possible security when handling IoT of large networks. What comes closer is the concept of Block chain technology. It is a registry of nodes, distributed across the connected networks. It is completely decentralized. There are special nodes called miners. These miners solve a puzzled node and add it to a block and hence form a block chain. Each block is unique and carries its information as well as a tag to the previous node. Hence, they are completely non-modifiable and immutable.
Thus, the block chain technology can be used in implementing IoT, which will very easily solve the so far discussed security concerns. Any communication through the block chain technology can be assured for swiftness and trust. They are completely safe from phishing and other cyber threats because, in a block chain technology, building a block is easy but undoing it is close to impossible. This remarkable feature makes it a safe option for utilizing in...