1,191 research outputs found
Solutions and Tools for Secure Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks
Secure communication is considered a vital requirement in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) applications. Such a requirement embraces different aspects, including confidentiality, integrity and authenticity of exchanged information, proper management of security material, and effective prevention and reaction against security threats and attacks. However, WSNs are mainly composed of resource-constrained devices. That is, network nodes feature reduced capabilities, especially in terms of memory storage, computing power, transmission rate, and energy availability.
As a consequence, assuring secure communication in WSNs results to be more difficult than in other kinds of network. In fact, trading effectiveness of adopted solutions with their efficiency becomes far more important. In addition, specific device classes or technologies may require to design ad hoc security solutions. Also, it is necessary to efficiently manage security material, and dynamically cope with changes of security requirements. Finally, security threats and countermeasures have to be carefully considered since from the network design phase.
This Ph.D. dissertion considers secure communication in WSNs, and provides the following contributions. First, we provide a performance evaluation of IEEE 802.15.4 security services. Then, we focus on the ZigBee technology and its security services, and propose possible solutions to some deficiencies and inefficiencies. Second, we present HISS, a highly scalable and efficient key management scheme, able to contrast collusion attacks while displaying a graceful degradation of performance. Third, we present STaR, a software component for WSNs that secures multiple traffic flows at the same time. It is transparent to the application, and provides runtime reconfigurability, thus coping with dynamic changes of security requirements. Finally, we describe ASF, our attack simulation framework for WSNs. Such a tool helps network designers to quantitatively evaluate effects of security attacks, produce an attack ranking based on their severity, and thus select the most appropriate countermeasures
Deploying RIOT operating system on a reconfigurable Internet of Things end-device
Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia Eletrónica Industrial e ComputadoresThe Internet of Everything (IoE) is enabling the connection of an infinity of
physical objects to the Internet, and has the potential to connect every single
existing object in the world. This empowers a market with endless opportunities
where the big players are forecasting, by 2020, more than 50 billion connected
devices, representing an 8 trillion USD market.
The IoE is a broad concept that comprises several technological areas and will
certainly, include more in the future. Some of those already existing fields are the
Internet of Energy related with the connectivity of electrical power grids, Internet
of Medical Things (IoMT), for instance, enables patient monitoring, Internet of
Industrial Things (IoIT), which is dedicated to industrial plants, and the Internet
of Things (IoT) that focus on the connection of everyday objects (e.g. home
appliances, wearables, transports, buildings, etc.) to the Internet.
The diversity of scenarios where IoT can be deployed, and consequently the
different constraints associated to each device, leads to a heterogeneous network
composed by several communication technologies and protocols co-existing on the
same physical space. Therefore, the key requirements of an IoT network are
the connectivity and the interoperability between devices. Such requirement is
achieved by the adoption of standard protocols and a well-defined lightweight network
stack. Due to the adoption of a standard network stack, the data processed
and transmitted between devices tends to increase. Because most of the devices
connected are resource constrained, i.e., low memory, low processing capabilities,
available energy, the communication can severally decrease the device’s performance.
Hereupon, to tackle such issues without sacrificing other important requirements,
this dissertation aims to deploy an operating system (OS) for IoT, the
RIOT-OS, while providing a study on how network-related tasks can benefit from
hardware accelerators (deployed on reconfigurable technology), specially designed
to process and filter packets received by an IoT device.O conceito Internet of Everything (IoE) permite a conexão de uma infinidade
de objetos à Internet e tem o potencial de conectar todos os objetos existentes no
mundo. Favorecendo assim o aparecimento de novos mercados e infinitas possibilidades,
em que os grandes intervenientes destes mercados preveem até 2020 a
conexão de mais de 50 mil milhões de dispositivos, representando um mercado de
8 mil milhões de dólares.
IoE é um amplo conceito que inclui várias áreas tecnológicas e irá certamente
incluir mais no futuro. Algumas das áreas já existentes são: a Internet of Energy
relacionada com a conexão de redes de transporte e distribuição de energia Ã
Internet; Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), que possibilita a monotorização de
pacientes; Internet of Industrial Things (IoIT), dedicada a instalações industriais
e a Internet of Things (IoT), que foca na conexão de objetos do dia-a-dia (e.g.
eletrodomésticos, wearables, transportes, edifÃcios, etc.) à Internet.
