An analysis of secure MANET routing features to maintain confidentiality and integrity in IoT routing

The Internet of Things (IoT) is fast becoming a global phenomenon and many issues are arising such as standardization, deployment of IPv6, sensors’ energy requirements and security among others. However, without a secure network routing system IoT nodes will be exposed to malicious activities on the network, data compromises, privacy invasion and even acts of terrorism could be perpetrated via the teeming billions of IoT nodes. Various MANETs secure routing protocols have been proposed by researchers which could be utilized in the development of secure routing protocols for the Internet of things, thus the study of these secure MANET routing protocols will give a direction for the development and incorporation of secure routing in the Internet of Things. This paper surveys secure routing protocols in MANETs while proposing some secure MANET routing features for enshrining confidentiality and integrity in IoT routing. This paper also discusses research trends and future directions in the area of security of IoT networks

Greening and Optimizing Energy Consumption of Sensor Nodes in the Internet of Things through Energy Harvesting: Challenges and Approaches

This paper presents a survey of current energy efficient technologies that could drive the IoT revolution while examining critical areas for energy improvements in IoT sensor nodes. The paper reviews improvements in emerging energy techniques which promise to revolutionize the IoT landscape. Moreover, the current work also studies the sources of energy consumption by the IoT sensor nodes in a network and the metrics adopted by various researchers in optimizing the energy consumption of these nodes. Increasingly, researchers are exploring better ways of sourcing sufficient energy along with optimizing the energy consumption of IoT sensor nodes and making these energy sources green. Energy harvesting is the basis of this new energy source. The harvested energy could serve both as the principal and alternative energy source of power and thus increase the energy constancy of the IoT systems by providing a green, sufficient and optimal power source among IoT devices. Communication of IoT nodes in a heterogeneous IoT network consumes a lot of energy and the energy level in the nodes depletes with time. There is the need to optimize the energy consumption of such nodes and the current study discusses this as well

A Trust-based Routing Framework for the Internet of Things

The intelligent connectivity of smart sensor devices commonly referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT) — is swiftly progressing productivity and communication levels and providing many functionalities throughout many organizations globally. The benefits heralded by the IoT’s revolution is threatened, however, by the general lack of understanding of IoT’s specific security demands thus, limiting its swift adoption and potential growth. Two distinguishing features of IoT that makes it unique are the interconnection of billions of smart devices, and the resource-constrained nature of smart “things”. However, most IoT devices and applications operate with either no security; limited or insufficient security to protect the data they transmit during operation due to their limiting properties like CPU, memory capacity, battery life and mobility. This issue is further compounded for IoT system designers, as a global security framework has not been well defined, and most IoT system designers lack the knowledge or expertise to design or define secure IoT systems since this is a new and emerging technology. The routing of data in the IoT network is a specific security area of concern. With the massive scale of data exchange between these devices, and no adequate security to protect the communication of data, compromising data routes becomes easy for attackers. This thesis therefore, proposes a secure routing communication framework called SecTrust, which scales on IoT size and provides acceptable network performances while not depleting the resource availability of these smart “things”. The proposed SecTrust is a secure Trust-based framework for IoT that provides a platform for trust computation, trust evaluation and trust formation among nodes. This framework provides a secure communication among the connected nodes. The framework further provides a system for the identification and isolation of malicious nodes operating within the network. In this system, every node computes the trustworthiness of its direct neighbours based on the computed direct trust value and the recommended trust value. While neighbours with high trust values are chosen for secure routing, nodes with lower trust values are categorised either as malicious, compromised, or perhaps selfish nodes that seek to preserve their resources like battery power. SecTrust consists of five main processes: trust calculation process, trust monitoring process, detection and isolation of malicious nodes, trust rating process and trust backup/recuperation process. The development of this system provides insight into the use of modelling and analytical tools in building effective designs for P2P networks, through the design and development of trust computation, trust creation and trust propagation mechanisms, which are embedded, tested and validated using an IoT platform. The utility of SecTrust as a promising framework for IoT systems is demonstrated via its practical applications comprising: detection and isolation of malicious actors, management and sustenance of trust and recommendation systems in IoT networks and secure routing in IoT using a trust-based mechanism. Through the framework proposed, this thesis demonstrates that the SecTrust system showed promising performance results over other trust-based systems while simulations and testbed experiments offer proof-of-concept of the practicality of the proposed framework solution regardless of the operations of unreliable nodes, malicious nodes, selfish nodes, and even trust related attacks in the network. Furthermore, this study is supported by proposing, implementing, and evaluating the trust-based system for large-scale IoT networks, and it constitutes three main parts. In the first part, the design and evaluation of SecTrust is reported. The effectiveness and transaction validity metrics are measured under purely naïve (attacking nodes working independently) and purely collective (attacking nodes colluding together) scenarios while scaling the network size from small size to a large-sized network. The second part covered the actualization of the SecTrust framework into an IoT routing protocol (SecTrust-RPL). The SecTrust framework was embedded into the RPL routing protocol and simulated using an IoT platform. The simulation was conducted to demonstrate the performance of the trust framework in mitigating known IoT attacks while providing acceptable levels of network performance. The performance of SecTrust-RPL protocol was compared with the RPL routing protocol. The third part was a testbed experiment, which served as a proof-of-concept to validate the simulation results presented and to show the practicality and efficacy of the SecTrust framework in mitigating IoT attacks in a real-world environment with minimal impact on network performance

