Securing Our Future Homes: Smart Home Security Issues and Solutions

The Internet of Things, commonly known as IoT, is a new technology transforming businesses, individuals’ daily lives and the operation of entire countries. With more and more devices becoming equipped with IoT technology, smart homes are becoming increasingly popular. The components that make up a smart home are at risk for different types of attacks; therefore, security engineers are developing solutions to current problems and are predicting future types of attacks. This paper will analyze IoT smart home components, explain current security risks, and suggest possible solutions. According to “What is a Smart Home” (n.d.), a smart home is a home that always operates in consideration of security, energy, efficiency and convenience, whether anyone is home or not

A Survey in Wireless Ad hoc Network Security and Secure Energy Optimization Approaches for Routing

Wireless ad hoc network nodes together establish a network infrastructure without using any access points or base stations for communicates using multi hop schemes. It has significant characteristics like dynamic topologies, constrained in bandwidth and limited resource a high challenge in implementing security with optimized energy resource utilization which is the key aspects while designing modern ad hoc networks architecture. Ad hoc Networks nodes are limited in broadcast range, and also their capabilities of computation and storage are well limited to their energy resources. This limitation of resources in wireless ad hoc creates high challenges in incorporating security mechanism for routing security and privacy maintenance. This paper investigates the various issues and challenges in secure routing and energy optimization during communication in wireless ad hoc network towards security and secure energy utilization improvisation

Quality assessment technique for ubiquitous software and middleware

The new paradigm of computing or information systems is ubiquitous computing systems. The technology-oriented issues of ubiquitous computing systems have made researchers pay much attention to the feasibility study of the technologies rather than building quality assurance indices or guidelines. In this context, measuring quality is the key to developing high-quality ubiquitous computing products. For this reason, various quality models have been defined, adopted and enhanced over the years, for example, the need for one recognised standard quality model (ISO/IEC 9126) is the result of a consensus for a software quality model on three levels: characteristics, sub-characteristics, and metrics. However, it is very much unlikely that this scheme will be directly applicable to ubiquitous computing environments which are considerably different to conventional software, trailing a big concern which is being given to reformulate existing methods, and especially to elaborate new assessment techniques for ubiquitous computing environments. This paper selects appropriate quality characteristics for the ubiquitous computing environment, which can be used as the quality target for both ubiquitous computing product evaluation processes ad development processes. Further, each of the quality characteristics has been expanded with evaluation questions and metrics, in some cases with measures. In addition, this quality model has been applied to the industrial setting of the ubiquitous computing environment. These have revealed that while the approach was sound, there are some parts to be more developed in the future

Bioinformatic analyses of the structural and functional complexity in chromosomal interactomes