A diversidade de cenários à qual IoT pode ser aplicado, e consequentemente,
as diferentes restrições aplicadas a cada dispositivo, levam à criação de uma rede
heterogénea composto por diversas tecnologias de comunicação e protocolos a coexistir
no mesmo espaço fÃsico. Desta forma, os requisitos chave aplicados à s redes
IoT são a conectividade e interoperabilidade entre dispositivos. Estes requisitos
são atingidos com a adoção de protocolos standard e pilhas de comunicação bem
definidas. Com a adoção de pilhas de comunicação standard, a informação processada
e transmitida entre dispostos tende a aumentar. Visto que a maioria dos
dispositivos conectados possuem escaços recursos, i.e., memória reduzida, baixa
capacidade de processamento, pouca energia disponÃvel, o aumento da capacidade
de comunicação pode degradar o desempenho destes dispositivos.
Posto isto, para lidar com estes problemas e sem sacrificar outros requisitos importantes,
esta dissertação pretende fazer o porting de um sistema operativo IoT,
o RIOT, para uma solução reconfigurável, o CUTE mote. O principal objetivo
consiste na realização de um estudo sobre os benefÃcios que as tarefas relacionadas
com as camadas de rede podem ter ao serem executadas em hardware via aceleradores
dedicados. Estes aceleradores são especialmente projetados para processar
e filtrar pacotes de dados provenientes de uma interface radio em redes IoT periféricas
Generic sensor network architecture for wireless automation (GENSEN)
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On Information-centric Resiliency and System-level Security in Constrained, Wireless Communication
The Internet of Things (IoT) interconnects many heterogeneous embedded devices either locally between each other, or globally with the Internet. These things are resource-constrained, e.g., powered by battery, and typically communicate via low-power and lossy wireless links. Communication needs to be secured and relies on crypto-operations that are often resource-intensive and in conflict with the device constraints. These challenging operational conditions on the cheapest hardware possible, the unreliable wireless transmission, and the need for protection against common threats of the inter-network, impose severe challenges to IoT networks. In this thesis, we advance the current state of the art in two dimensions.
Part I assesses Information-centric networking (ICN) for the IoT, a network paradigm that promises enhanced reliability for data retrieval in constrained edge networks. ICN lacks a lower layer definition, which, however, is the key to enable device sleep cycles and exclusive wireless media access. This part of the thesis designs and evaluates an effective media access strategy for ICN to reduce the energy consumption and wireless interference on constrained IoT nodes.
Part II examines the performance of hardware and software crypto-operations, executed on off-the-shelf IoT platforms. A novel system design enables the accessibility and auto-configuration of crypto-hardware through an operating system. One main focus is the generation of random numbers in the IoT. This part of the thesis further designs and evaluates Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) to provide novel randomness sources that generate highly unpredictable secrets, on low-cost devices that lack hardware-based security features.
This thesis takes a practical view on the constrained IoT and is accompanied by real-world implementations and measurements. We contribute open source software, automation tools, a simulator, and reproducible measurement results from real IoT deployments using off-the-shelf hardware. The large-scale experiments in an open access testbed provide a direct starting point for future research
Routing and Mobility on IPv6 over LoWPAN
The IoT means a world-wide network of interconnected objects based on standard communication
protocols. An object in this context is a quotidian physical device augmented with
sensing/actuating, processing, storing and communication capabilities. These objects must be
able to interact with the surrounding environment where they are placed and to cooperate with
neighbouring objects in order to accomplish a common objective. The IoT objects have also the
capabilities of converting the sensed data into automated instructions and communicating them
to other objects through the communication networks, avoiding the human intervention in several
tasks. Most of IoT deployments are based on small devices with restricted computational
resources and energy constraints. For this reason, initially the scientific community did not
consider the use of IP protocol suite in this scenarios because there was the perception that it
was too heavy to the available resources on such devices. Meanwhile, the scientific community
and the industry started to rethink about the use of IP protocol suite in all IoT devices and now
it is considered as the solution to provide connectivity between the IoT devices, independently
of the Layer 2 protocol in use, and to connect them to the Internet. Despite the use of IP suite
protocol in all devices and the amount of solutions proposed, many open issues remain unsolved
in order to reach a seamless integration between the IoT and the Internet and to provide the
conditions to IoT service widespread. This thesis addressed the challenges associated with the
interconnectivity between the Internet and the IoT devices and with the security aspects of
the IoT. In the interconnectivity between the IoT devices and the Internet the problem is how