An analysis of secure MANET routing features to maintain confidentiality and integrity in IoT routing

The Internet of Things (IoT) is fast becoming a global phenomenon and many issues are arising such as standardization, deployment of IPv6, sensors’ energy requirements and security among others. However, without a secure network routing system IoT nodes will be exposed to malicious activities on the network, data compromises, privacy invasion and even acts of terrorism could be perpetrated via the teeming billions of IoT nodes. Various MANETs secure routing protocols have been proposed by researchers which could be utilized in the development of secure routing protocols for the Internet of things, thus the study of these secure MANET routing protocols will give a direction for the development and incorporation of secure routing in the Internet of Things. This paper surveys secure routing protocols in MANETs while proposing some secure MANET routing features for enshrining confidentiality and integrity in IoT routing. This paper also discusses research trends and future directions in the area of security of IoT networks

A cluster-driven energy routing protocol for optimal network lifetime in ad hoc networks

Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is a group of networked mobile devices working in a cooperative manner. Due to usage, these devices quickly run out of battery power in critical situations and consequently fail in packet transmission. Power-Efficient Gathering in Sensor Information Systems (PEGASIS) and Dynamic State algorithm are two research works with unique energy efficiency concepts that, if harmonized and refined, will deliver a better optimized energy-efficient routing protocol for MANETs. This study, therefore, proposes PEGADyn – a hybrid version of PEGASIS and Dynamic State algorithm for a new energy-efficient routing protocol in ad hoc networks. PEGADyn creates a virtual grid classification of nodes based on current location, followed by a cluster formation of nodes in each virtual grid created. In each cluster and virtual grid formed, cluster heads (CHs) and designated cluster heads (dCH) are selected based on their energy levels. CHs and dCHs are used for communication between clusters and virtual grids. The use of CHs and dCHs limits communication overheads among nodes, reducing the energy expended and increasing the network lifetime. A simulation comparison of PEGADyn with PEGASIS and Dynamic State shows PEGADyn to be better in extending network lifetime and maintaining network throughput

A trust-aware RPL routing protocol to detect blackhole and selective forwarding attacks

This research addresses blackhole and selective forwarding routing attacks, whichare fundamental security attacks on the routing of data in IoT networks. Most IoT devices today,from medical devices to connected vehicles and even smart buildings, have the capability ofcommunicating wirelessly with one another. Although, consumers are progressively embracingthe concept of connected devices, recent studies indicate that security is not high on the prioritylist of manufacturers, especially in the way these IoT devices route and communicate dataamongst themselves. Thus, it leaves the door wide open to attacks and compromises. In thisstudy, a trust-based routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks, addressing blackholeand selective forwarding attacks is proposed. We show that our proposed protocol is not onlysecure from blackhole and selective forwarding attacks, but also does not impose undueoverheads on network traffic

Social engineering attacks and countermeasures in the New Zealand banking system : advancing a user-reflective mitigation model

Social engineering attacks are possibly one of the most dangerous forms of security and privacy attacks since they are technically oriented to psychological manipulation and have been growing in frequency with no end in sight. This research study assessed the major aspects and underlying concepts of social engineering attacks and their influence in the New Zealand banking sector. The study further identified attack stages and provided a user-reflective model for the mitigation of attacks at every stage of the social engineering attack cycle. The outcome of this research was a model that provides users with a process of having a reflective stance while engaging in online activities. Our model is proposed to aid users and, of course, financial institutions to re-think their anti-social engineering strategies while constantly maintaining a self-reflective assessment of whether they are being subjected to social engineering attacks while transacting online

A trust-based defence scheme for mitigating blackhole and selective forwarding attacks in the RPL routing protocol

The routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks (RPL) has gained prominence as the standard IoT routing protocol. However, it faces like many other routing protocols diverse attacks. Many studies have been proposed to secure the RPL protocol, and simulation studies have been put forward as the main research method, while testbed experiments, though an authentic research and testing method, have been ignored. Although testbed experiments and simulation studies have their strengths and limitations, testbed techniques could be used as a verifiable validation method for simulation studies. This study is a follow up research work to validate our simulation study, which addressed Blackhole attacks in the RPL routing protocol. In addition, Selective Forwarding attacks are also addressed. It implements a testbed while embedding our Trust-based RPL protocol and the standard RPL protocol in a smart environment configuration. Based on the test experiments, we provide a proof-of-concept of the validity of our claim that our Trust-based RPL protocol provides a comprehensive defence (simulation and testbed) against Blackhole and Selective Forwarding attacks

SecTrust : a trust and recommendation system for Peer-2-Peer networks

The concept of Trust has been applied in many information systems such as e-commerce, social networks and smart grid networks. It is currently getting attention on the Internet of Things. The fundamental concept in Trust, is the ability of a user to evaluate its neighbour, or a recommended neighbour with the hope of being able to trust that user. In this paper, we propose SecTrust, which is a trust-based system that computes trust values as a time-based packet forwarding behaviour of a node in a peer-2-peer (P2P) network. It uses a trust rating iteration and rating scheme to select only trusted nodes for communication while isolating malicious nodes in the network. A penalty is also introduced in our system that penalizes the continuous misbehaviour of a node in the network. Simulation evaluation results show the superior performance of SecTrust over other trust systems in isolating malicious peers, improving information interaction success rates, enhancing trust formation, and promoting better reputation between trusted peer nodes