Evolution requires information storage systems with different demands with respect to persistence. While the genome provides a mechanism for long term, static and accurate information storage, it is incapable of mediating adaptation to short term changes in the environment. Chromatin, however, constitutes a dynamic, reprogrammable memory with different levels of persistence. Moreover, chromatin states carry information not only in 2D, i.e. in the structure of the primary chromatin fibre, but also in the 3D organization of the genome in the nuclear space. The following thesis delves into the new bioinformatic and wet lab protocols developed to map, quantitative and functionally analyze the 3D architecture of chromatin. The chromatin insulator protein CTCF is a major factor underlying the 3D organization of the epigenome. We have uncovered, however, that CTCF binding sites within a regulatory region have multiple functions that are influenced by the chromatin environment and possibly the combinatorial usage of the 11 Zn-fingers of CTCF (Paper I). This observation exemplifies that understanding the function of dynamic and transient chromatin fibre interactions requires novel technology that enables the detection of 3D chromatin folding with high resolution in single cells and in small cell populations. We therefore set out to devise a novel method for the visualization of higher order chromatin structures by combining the strengths of both DNA Fluorescent In Situ Hybridization (FISH) and In Situ Proximity Ligation Assay (ISPLA) technologies (Paper II). The resulting Chromatin in Situ Proximity (ChrISP) assay thus takes advantage of the direct contact detection of ISPLA and the locus-specific nature of FISH and uncovered the existence of compact chromatin structures at the nuclear envelope with unprecedented resolution. To complement ChrISP with a high throughput method capable of quantitatively recovering chromatin fibre contacts in small cell populations, we furthermore innovated the Nodewalk assay (Paper III). The protocol builds on existing ligation based chromosome conformation capture methods, but features significant reduction in the random ligation event frequency, inclusion of negative and positive ligation controls, iterative template resampling, increased signal to noise ratio and improved sensitivity. Using this technique, we have uncovered a cancer cell-specific, productive chromatin fibre interactome connecting the promoter and enhancer of c-MYC to a network of enhancers and super-enhancers. Underpinning this new protocol, I have developed the Nodewalk Analysis Pipeline (NAP) (Paper IV). This suite of tools consists of preprocessing, analysis and post-processing modules designed specifically for the rapid and efficient analysis of Nodewalk datasets through an interactive and user-friendly web based interface. Overall the work described in this thesis advances our understanding of the role of CTCF in nuclear organization and provides innovative wet lab techniques along with specialized software tools. Moreover, this work is an example of an emerging trend where the challenge of understanding chromatin dynamics within the 3D nuclear architecture demands a close synergistic collaboration between the fields of biology, biotechnology and bioinformatics

Security and blockchain convergence with internet of multimedia things : current trends, research challenges and future directions

The Internet of Multimedia Things (IoMT) orchestration enables the integration of systems, software, cloud, and smart sensors into a single platform. The IoMT deals with scalar as well as multimedia data. In these networks, sensor-embedded devices and their data face numerous challenges when it comes to security. In this paper, a comprehensive review of the existing literature for IoMT is presented in the context of security and blockchain. The latest literature on all three aspects of security, i.e., authentication, privacy, and trust is provided to explore the challenges experienced by multimedia data. The convergence of blockchain and IoMT along with multimedia-enabled blockchain platforms are discussed for emerging applications. To highlight the significance of this survey, large-scale commercial projects focused on security and blockchain for multimedia applications are reviewed. The shortcomings of these projects are explored and suggestions for further improvement are provided. Based on the aforementioned discussion, we present our own case study for healthcare industry: a theoretical framework having security and blockchain as key enablers. The case study reflects the importance of security and blockchain in multimedia applications of healthcare sector. Finally, we discuss the convergence of emerging technologies with security, blockchain and IoMT to visualize the future of tomorrow's applications. © 2020 Elsevier Lt

Securing Communication Channels in IoT using an Android Smart Phone

In today's world, smart devices are a necessity to have, and represent an essential tool for performing daily activities. With this comes the need to secure the communication between the IoT devices in the consumer's home, to prevent attacks that may jeopardize the confidentiality and integrity of communication between the IoT devices. The life cycle of a a simple device includes a series of stages that the device undergoes: from construction and production to decommissioning. In this thesis, the Manufacturing, Bootstrapping and Factory Reset parts of IoT device's life cycle are considered, focusing on security. For example, the Controller of user's home network (e.g., user's smart phone) should bootstrap the ``right'' IoT device and the IoT device should bootstrap with the ``right'' Controller. The security is based on device credentials, such as the device certificate during the bootstrapping process, and the operational credentials that are provisioned to the IoT device from the Controller during the bootstrapping. The goal of this thesis is to achieve easy-to-use and secure procedure for setting up the IoT device into a home network, and for controlling that IoT device from an Android mobile phone (Controller). The objectives are: (1) explore the different aspects of using a smartphone as a Controller device to securely manage the life cycle of a simple device; (2) propose a system design for securely managing the life cycle of a simple device from a Controller compliant with existing standards, (e.g. Lightweight Machine to Machine (LwM2M) is an industrial standard used to manage and control industrial IoT Devices); (3) implement a proof of concept based on the system design; (4) provide a user-friendly interface for a better experience for the user by using popular bootsrapping methods such as QR code scanning; (5) discuss the choices regarding securing credentials and managing data, and achieve a good balance between usability and security during the bootstrapping process. In order to achieve those goals, the state-of-art technologies for IoT device management were studied. Then an Android application that uses LwM2M standard in consumer's home setting was specified, designed and implemented. The Android application is wrapped in a smooth user interface that allows the user a good experience when attempting to connect and control the target IoT device

A Lightweight Attribute-Based Access Control System for IoT.

