Supporting Cyber-Physical Systems with Wireless Sensor Networks: An Outlook of Software and Services

Sensing, communication, computation and control technologies are the essential building blocks of a cyber-physical system (CPS). Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are a way to support CPS as they provide fine-grained spatial-temporal sensing, communication and computation at a low premium of cost and power. In this article, we explore the fundamental concepts guiding the design and implementation of WSNs. We report the latest developments in WSN software and services for meeting existing requirements and newer demands; particularly in the areas of: operating system, simulator and emulator, programming abstraction, virtualization, IP-based communication and security, time and location, and network monitoring and management. We also reflect on the ongoing efforts in providing dependable assurances for WSN-driven CPS. Finally, we report on its applicability with a case-study on smart buildings

Exploring Data Security and Privacy Issues in Internet of Things Based on Five-Layer Architecture

Data Security and privacy is one of the serious issues in internet-based computing like cloud computing, mobile computing and Internet of Things (IoT). This security and privacy become manifolded in IoT because of diversified technologies and the interaction of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) used in IoT. IoTs are being adapted in academics and in many organizations without fully protecting their assets and also without realizing that the traditional security solutions cannot be applied to IoT environment. This paper explores a comprehensive survey of IoT architectures, communication technologies and the security and privacy issues of them for a new researcher in IoT. This paper also suggests methods to thwart the security and privacy issues in the different layers of IoT architecture

6LoWPAN Stack Model Configuration for IoT Streaming Data Transmission over CoAP

Abstract: Different protocols have been developed for the Internet of things (IoT), such as the constrained application protocol (CoAP) for the application layer of the IPv6 over low-power wireless personal area networks (6LoWPAN) stack model. Data transmitted over 6LoWPAN are limited by the throughput and the frame size defined by IEEE 805.14.5 standards. Choosing the best configuration for data transmission involves a trade off between the application requirements, the constrained network configuration, the constrained device specifications and IoT application protocols. This paper provides an analysis of message size and structure recommendations for the 6LoWPAN stack model for different network topologies using CoAP. CoAP is a promising application protocol for the 6LoWPAN stack model because it can effectively manage the transmission required functionality in small header UDP packets compared to TCP packets. However, a data model is also required to realize an effective IoT model. While fragmentation and reassembly are supported by CoAP, they should be avoided for this type of model. As for any conceptual model, a high configuration between layers is mandatory. Additionally, the proposed message format is useful for semantic web of things application development and for WSN design and management

Security of the Internet of Things: Vulnerabilities, Attacks and Countermeasures

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) constitute one of the most promising third-millennium technologies and have wide range of applications in our surrounding environment. The reason behind the vast adoption of WSNs in various applications is that they have tremendously appealing features, e.g., low production cost, low installation cost, unattended network operation, autonomous and longtime operation. WSNs have started to merge with the Internet of Things (IoT) through the introduction of Internet access capability in sensor nodes and sensing ability in Internet-connected devices. Thereby, the IoT is providing access to huge amount of data, collected by the WSNs, over the Internet. Hence, the security of IoT should start with foremost securing WSNs ahead of the other components. However, owing to the absence of a physical line-of-defense, i.e., there is no dedicated infrastructure such as gateways to watch and observe the flowing information in the network, security of WSNs along with IoT is of a big concern to the scientific community. More specifically, for the application areas in which CIA (confidentiality, integrity, availability) has prime importance, WSNs and emerging IoT technology might constitute an open avenue for the attackers. Besides, recent integration and collaboration of WSNs with IoT will open new challenges and problems in terms of security. Hence, this would be a nightmare for the individuals using these systems as well as the security administrators who are managing those networks. Therefore, a detailed review of security attacks towards WSNs and IoT, along with the techniques for prevention, detection, and mitigation of those attacks are provided in this paper. In this text, attacks are categorized and treated into mainly two parts, most or all types of attacks towards WSNs and IoT are investigated under that umbrella: “Passive Attacks” and “Active Attacks”. Understanding these attacks and their associated defense mechanisms will help paving a secure path towards the proliferation and public acceptance of IoT technology

