Securing IoT uplink communications against eavesdropping

We consider a network of Internet of Things devices transmitting to an IoT Gateway (IoT-GW). Such communications can potentially be overheard by one or multiple eavesdroppers. Our goal is to design an artificial noise (AN)-aided transmit strategy in order to enhance security against eavesdropping. We propose a communication design where the potential eavesdroppers are deactivated by means of jamming operations performed by 1) an In-Band Full Duplex (IBFD) IoT-GW and/or by 2) cooperative helpers featuring multiple antennas. We show that the solution where only the IBFD IoT-GW generates AN is feasible for small IoT networks and when a neutralization zone around each IoT-device is assumed. In the case with helpers instead, we show that the Average number of Secure Connections (ASC) increases at least exponentially with the density of the helpers

IoT Security Vulnerabilities and Predictive Signal Jamming Attack Analysis in LoRaWAN

Internet of Things (IoT) gains popularity in recent times due to its flexibility, usability, diverse applicability and ease of deployment. However, the issues related to security is less explored. The IoT devices are light weight in nature and have low computation power, low battery life and low memory. As incorporating security features are resource expensive, IoT devices are often found to be less protected and in recent times, more IoT devices have been routinely attacked due to high profile security flaws. This paper aims to explore the security vulnerabilities of IoT devices particularly that use Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs). In this work, LoRaWAN based IoT security vulnerabilities are scrutinised and loopholes are identified. An attack was designed and simulated with the use of a predictive model of the device data generation. The paper demonstrated that by predicting the data generation model, jamming attack can be carried out to block devices from sending data successfully. This research will aid in the continual development of any necessary countermeasures and mitigations for LoRaWAN and LPWAN functionality of IoT networks in general

Physical layer security against eavesdropping in the internet of drones (IoD) based communication systems

rones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) communication technology, which has recently been thoroughly studied and adopted by 3GPP standard (Release 15) due to its dynamic, flexible, and flying nature, is expected to be an integral part of future wireless communications and Internet of drones (IoD) applications. However, due to the unique transmission characteristics and nature of UAV systems including broadcasting, dominant line of site and poor scattering, providing confidentiality for legitimate receivers against unintended ones (eavesdroppers) appears to be a challenging goal to achieve in such scenarios. Besides, the special features of UAVs represented by having limited power (battery-operated) and precessing (light RAM and CPU capabilities), makes applying complex cryptography approaches very challenging and inefficient for such systems. This motives the utilization of alternative approaches enabled by physical layer security (PLS) concept for securing UAV-based systems. Techniques based on PLS are deemed to be promising due to their ability to provide inherent secrecy that is complexity independent, where no matter what computational processing power the eavesdropper may have, there is no way to decrypt the PLS algorithms. This work is dedicated to highlight and overview the latest advances and state of art researches on the field of applying PLS to UAV systems in a unified and structured manner. Particularity, it discusses and explains the different, possible PLS scenarios and use cases of UAVs, which are categorized based on how the drone is utilized and employed in the communication system setup. The main classified categories include the deployment of the flying, mobile UAV as a 1) base station (BS), 2) user equipment (UE), 2) relay, or 4) jammer. Then, recommendations and future open research issues are stated and discussed.No sponso

A Survey of Physical Layer Security Techniques for 5G Wireless Networks and Challenges Ahead

Physical layer security which safeguards data confidentiality based on the information-theoretic approaches has received significant research interest recently. The key idea behind physical layer security is to utilize the intrinsic randomness of the transmission channel to guarantee the security in physical layer. The evolution towards 5G wireless communications poses new challenges for physical layer security research. This paper provides a latest survey of the physical layer security research on various promising 5G technologies, including physical layer security coding, massive multiple-input multiple-output, millimeter wave communications, heterogeneous networks, non-orthogonal multiple access, full duplex technology, etc. Technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends of physical layer security in 5G and beyond are discussed.Comment: To appear in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication

A Survey on the Security and the Evolution of Osmotic and Catalytic Computing for 5G Networks

The 5G networks have the capability to provide high compatibility for the new applications, industries, and business models. These networks can tremendously improve the quality of life by enabling various use cases that require high data-rate, low latency, and continuous connectivity for applications pertaining to eHealth, automatic vehicles, smart cities, smart grid, and the Internet of Things (IoT). However, these applications need secure servicing as well as resource policing for effective network formations. There have been a lot of studies, which emphasized the security aspects of 5G networks while focusing only on the adaptability features of these networks. However, there is a gap in the literature which particularly needs to follow recent computing paradigms as alternative mechanisms for the enhancement of security. To cover this, a detailed description of the security for the 5G networks is presented in this article along with the discussions on the evolution of osmotic and catalytic computing-based security modules. The taxonomy on the basis of security requirements is presented, which also includes the comparison of the existing state-of-the-art solutions. This article also provides a security model, "CATMOSIS", which idealizes the incorporation of security features on the basis of catalytic and osmotic computing in the 5G networks. Finally, various security challenges and open issues are discussed to emphasize the works to follow in this direction of research.Comment: 34 pages, 7 tables, 7 figures, Published In 5G Enabled Secure Wireless Networks, pp. 69-102. Springer, Cham, 201

Secure Short-Packet Transmission with Aerial Relaying: Blocklength and Trajectory Co-Design

In this paper, we propose a secure short-packet communication (SPC) system involving an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-aided relay in the presence of a terrestrial passive eavesdropper. The considered system, which is applicable to various next-generation Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks, exploits a UAV as a mobile relay, facilitating the reliable and secure exchange of intermittent short packets between a pair of remote IoT devices with strict latency. Our objective is to improve the overall secrecy throughput performance of the system by carefully designing key parameters such as the coding blocklengths and the UAV trajectory. However, this inherently poses a challenging optimization problem that is difficult to solve optimally. To address the issue, we propose a low-complexity algorithm inspired by the block successive convex approximation approach, where we divide the original problem into two subproblems and solve them alternately until convergence. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed design achieves significant performance improvements relative to other benchmarks, and offer valuable insights into determining appropriate coding blocklengths and UAV trajectory.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, Accepted by IEEE Global Communications Conference, 4-8 December 2023, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2307.0722