to provide valuable information to the Internet connected devices, independently of the supported
IP protocol version, without being necessary accessed directly to the IoT nodes. In order
to solve this problem, solutions based on Representational state transfer (REST) web services
and IPv4 to IPv6 dual stack transition mechanism were proposed and evaluated. The REST web
service and the transition mechanism runs only at the border router without penalizing the IoT
constrained devices. The mitigation of the effects of internal and external security attacks
minimizing the overhead imposed on the IoT devices is the security challenge addressed in this
thesis. Three different solutions were proposed. The first is a mechanism to prevent remotely
initiated transport level Denial of Service attacks that avoids the use of inefficient and hard to
manage traditional firewalls. It is based on filtering at the border router the traffic received
from the Internet and destined to the IoT network according to the conditions announced by
each IoT device. The second is a network access security framework that can be used to control
the nodes that have access to the network, based on administrative approval, and to enforce
security compliance to the authorized nodes. The third is a network admission control framework
that prevents IoT unauthorized nodes to communicate with IoT authorized nodes or with
the Internet, which drastically reduces the number of possible security attacks. The network
admission control was also exploited as a management mechanism as it can be used to manage
the network size in terms of number of nodes, making the network more manageable, increasing
its reliability and extending its lifetime.A IoT (Internet of Things) tem suscitado o interesse tanto da comunidade académica como
da indústria, uma vez que os campos de aplicação são inúmeros assim como os potenciais ganhos
que podem ser obtidos através do uso deste tipo de tecnologia. A IoT significa uma rede
global de objetos ligados entre si através de uma rede de comunicações baseada em protocolos
standard. Neste contexto, um objeto é um objeto fÃsico do dia a dia ao qual foi adicionada a
capacidade de medir e de atuar sobre variáveis fÃsicas, de processar e armazenar dados e de
comunicar. Estes objetos têm a capacidade de interagir com o meio ambiente envolvente e de
cooperar com outros objetos vizinhos de forma a atingirem um objetivo comum. Estes objetos
também têm a capacidade de converter os dados lidos em instruções e de as comunicar a outros
objetos através da rede de comunicações, evitando desta forma a intervenção humana em
diversas tarefas. A maior parte das concretizações de sistemas IoT são baseados em pequenos
dispositivos autónomos com restrições ao nÃvel dos recursos computacionais e de retenção de
energia. Por esta razão, inicialmente a comunidade cientÃfica não considerou adequado o uso
da pilha protocolar IP neste tipo de dispositivos, uma vez que havia a perceção de que era muito
pesada para os recursos computacionais disponÃveis. Entretanto, a comunidade cientÃfica e a
indústria retomaram a discussão acerca dos benefÃcios do uso da pilha protocolar em todos os
dispositivos da IoT e atualmente é considerada a solução para estabelecer a conetividade entre
os dispositivos IoT independentemente do protocolo da camada dois em uso e para os ligar Ã
Internet. Apesar do uso da pilha protocolar IP em todos os dispositivos e da quantidade de
soluções propostas, são vários os problemas por resolver no que concerne à integração contÃnua
e sem interrupções da IoT na Internet e de criar as condições para a adoção generalizada deste
tipo de tecnologias.
Esta tese versa sobre os desafios associados à integração da IoT na Internet e dos aspetos de
segurança da IoT. Relativamente à integração da IoT na Internet o problema é como fornecer
informação válida aos dispositivos ligados à Internet, independentemente da versão do protocolo
IP em uso, evitando o acesso direto aos dispositivos IoT. Para a resolução deste problema foram
propostas e avaliadas soluções baseadas em web services REST e em mecanismos de transição
IPv4 para IPv6 do tipo pilha dupla (dual stack). O web service e o mecanismo de transição são
suportados apenas no router de fronteira, sem penalizar os dispositivos IoT. No que concerne
à segurança, o problema é mitigar os efeitos dos ataques de segurança internos e externos
iniciados local e remotamente. Foram propostas três soluções diferentes, a primeira é um
mecanismo que minimiza os efeitos dos ataques de negação de serviço com origem na Internet e
que evita o uso de mecanismos de firewalls ineficientes e de gestão complexa. Este mecanismo
filtra no router de fronteira o tráfego com origem na Internet é destinado à IoT de acordo
com as condições anunciadas por cada um dos dispositivos IoT da rede. A segunda solução,
é uma framework de network admission control que controla quais os dispositivos que podem
aceder à rede com base na autorização administrativa e que aplica polÃticas de conformidade
relativas à segurança aos dispositivos autorizados. A terceira é um mecanismo de network
admission control para redes 6LoWPAN que evita que dispositivos não autorizados comuniquem
com outros dispositivos legÃtimos e com a Internet o que reduz drasticamente o número de
ataques à segurança. Este mecanismo também foi explorado como um mecanismo de gestão uma
vez que pode ser utilizado a dimensão da rede quanto ao número de dispositivos, tornando-a
mais fácil de gerir e aumentando a sua fiabilidade e o seu tempo de vida
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