A Survey on Layer-Wise Security Attacks in IoT: Attacks, Countermeasures, and Open-Issues

© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Security is a mandatory issue in any network, where sensitive data are transferred safely in the required direction. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are the networks formed in hostile areas for different applications. Whatever the application, the WSNs must gather a large amount of sensitive data and send them to an authorized body, generally a sink. WSN has integrated with Internet-of-Things (IoT) via internet access in sensor nodes along with internet-connected devices. The data gathered with IoT are enormous, which are eventually collected by WSN over the Internet. Due to several resource constraints, it is challenging to design a secure sensor network, and for a secure IoT it is essential to have a secure WSN. Most of the traditional security techniques do not work well for WSN. The merger of IoT and WSN has opened new challenges in designing a secure network. In this paper, we have discussed the challenges of creating a secure WSN. This research reviews the layer-wise security protocols for WSN and IoT in the literature. There are several issues and challenges for a secure WSN and IoT, which we have addressed in this research. This research pinpoints the new research opportunities in the security issues of both WSN and IoT. This survey climaxes in abstruse psychoanalysis of the network layer attacks. Finally, various attacks on the network using Cooja, a simulator of ContikiOS, are simulated.Peer reviewe

A survey of potential security issues in existing wireless sensor network protocols

The increasing pervasiveness of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in diverse application domains including critical infrastructure systems, sets an extremely high security bar in the design of WSN systems to exploit their full benefits, increasing trust while avoiding loss. Nevertheless, a combination of resource restrictions and the physical exposure of sensor devices inevitably cause such networks to be vulnerable to security threats, both external and internal. While several researchers have provided a set of open problems and challenges in WSN security and privacy, there is a gap in the systematic study of the security implications arising from the nature of existing communication protocols in WSNs. Therefore, we have carried out a deep-dive into the main security mechanisms and their effects on the most popular protocols and standards used in WSN deployments, i.e., IEEE 802.15.4, Berkeley media access control for low-power sensor networks, IPv6 over low-power wireless personal area networks, outing protocol for routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks (RPL), backpressure collection protocol, collection tree protocol, and constrained application protocol, where potential security threats and existing countermeasures are discussed at each layer of WSN stack. This paper culminates in a deeper analysis of network layer attacks deployed against the RPL routing protocol. We quantify the impact of individual attacks on the performance of a network using the Cooja network simulator. Finally, we discuss new research opportunities in network layer security and how to use Cooja as a benchmark for developing new defenses for WSN systems

Intrusion detection in IPv6-enabled sensor networks.

In this research, we study efficient and lightweight Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) for ad-hoc networks through the lens of IPv6-enabled Wireless Sensor Actuator Networks. These networks consist of highly constrained devices able to communicate wirelessly in an ad-hoc fashion, thus following the architecture of ad-hoc networks. Current state of the art IDS in IoT and WSNs have been developed considering the architecture of conventional computer networks, and as such they do not efficiently address the paradigm of ad-hoc networks, which is highly relevant in emerging network paradigms, such as the Internet of Things (IoT). In this context, the network properties of resilience and redundancy have not been extensively studied. In this thesis, we first identify a trade-off between the communication and energy overheads of an IDS (as captured by the number of active IDS agents in the network) and the performance of the system in terms of successfully identifying attacks. In order to fine-tune this trade-off, we model networks as Random Geometric Graphs; these are a rigorous approach that allows us to capture underlying structural properties of the network. We then introduce a novel IDS architectural approach that consists of a central IDS agent and set of distributed IDS agents deployed uniformly at random over the network area. These nodes are able to efficiently detect attacks at the networking layer in a collaborative manner by monitoring locally available network information provided by IoT routing protocols, such as RPL. The detailed experimental evaluation conducted in this research demonstrates significant performance gains in terms of communication overhead and energy dissipation while maintaining high detection rates. We also show that the performance of our IDS in ad-hoc networks does not rely on the size of the network but on fundamental underling network properties, such as the network topology and the average degree of the nodes. The experiments show that our proposed IDS architecture is resilient against frequent topology changes due to node failures