The evolution of the Internet of things (IoT) has made a significant impact on our daily and professional life. Home and office automation are now even easier with the implementation of IoT. Multiple sensors are connected to monitor the production line, or to control an unmanned environment is now a reality. Sensors are now smart enough to sense an environment and also communicate over the Internet. That is why, implementing an IoT system within the production line, hospitals, office space, or at home could be beneficial as a human can interact over the Internet at any time to know the environment. 61% of International Data Corporation (IDC) surveyed organizations are actively pursuing IoT initiatives, and 6.8% of the average IT budgets is also being allocated to IoT initiatives. However, the security risks are still unknown, and 34% of respondents pointed out that data safety is their primary concern [1]. IoT sensors are being open to the users with portable/mobile devices. These mobile devices have enough computational power and make it di cult to track down who is using the data or resources. That is why this research focuses on proposing a dynamic access control system for portable devices in IoT environment. The proposed architecture evaluates user context information from mobile devices and calculates trust value by matching with de ned policies to mitigate IoT risks. The cloud application acts as a trust module or gatekeeper that provides the authorization access to READ, WRITE, and control the IoT sensor. The goal of this thesis is to offer an access control system that is dynamic, flexible, and lightweight. This proposed access control architecture can secure IoT sensors as well as protect sensor data. A prototype of the working model of the cloud, mobile application, and sensors is developed to prove the concept and evaluated against automated generated web requests to measure the response time and performance overhead. The results show that the proposed system requires less interaction time than the state-of-the-art methods

Multifaceted Optimization of Energy Efficiency for Stationary WSN Applications

Stationary Wireless Sensor Networks (S-WSNs) consist of battery-powered and resource-constrained sensor nodes distributed at fixed locations to cooperatively monitor the environment or an object and provide persistent data acquisition. These systems are being practiced in many applications, ranging from disaster warning systems for instant event detection to structural health monitoring for effective maintenance. Despite the diversity of S-WSN applications, one common requirement is to achieve a long lifespan for a higher value-to-cost ratio. However, the variety of WSN deployment environments and use cases imply that there is no silver bullet to solve the energy issue completely. This thesis is a summary of six publications. Our  contributions include four energy optimization techniques on three layers for S-WSN applications. From the bottom up, we designed an ultra-low power smart trigger to integrate environment perceptibility into the hardware. On the network layer, we propose a reliable clustering protocol and a cluster-based data aggregation scheme. This scheme offers topology optimization together with in-network data processing. On the application layer, we extend an industrial standard protocol XMPP to incorporate WSN characteristics for unified information dissemination. Our protocol extensions facilitate WSN application development by adopting IMPS on the Internet. In addition, we conducted a performance analysis of one lightweight security protocol for WSNs called HIP Diet Exchange, which is being standardized by IETF. We suggested a few improvements and potential applications for HIP DEX. In the process of improving energy efficiency, we explore modular and generic design for better system integration and scalability. Our hardware invention can extend features by adding new transducers onboard. The clustering protocol and data aggregation scheme provides a general self-adaptive method to increase information throughput per energy cost while tolerating network dynamics. The unified XMPP extensions aim to support seamless information flow for the Web of Things. The results presented in this thesis demonstrate the importance of multifaceted optimization strategy in WSN development. An optimal WSN system should comprehend multiple factors to boost energy efficiency in a holistic approach